A New Zealand minister is getting flak for his “outright racist” remark against Indians even as Wellington and Delhi prepared to sign a free-trade deal next week.
Shane Jones, deputy leader of the right-wing, populist NZ First Party, said a trade deal with India could trigger a “butter chicken tsunami” in the country. The minister for regional development was referring to the popular Indian dish to emphasise that the “once in a generation” deal to boost the country’s business access to India’s domestic market could open New Zealand up for a flood of immigrants.
The agreement will eliminate or reduce tariffs on 95 per cent of New Zealand’s exports to India with more than half of the products to be duty free on day one of the pact, while all Indian goods would have duty free-access to New Zealand. New Zealand also agreed to invest $20bn in the Asian country in the next 15 years.
Under the deal, which follows in the footsteps of those signed by the UK, and the European Union last year, more than 20,000 Indian migrants could enter the country, according to an estimate by the New Zealand officials.
“I don’t care how much criticism we get, I am just never going to agree with a butter chicken tsunami coming to New Zealand,” Mr Jones said, speaking to Reality Check Radio.
His remarks were criticised by prime minister Christopher Luxon as “unhelpful” and a “gross misrepresentation” of the trade deal. “I don’t know. I’m just saying the immigration story that they are scaremongering around is absolutely false. We have taken them through the data, we have taken them through the details of that deal. We’ll continue to do so, because we would love them to rethink their position,” Mr Luxon said on Monday, but stopped short of calling out Mr Jones’s remarks.
“I appreciate they’ve got a pretty hard no against anything around free trade agreements. I just think that makes New Zealand poorer,” he said.
Mr Luxon had called the gains from the historic agreement as “wide-ranging and significant”.
“India is the world’s most populous country and is the fastest-growing big economy, and that creates opportunities for jobs for Kiwis, exports and growth,” he had said when the agreement was inked in December last year.
The deal matters to Wellington politically as well as it fulfils an election promise from New Zealand’s governing National Party that it would finalise the free trade agreement in its first term.
However, Mr Jones’s comments sparked a backlash from the Indian diaspora, making up around 6 per cent of the population, in New Zealand.
“It’s incredibly worrying for everybody,” Shanti Patel, president of the Auckland Indian Association, told public broadcaster RNZ.
New Zealand lawmaker Priyanca Radhakrishnan said the remarks amounted to “outright racism”.
“It’s unacceptable and politicians shouldn’t be making statements like he has,” she said.
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