Labour in full retreat on immigration

David Cunliffe yesterday on Radio Live:

SEAN PLUNKET:        So you’re going to leave family reunification completely out of it?

DAVID CUNLIFFE:     Yep, we’ll leave family reunification out of it.

And Stuff last week:

Labour is taking aim at work visa and family reunification categories as it eyes ways to limit the flow of migrants to the country. …

Labour immigration spokesman Trevor Mallard said there would be no change to the rights of Australians to come here, or to quotas under agreements such as with Samoa or the annual refugee quota.

Instead, it would target the numbers getting work visas, which according to Statistics NZ were granted to about 30,000 last year, as well as visas in the family reunification category.

This is policy on the hoof. They’re making it up every day.

If they can’t even handle opposition, how could they handle Government?

UPDATE: Cunliffe this morning still denying the comments of his own immigration spokespersoon. On ZB with Rachel Smalley he said:

I mean he has frankly made up the suggestion that we would decrease the Samoan or Pacific quotas or cut back on family reunification.  At no stage have we said we would do any of that and frankly it’s not our policy.

The Stuff article makes it very clear they were talking family reunifications.

It seems the only category they’re willing to now concede they may change is investor migrants. We have only a few dozen of those a year. You could scrap the category entirely and impact migration by around 0.5% only.