India-NZ FTA: Seymour warns of ‘anti-Indian sentiment’ as misinformation spreads
ACT Party leader David Seymour. (Facebook/David Seymour)
"We have had a period...where there's been a lot of people saying a lot of things about India," says the deputy prime minister.
Speculation and misinformation about the free trade agreement (FTA) with India is spawning a negative sentiment about people of Indian descent across the country, especially in South Auckland, David Seymour said on Friday.
The deputy prime minister was speaking at a public meeting in his central Auckland electorate of Epsom, with India's high commissioner Neeta Bhushan and consul general Madan Mohan Sethi in attendance.
The negotiations for the FTA concluded in December last year, and it can be put into operation only once it is ratified by the Indian and New Zealand parliaments. The deal's fate now rests with the opposition Labour Party as one of the ruling coalition partners, New Zealand First, has said it won't lend its support.
At Friday's meeting, meant for Epsom voters to understand the deal and its impacts, Seymour said "I would just make the point that there is an anti-Indian sentiment out there in the community. I've picked it up, especially in South Auckland."
He pointed specifically to commentary in the last few days. "We have had a period over the last, say, two weeks where there's been a lot of people saying a lot of things about India, about Kiwis of Indian origin, about the Free Trade Agreement."
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NZ First leader Winston Peters and deputy Shane Jones have said the deal doesn't get the best bargain for New Zealand, especially for its dairy farmers, and that it opens the floodgates for more Indian migrants than the country can accept without compromising local jobs.
Seymour indicated the public mood against Indians is being shaped in part because details of the deal are not known publicly as yet. "I suspect that as the facts about this free trade agreement come out, and I have seen it, anyone who says that this is somehow a major departure, or going to be the end of New Zealand as we know it, is going to find something Warren Buffet once said, 'Sometimes the tide goes out and you see who's swimming naked'."
When asked later if he felt the government could have proactively offered details about the deal to discourage speculation, he pointed to NZ First's public condemnation of the deal.
"Unfortunately, a ruling coalition partner has decided to oppose the deal," he said, adding he hoped information expected to come through in the days to come should help lift the haze.
Seymour said his party's view on immigration in general, and particularly migrants from India, was clear. "New Zealand is made stronger by each wave of settlers that have come here. That is our DNA, is that we're a people who are prepared to move across the world to get ourselves a better life."
He said the country wasn't new to skepticism around immigrants. "It's also true that despite people's misgivings from time to time, every wave of settlers has become Kiwi and adopted the morals that we recognise. In the case of India, significantly enriched, I would argue, based on the culinary aspects. Not into yoga myself, but it seems to have enriched a lot of people's lives."
