Stuff reports:

City-wide zoning, limited out-of-zone enrolments, and an annual “greater Christchurch ballot day” have been mooted as potential solutions to an unequal distribution of pupils across state high schools.

Oh no. An unequal distributions. Parents are not sending their kids to their designated school.

Of six options presented – a free market system, per-school student caps, zones and caps for co-educational schools, zoning and capping all schools, full regulation, or the status quo – the report writers said full regulation best met the ministry’s goal of accessible, equitable and efficiently-resourced schools.

And that sums up everything wrong. The goal is about schools, not students and families.

Full regulation would include zoning and an out-of-zone cap – likely at 5 to 10 per cent of enrolments – at all state high schools, with financial penalties for exceeding the cap.

Why only fine people for going to the wrong school? Jail them, and their accomplices such as principals of popular schools.

Shirley Boys’ High School principal John Laurenson said his “personal view is that there needs to be legislative teeth to the final decision” on the city’s enrolment system.

He said the main differences between schools were cultural, not academic, and Christchurch’s high school leaders appreciated the need for an efficient and equitable network.

I think parents have a very different view of the differences.

Labour’s education spokesman Chris Hipkins said he was open to debating enrolment mechanisms across New Zealand, but was “strongly opposed to Christchurch being treated any different because it had an earthquake”.

“If we have a policy of parental choice across the country, then Christchurch parents should have that same choice.”

When even Chris Hipkins says these proposals go too far, you know they are bad.

Stuff reports:

Bars in a central Christchurch street fighting a proposed 1am closing time have had “a win”.

The High Court has ordered the Christchurch City Council to reconsider its alcohol policy after the hospitality sector raised concerns about its decision-making over Victoria St. …

Brett Giddens, who owns Boo Radley’s bar, in north Victoria St, called the decision “a win for common sense”.

He said the council’s decision was “flawed”.

“Hopefully they take the opportunity to reconsider the entire process as it has been a substantial waste of ratepayer money to date.”

Giddens said a group of affected bar owners had been involved in the review process since 2013, supported by Hospitality NZ.

“The decisions that have come out to date have been very overwhelmingly in support for the bars on Victoria St that took the early risk to establish in the central city,” he said.

“Everyone involved in the appeal is still waiting for the council to pick up the phone and communicate what they are going to do to fix this. “

Hospitality NZ (HNZ) said it had “no other choice” but to seek a High Court review. The council spent more than $91,000 defending its policy. 

Some Councils think that they can insert whatever conditions they like in a LAP. They don’t understand the Act, which requires decisions to be based on evidence.

Mike Yardley weighs in:

HNZ sought such assurances, but in a defiant act of petulance, the council refused to provide any clarity, prompting HNZ to seek a judicial review in the High Court.

In late June, the court issued its decision, strongly ruling in favour of HNZ, confirming that “the council is directed to address the reconsideration decision afresh” in accordance with Decision 43’s intentions for Victoria St.

Despite the colossal waste of ratepayers money on these losing legal capers, the council doesn’t even seem to have the good grace to publicly accept it got it wrong.

Head of strategic policy Helen Beaumont replied to me: “The Council is considering the implications of the decision. It is currently taking legal advice and will not comment further at this stage.”

And earlier on:

When the council first embarked on crafting its LAP in February 2013, it wanted to shoehorn the city’s nightlife scene and late-night trading into a tightly designated pocket of the central city. For the likes of Victoria St, a closing time of 1am was proposed, despite its spectacular evolution into being the city’s premium entertainment precinct.

Last year the Alcohol Regulatory Licensing Authority (ARLA) ruled that Christchurch’s LAP had 13 elements that were “unreasonable”, requiring the council to “reconsider” those elements.

Again LAPs need to be based on evidence, not just the whim of staff or Councillors.

From the Electoral Commission:

1. Gareth Morgan to TOP $900,000
2. Inner Mongolia Rider Horse Industry (NZ) Ltd to National $150,000
3. E Tu Union to Labour $120,000
4. Hon Robert Smellie to Labour $115,000
5. Dame Jenny Gibbs to ACT $106,200
6. Alan Gibbs to ACT $100,000
7. Phillip Mills to Labour $50,000
8. De Yi Shi to National $50,000
9. Murray Chandler to ACT $35,000
10. MF Management Ltd to National $32,000

So by party:

1. TOP $900,000
2. Labour $285,000
3. ACT $241,200
4. National $232,000

The Herald reports:

The alcohol purchase age would be 20 years and booze prices would jump by an average of 10 per cent under policy by Gareth Morgan’s political party. …

“One doesn’t need to be a policy analyst to see that lowering the age of purchase has effectively lowered the socially acceptable age at which young people start drinking. 

If they did use a policy analyst, the analyst might have told them they are talking shit.

As I blogged in 2011:

Certain lobby groups and MPs would have you believe that since the alcohol purchase age was lowered in 1999, many more young people are drinking alcohol.

But an Auckland University study of 9,000 high school students has found the following changes from 2001 to 2007:

• Students who have never drunk alcohol increased from 18% to 28%

• Students who do not currently drink alcohol increased from 30% to 39%

So fewer students drinking. Also I blogged in 2012:

And if you go back to before the age dropped from 20 to 18, in 1997, 80% of 14 to 18 year olds were drinking alcohol despite it being illegal to purchase it. There is no direct data for the the same age range today, but the closest we have is 53% of 15 to 17 year olds were drinkers in 2010. Overall there looks to be fewer minors drinking today than when the purchase age was 20, and beyond doubt the rate has fallen massively since 2005.

That data is from two independent surveys. And also Stuff reported in 2013:

Lowering the drinking age to 18 has not led to more binge-drinking or alcohol-related road accidents among young people, researchers have found.

The study, due to be published in an academic journal later this year, shows changes to the minimum purchasing age passed by Parliament in 1999 had no significant impact on the drinking patterns of 15 to 19-year-olds relative to 22 to 23-year-olds between 1996 and 2007.

I have a summary of all the evidence that fewer young people are drinking today than in the past in this blog post.

So it is a real shame to see a party that claims to be about policy and evidence, ignore the evidence which doesn’t fit with their views. That is not to say the level of harm from alcohol abuse amongst some young people is too high. Of course it is. But the change in the purchase age in 1999 was not a factor, and is a lazy cop out from the more complex solutions.

McGreedy Winder & Co do a monthly newsletter called Town Hall that focuses on the Auckland Council. It is excellent reading and well worth subscribing to for those interested in Auckland.

Their analysis of the Auckland Council’s latest budget is so astute that I thought I’d share some key aspects here:

Alongside its torrid passage, the budgets noteworthy characteristic was the most fiscally lax approach that has been seen in an annual plan to date. To be honest, if you are even remotely a fiscal conservative who thinks Auckland Council needs to tighten up its ship, it was an absolute shocker.

So why was it so fiscally lax?

Internal council documents provided to the Town Hall show that the efficiency savings achieved during the 2017 budget process were a meagre $11.3 million (in the context of a $3.8 billion operating expenditure budget). To put this another way, Mayor Goff’s first annual budget delivered efficiency savings of 0.30%.

So that is bad enough – Goff only found 0.3% of spending to cut. But they find that half of even that paltry $11 million came from Auckland Transport (which can be done by capitalising some opex). How much came from the Council itself:

The truly staggering number though, is the savings generated within the Council organisation itself. From its $2.957 billion operating budget, the cost cutting crusader of a Mayor managed to find
$800,000 in savings. Despite all the Mayors huffing, all of his puffing, he could only drag 0.03% of savings out of Council’s bureaucracy.

Let’s put that into context. Say you are in a household spending $100,000 a year. Things are tight so you need to save money. This is equivalent to reducing your annual household spend from $100,000 to $99,970.

And finally to add insult to injury:

The budget includes an additional $1.2 million for 17A cost efficiency reviews (that were discussed in the March edition). So, the initial budget impact of the Mayor’s much heralded efficiency drive, in the financial year that starts tomorrow, is to increase costs by $1.2 million. For lovers of the slap stick, that is 50% more than the council organisation managed to capture as efficiency gains during the budget round.

So Goff has spent more trying to save money than the Council has actually saved. Someone should turn this into a Yes Minister episode.

The Herald reports:

More evidence has emerged showing the Auckland property market prices are falling.

Monthly figures for Barfoot & Thompson, the real estate firm handling nearly a third of Auckland sales, show prices have dropped 3.1 per cent in three months.

Lower sales numbers are finally having an effect on Auckland residential property sales prices, said Peter Thompson, managing director of Barfoot & Thompson.

“In June the average sales price was $913,606, a 3.1 per cent fall on the average price for the previous three months, and only 0.6 per cent higher than it was 12 months ago,” he said.

That means house inflation in Auckland is now less than overall inflation.

This is only one measure, so too early to be certain. But it looks like the combination of supply and demand side measures are finally having the impact people wanted.

Stuff reports:

It is not your imagination – something does indeed appear to be wrong with the petrol market, a government study has found.

Energy and Resources Minister Judith Collins said a report into the retail fuel market had found “features which may not be consistent with a workably competitive market.”

The gross profit margin on fuel at the pump had doubled to about 30 cents a litre in Wellington and the South Island over the past four years, and the price of fuel – ignoring taxes – was now the highest in the OECD, the report found.

​Higher profit margins in the South Island and Wellington were “not explained by higher costs in those areas”.

Collins said the study didn’t say for sure whether fuel prices were reasonable or not, but she noted the report’s authors said “we have reason to believe that they might not be”.

I think the market is clearly not competitive enough. Now the solution is not necessarily to regulate, but to look at how to get better competition. A petrol price app could be one useful tool for motorists – it can automatically tell you the cheapest price within x kms.

This graph uses MBIE data and shows how the margin between the importer cost and retail cost has grown in the last decade. It clearly shows there is a price and competition issue.

Barry Soper writes:

Labour’s biggest problem going into this year’s election isn’t what’s been identified by Shane Jones, the man who before the last election unsuccessfully tried to become the party’s leader, missing out to David Cunliffe.

Jones, who’s now formally joined forces to become what he says is a union with Winston Peters in the far north, believes the hook up with The Greens has diminished Labour’s brand.

The biggest problem for Labour is the trade unions and the influence they’re able to exert on who’s the party’s leader, given to them just five years ago. Andrew Little’s there simply because the unions want him there.

It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with trade unions, many of us can thank them for the working conditions we have today. It’s just their political influence takes away the ability of the caucus to chose who they want to daily lead them, and those at the pitface of politics know better.

I’m always surprised more people are not outraged over the union power within Labour. There;’s a huge difference between being pro-worker and letting unions decide who your leader is.

Imagine if the National Party leadership wasn’t decided purely by National but the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Dunedin Employers Association, Business NZ etc all got to vote on National’s leader, vote on National’s list rankings, vote on candidate selection and bulk vote at conferences on policy.

And for Labour, anything they announce that benefits trade unions is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being done to feather their beds.

Generally rightly. The more money they funnel to unions, the more unions spend on helping Labour.

Stuff have done a useful article looking at the policy of each party with regards to the status of cannabis for both personal and medical use.

I’ve summarised this in the table below:

These are based on the substance of their policies. So the parties that are totally prohibitionist are National and Maori Party. The total legalisation ones are Greens, TOP, ALCP and basically ACT (no official policy but their sole MP is in favour). The others are a mixture.

Politik reports:

A nine year veteran and two times candidate walked out of the Labour Party last Friday and joined National because he was fed up with Labour’s approach to law and order.

Sunny Kaushal is a well known Indian community leader in Auckland who has been leading a campaign to get more protection for Indian shopkeepers faced with violent robberies. …

The Indian Weekender website said that Kaushal had been with Labour for the past nine years, and many in the Indian community believed that he had become the face of the Labour Party.

The Indian Weekender says that Kaushal’s defection meant that the leaders within the community who had first hand connection with the Labour Party during the Helen Clark and Phil Goff leadership were gradually slipping into political oblivion under the current Labour leadership. 

“Only time will tell if the current Labour leadership has done a major miscalculation in sidelining Mr Kaushal from the Party in building bridges with the Kiwi-Indian community,” it says.

However, it singled out Labour’s Maungakiekie candidate, Priyanca Radhakrishnan, as being one Labour person who was in touch with the Indian community.

National is clearly revelling in the defection and arranged a lunch for Kaushal last Friday with Party President, Peter Goodfellow and Auckland Regional Chair, Andrew Hunt at a Khyber Pass restaurant.

Kaushal has led a campaign calling for tougher action to combat dairy and small shop robberies in Auckland – an issue important to the Indian community, many of whom are shop owners.

He told POLITIK that he was getting a lot of support for his stance and more and more members of the community, which had historically backed Labour, were now turning to National.

“For the community, the law and order issue is Number One,” he said.

Kaushal is very well connected in the Indian community and his defection could be quite significant.

Pete George blogged:

The ‘Auckland Labour Party’ has now been named by Labour Party general secretary Andrew Kirton as responsible along with Matt McCarten for the intern scheme.

Kirton has also said that “it started off as a Labour Party project”. So Kirton, and one would expect Labour’s leader Andrew Little, would have known more about the scheme than they have admitted.

When the Labour intern story broke it was obvious that Little and Kirton were not being open about what they knew about the scheme.

Little has said he had heard about the scheme as an idea at the start of the year, has admitted finding out it was running as an unapproved scheme in May, and he says he stepped in when they started getting complaints around Monday last week (but there are variations in that story too).

Matt McCarten quickly became the scapegoat. He was employed (by Parliamentary Services) to work for Andrew Little in Auckland, and no campaign work was allowed. However it is clear that McCarten has spent some time (months) working on the intern scheme aimed at campaigning for Labour.

It is clear that this Campaign for Change was in no way independent of Labour or non-partisan. It was run by the Auckland division of the Labour Party. Now it may well be true the Head Office was not fully in the loop, but that is an internal issue for Labour. It does not change that this was a Labour Party campaign.

In two other posts, Peter George details how the interns were working for Labour Party candidates and MPs. To quote one intern:

• Authored campaign strategy to increase Pacifica turnout for Auckland’s 19 electorates
• Pinpointed four “flippable” Auckland electorates
• Worked directly with North Shore MPs to craft specifically-altered campaign strategy to increase religious Labour votes in the heaving National Party-leaning electorate

How much more evidence do you need that this is and was a campaign for Labour, and hence all expenses and donations associated with it must be treated as Labour Party expenses and donations. Our electoral laws will be a mockery if the Labour Party can claim that anything done by the Auckland Labour Party doesn’t count.

The 10 working day deadline for revealing the mystery donor has already passed.

The Press reports:

The offer includes a $10 million Christchurch City Council pledge – supported in principle unanimously by councillors behind closed doors on Friday, but subject to public consultation – a Great Christchurch Buildings Trust (GCBT) pledge of $13.7m, a $10m Crown cash contribution and a $15m government loan that would not have to be paid back if the restoration was completed in a reasonable time and stayed within budget. That money, along with the church’s insurance proceeds of nearly $42m, amounted to just over $90m of the estimated $104m restoration cost.

So the contributions would be:

1. Insurance $42 million
2. Taxpayers $25 million
3. GCBT (public) $14 million
4. Anglican Church $13 million
5. Ratepayers $10 million

As a taxpayer I can think of much better things to spend $25 million on. But I can understand that a decision is needed as soon as possible, so other development work can occur. The uncertainty has gone on for too long.

The offer also proposes new legislation, which would allow reinstatement of the cathedral to be fast tracked, and the formation of an independent fundraising trust to find the remaining money. 

So the Anglican Church may not even need to find the $13 million shortfall. Can’t see them saying no.

Wagner said: “The Government contribution is a significant amount of money, but we need to balance the property rights of the church with the historical value of the building and the need to break this deadlock.” 

“About half of Christchurch wants to see the cathedral reinstated, the other half wants a modernised version or a contemporary new-build, but really, everyone just needs a decision. It’s time to move forward, and I think this is our best option.”

Yeah, just decide.  I have no problems at all if the Anglican Church says no – it is their cathedral, not ours. But it looks a pretty generous offer.

Liam Hehir writes:

I have been writing columns for almost six years now. Freedom of speech has been a theme of them. I do not think I have come out in favour of censorship once. But that doesn’t mean there are no lines that should not be crossed.

As Nobody Speak built up to a rah-rah finale extolling journalism, something was missing. It was something that the film never really dealt with properly. That is that, when it came down to it, Gawker was undone by its own grossness.

The help Thiel gave Hogan would have come to nothing if Gawker  were not guilty of a shameful abuse of platform.

Gawker had media rabies. While its editor points out the good stories it was involved in, overt cruelty was its signature trait. It was a site built around the profitability of nastiness. 

During the proceedings, another Gawker editor said that his personal line for celebrity sex-tape publication would be if it involved a child. Asked to explain further, he ventured that the line be drawn at  4 years old and younger. That editor now says he was joking, but it’s hard to imagine a sentiment more emblematic of gutter reporting.

I can’t say I mourn Gawker.

Stuff reports:

A regulated market in cannabis would net $70 million in new tax revenue, independent analysis carried out for Stuffreveals.

The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research modelling shows a 25 per cent excise tax on legal marijuana would raise $40m, on top of an extra $30m from GST.

The figures are well short of an earlier estimate by Treasury which put the potential tax take at $150m per year.

$70 million is still a useful sum of money.

Despite the dramatically lower revenue estimate, NZIER principal economist Peter Wilson said he still felt the drug should be legalised.

“Prohibition has been an expensive failure. It has allowed illegal groups to charge higher prices and there is no evidence that it has changed consumption,” Wilson said.

When half of adult NZers say they have tried it, you know a different approach is needed.

A legal market in cannabis would drive the consumer price down and significantly cut the cost of producing the crop, NZIER believes.

Wilson suggested a 25 per cent excise on cannabis, based on the experience in Colorado, USA. After the drug was legalised in Colorado, the black market for cannabis shrunk dramatically as users put a premium on being able to buy a product of uniform standard, that had been subject to quality checks and was legal.

“One feature that has been very popular with users is the requirement in Colorado for the strength of marijuana to be independently tested and displayed on package,” Wilson said.

So the market becomes more about quality than price.

Proponents also believe a tax on cannabis could mitigate some of the harm it causes.

The “drug harm index” puts the wider cost to society from cannabis-related crime, loss of wealth and police interventions at $1.28b. While some of those costs would disappear if cannabis sales were no longer a crime, the health costs would remain.

The tax windfall from cannabis could go back into health measures, according to Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell.

“There are 50,000 people who need help for their alcohol and drug problems any given year who cannot get that help,” Bell said.

He favours an initially tough legalisation regime, treating cannabis similarly to heavily taxed tobacco or alcohol.

“You can say, there’s no advertising and we’re only going to let you buy it online only, there won’t be any stores and the age restriction is going to be 20 and the tax is going to be really high.”

Sounds reasonable.

As you can see both National and Labour have been quite consistent since the last election National in the high 40s and Labour in the high 20s. They both dropped during the last three months (but National outperformed the polls), so will this happen again?

The monthly newsletter summary is:

Curia’s Polling Newsletter – Issue 110, June 2017

There were two political voting polls in June – a Roy Morgan and a Newshub Reid Research.

The average of the public polls sees National 21% ahead of Labour in June, up 4% from May.

 The current seat projection is centre-right 61 seats, centre-left 48 which would see a National-led Government.

We show the current New Zealand poll averages for party vote, country direction and preferred PM compared to three months ago, a year ago, three years ago and nine years ago. This allows easy comparisons between terms and Governments.

National’s party vote is around the same as a year ago but down from three years ago.

Labour’s party vote is below a year ago and three years ago.

In the United States there is not a lot of change, but Democrats now ahead by 5% on the generic congressional poll.

In the UK Jeremy Corbyn is now the Preferred Prime Minister and Labour lead the Conservatives by 5%. However the next election is 250 or so weeks away.

In Australia, Turnbull’s net satisfaction has fallen by 11% in the last two months as Abbott openly campaigns against him.

In Canada, The Liberals have a healthy 7% lead over the Conservatives, who now have a new leader.

We also carry details of polls on euthanasia, Christchurch Cathedral, and the Budget as well as business and consumer confidence.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues, please go to http://curia.us10.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=e9168e04adbaaaf75e062779e&id=8507431512 to subscribe yourself.

Stuff reports:

New Zealand has signed an agreement to start trade negotiations with a four-country Latin American bloc.

The go-ahead comes after Trade Minister Todd McClay met the presidents of the four countries – Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru – at the Pacific Alliance Summit in Colombia.

New Zealand had been working closely with the four countries during the past two years, and the announcement of the formal launch of talks was important, McClay said on Saturday.

The four countries had indicated they wanted to get an agreement wrapped up within a year, with the first negotiation to take place in Peru in September.

Excellent. No one trade deal by itself is a game changer, but every extra one helps both our exporters and us as consumers.

The Herald editorial:

The Labour Party leader owes his position to the votes of affiliated trade unions and it is beginning to show. 

It’s called the pay off.

Andrew Little has announced a policy for industrial law that would represent a considerable step backwards for this country.

It goes far far beyond what we had during Helen Clark’s Government (in fact National has hardly changed the law). Their policy is all the way back to the 1970s style national awards and de facto compulsory unionism.

If Labour becomes the government in September it will reinstate industry awards by a different name. It will call them “fair pay agreements” that will set the minimum pay and conditions in each industry.

They do this in Australia also. Unless the employer donates to the Labor Party, they get told by the Government how much to pay their staff.

To force all employers in an independent industry to come together and negotiate minimum rates and conditions would take a great deal of competitiveness out of the New Zealand economy.

It would destroy much competition.

Stuff reports:

Joan Cowie, a 64-year-old Auckland grandmother, says she suffers from “horrid” pain when she’s not taking cannabis.

“It can be piercing, and if I lay on my side and bring my arm over, it feels like something is being squashed in my chest,” she says. …

Then, two years ago, she was told she had terminal lung cancer.

“I cried. I thought I was going to die. Well, I knew I was going to die,” she says. …

Cowie turned to Facebook to ask for help to access the drug after reading about its potential benefits.

“I was absolutely terrified,” she says. “I knew it was illegal, and I was frightened that the police might be watching that particular page, but I had no other choice.”

Since using cannabis, Cowie says her appetite has returned, her pain has been relieved, and she can get a good night’s sleep.

“It’s a blessing,” she says. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a god-send.”

Cowie had never been a cannabis user, and as a mother she warned her six children to stay away from the drug. …

Howes is afraid of what could happen to her family if police decide to target her cannabis use.

“I worry that I may lose my children,” she says. “I take good care of my children, and I don’t believe they need to be out of my care because I take medical cannabis.”

Cowie carries copies of her cancer diagnosis in her handbag in case she ever has to explain to police why she’s carrying cannabis.

“That way at least if I get pulled over I can show that I’m not lying, I have got cancer,” she says.

Smith acknowledges that technically she’s a criminal, but doesn’t identify with the label.

“I really don’t believe I’m doing anything wrong,” she says. “It’s the law that’s wrong. I’m just trying to help my quality of life, and make it worth being around for.”

The women all agree that legally available cannabis extract products such as Sativex and Tilray are out of reach – with a month of treatment costing as much as $1200.

There is no way Mrs Cowie should be forced to risk criminal prosecution just for accessing effective pain relief for her cancer.

There is a bill before Parliament that will mean cancer sufferers who possess (or grow) cannabis for their personal medical use will no longer be criminals.

MPs who vote against this bill even going to select committee will look heartless.

Stuff reports:

Co-leader of the Green Party James Shaw has apologised for the way they announced their immigration policy last year, saying it worsened public debate.

Shaw, speaking at the annual general meeting of the Federation of Multicultural Councils in Dunedin on Saturday, said their immigration policy launch in October of last year had focused too heavily on the numbers and not on values.

The policy set a limit on immigration of one percent of population growth – a cut on current numbers.

After a rush of negative feedback the party took the policy into “review.”

On Saturday, Shaw admitted the policy had contributed to a growing feeling of xenophobia in New Zealand society – although that was never the intent.

“Last year I made an attempt to try and shift the terms of the debate away from the rhetoric and more towards a more evidence-based approach,” Shaw said.

“Unfortunately, by talking about data and numbers, rather than about values, I made things worse.

“Because the background terms of the debate are now so dominated by anti-immigrant rhetoric, when I dived into numbers and data, a lot of people interpreted that as pandering to the rhetoric, rather than trying to elevate the debate and pull it in a different direction.

“We were mortified by that, because, in fact, the Greens have the ambition of being the most migrant-friendly party in Parliament. And I am sorry for any effect it may have had on your communities.”

We want to cut your numbers in half, but in a very friendly way.

The Greens want to halve the number of the migrants who qualify due to their skills, education, investment potential etc but quadruple the number of refugees.