People who need people
It’s an inspiring Māori truism – He aha te mea nui o te ao. He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. But it’s a darned inconvenient one these days.
No matter which variety and flavour-mix of government is elected at the weekend – just after the Listener goes to print – none of its promises can be fulfilled without the right tāngata – of whom we simply do not have enough in our “team of five million”.
The new administration faces skills and labour shortages in critical sectors that can’t be met in any way other than an at least temporary surge of imported people.
