Winston Peters is back on his anti-immigration bent.

And he says Thursday's budget will see the needs of Auckland square off against the needs of the regions - and Auckland, he says, will win.

Well, I would argue Auckland 'has' to be the winner and I've made this point many times -- if Auckland doesn't work, the rest of the country won't work either.

Yes, immigration is at record levels and various analysts estimate that Auckland takes upward of 60% of those migrants.

But here's the thing... a good chunk of those arriving here are Kiwis returning home. Just over 67,000 people moved back to New Zealand permanently in the year to march -- and 31,000 of those were expats coming home.

Our economy is doing a lot better than Australia's, Europe isn't quite the land of opportunity it once was, and so kiwis are packing up and coming home and that has to be a good thing, surely.

The reserve bank recently estimated that Auckland has taken just over 31,000 of those migrants -- while the BNZ recently did its own research and believed that number was closer to 41,000.

Whatever the case, it's a big number -- and that puts an enormous amount of pressure on housing, on transport, on the city's schools and on its hospitals as well.

And so Auckland has to be the winner in this budget.

It's the country's economic powerhouse and it's growing at a staggering rate.

Health and education has already been flagged as two areas likely to receive a big chunk of extra funding.

And Auckland, undoubtedly will receive a large percentage of that. It has to.

Peters, intriguingly, often accuses other politicians of dog-whistle politics -- but that's exactly what he's doing here.

He's trying to play off the regions against Auckland and he has good reason to. Much of his voter base is in the regions.

But you can't dispute that auckland is driving the country's economy.

We're in the midst of a dairy downturn. Our economy's taken a big hit because of that.

Meanwhile, Auckland is cranking but it's short of about 30,000 homes.

Yes, record migration is fuelling that -- but what can you do? Tell Kiwis they can't come home? Tell highly-skilled migrants we don't want them? Tell those coming in to pick fruit and to labour on our farms because kiwis don't want those jobs -- that they can't come?

And in all of this, you have to remember that we have an under-populated country and we have an ageing economy -- you have to grow the taxpayer base to support the baby-boomers who are putting an increasing demand on many areas of our economy -- including on our health system.

It's that taxpayer base that's supporting Peter's voter base.

And he should remember that as he attempts to play Auckland off against the regions.