Here is what I am trying to work out. 

Does this Government have, broadly speaking, the best of intentions but it's just delivery that is the issue? 

Take the job spots in MIQ for example. You can have 300 teachers but only eight come in. They think 300 is the answer and the fact it never comes to pass either isn't their problem, they didn’t think about the outworking, or they are taken by surprise and don’t know what to do. 

There is no doubt part of the labour crisis issue is deliberate ideology. 

Their insistence that locals could be hired to pick stuff, if only you paid enough, sort of worked and sort of didn’t.  

It is true to say that wages seem to have gone up in many of those jobs, so that's a win for the Government.  

But it's also fair to say that no matter what's been offered, we are still cripplingly short of people to do those jobs. 

So we can see there are still those without work and we can see the conditions for the jobs have been vastly improved -  yet the problem persists. 

So why then am I reading that as part of the Government's reset on immigration they are deliberately and overtly looking to make it harder for immigrants to come to the country? 

Why are they deliberately and overtly making it harder to bring your families? 

MBIE are doing this work behind the scenes as we speak and apparently it is going to come as a big shock to businesses when it's released. 

They are looking at tying migration to house consents, which in theory you can see the dots being joined, but look at the mess in housing right now with consents through the roof, but you cant get GIB board. So a consent is not a house.  

The upshot is that there seems no question getting skills is a nightmare, there's no question that everyone who wants a job locally has one or can get one and there seems no question that labour constraints cripple economies.  

So why the approach? 

Why have we turned immigration into such a fraught issue when it stands to provide so many of the solutions we are currently struggling with? 

And if it makes no sense, what else are you left to ask other than - "don't they know what they are doing"? 

Or do they know what they are doing and they really are that hell-bent on wrecking the place?