And so Labour’s election policy will be the immigration policy of the new government. The policy documents themselves are here and here. I wrote about the policy here at the time it was released in June, before the Ardern ascendancy. It was notable how little attention Labour gave to immigration policy during the campaign – perhaps it didn’t fit easily with the “relentlessly positive” theme – and I understand there was a conscious decision by the new leadership to downplay the subject. It will be interesting to see now whether they follow through on their manifesto, but very little about immigration policy requires legislative change so, in principle, the changes should be able to be done quite quickly. In fact, as the biggest proposed changes affect international students one would assume they will be wanting to have those measures in places in time for the new academic year.