This is edition 2025/213 of the Ten@10 newsletter.
Hi all,
This is the Ten@10, where I collate and summarise ten news items you generally won't see in the mainstream media.
Enjoy!
1. Doubling-Down.
Chris Trotter
- 🤯 Radical Proposal – Business New Zealand has floated a plan to double New Zealand’s population to 10 million by 2060, a move critics say would completely transform the nation’s demographic structure.
- ⚖️ Demographic Shock – Māori would fall from around 20% to 10% of the population, Pākehā would lose majority status, and Asian communities (Indian, Chinese, Filipino) would rise to over half the total population.
- 💣 National Identity Threatened – The author argues such population growth would “destroy New Zealand as its people have come to know it,” replacing cultural cohesion with fragmentation.
- 🏢 Business NZ’s Motivation – The plan stems from a fear of labour shortages after a consultancy (Sense Partners) projected a 250,000-worker shortfall by 2045 due to declining fertility.
- 🚪 Open-Borders Solution – Business NZ proposes mass immigration to offset the shortfall — about 140,000 new arrivals per year for 25 years.
- 🏘️ Infrastructure Nightmare – Doubling the population would require ~47,000 new dwellings yearly plus countless new schools, hospitals, and expanded transport and energy systems.
- 💸 Profit Over People – Critics say business elites benefit from rapid population growth through cheap labour and suppressed wages, regardless of social costs.
- 🧱 Historical Contrast – New Zealand’s earlier economic stability relied on a relatively homogeneous, English-speaking workforce, which supported class-based politics rather than ethnic division.
- 🌏 Cultural Transformation – The new immigration wave would largely consist of non-white, non-Christian, non-English-speaking migrants from Asia, ending cultural homogeneity and potentially deepening “Us vs Them” divides.
- ⚠️ Lessons Ignored – Between 2006 and 2020 NZ’s population grew from 4 to 5 million — already straining infrastructure and social cohesion. Repeating this at double pace would be reckless.
- 💀 Dire Consequences – Likely outcomes include low wages, overcrowded housing, ethnic tension, and a fraying national identity.
- 🙏 Final Warning – The author ends with a plea: if the plan proceeds, New Zealanders may have to “petition God to defend New Zealand” from those intent on its economic and cultural destruction.
