Prime Minister Helen Clark says if the economic downturn bites hard, the large number of short-term work permits issued to foreign workers plugging gaps in the workforce would not be renewed.
"I am confident we have quite a lot of slack there," she told the New Zealand Herald as she prepared for the final week of the campaign and a bid to lead a fourth-term government.
Between July last year and this June, 181,697 work permits were issued in areas of worker shortage.
If it looked as though New Zealanders were taking up that work, then the work permits - ranging up to three years - would not be renewed and Immigration had been told to keep a very close eye on changes.
"We have told Immigration that if there is the slightest sign of uptake, they are to get much tighter on permits," she said after campaigning in Mangere, Auckland, yesterday.
Immigration Service and the Ministry of Social Development would be working very closely on it.
Miss Clark said Labour's response to the global downturn was "malleable" and would be used only in areas which were badly affected.
"The way I have framed all this is `here's what we will do, if we have to to stop unemployment going up'."
She also said there was no chance that the recognised seasonal employer scheme that employed many Pacific workers in orchards and vineyards would be stopped because there was no hope of New Zealand being able to supply the required workforce.
Miss Clark and National leader John Key will go head to head tonight on TV3 for only the second time in the four-week campaign.
Mr Key, campaigning in the Hutt Valley yesterday, announced a $500 million capital spend-up on school buildings. Miss Clark stopped big spending promises at the end of the first week because of the global downturn.
Yesterday, she was relatively upbeat, saying New Zealand was in a very interesting position.
"The world economy is obviously very volatile. But here we are.
"We had a technical recession in the first half of the year; who knows, we may have been in recession in the September quarter, but we have still got unemployment under 4% and in the year to June we issued 181,000 work permits," she said.
Miss Clark announced two more measures yesterday to add to its suite of possibilities that could be activated if it regains power after Saturday's election.
One would be to enhance the existing financial assistance rate (between 50% and 70%) for funding new local roading that could be used for roading for public transport; additional walking or cycling facilities; street lighting upgrades; footpath renewals; and local road maintenance.
The second measure would allow more than 40% of the broadband roll-out fund to be spent in the first year, if suitable applications for the fund were made.
Labour has already promised it would deliver a mini-budget next month, with updated forecasts from Treasury on the economic outlook to decide which measures it would need.
Labour would also
• Improve existing financial assistance rate for funding local roading for regions with big economic downturn.
• Consider applications towards broadband roll-out beyond the $340 million (40%) allocated for year one of the investment programme.
