Recently, we legislated that our worker standards must apply to foreign trawlers fishing our waters. On face value that appeared virtuous. In fact it's utterly hypocritical.
Our living standards rely on cheap goods from Asia. They're cheap thanks to low labour costs, as on the foreign fishing boats. So to be consistent, why not impose the same fishing boat rules to imported goods? There are two answers.
First, in terms of moral inconsistency, it's analogous to the abortion debate. What can't be seen, namely Chinese factories and unborn babies, conveniently doesn't count.
The second excellent reason is that free trade is unquestionably mutually beneficial, and as with Japan and increasingly Korea, in a few years, fast-rising Chinese living standards will see this low labour cost manufacturing continue its westward move to Southeast Asia, then the sub-continent, and if robots haven't by then killed off menial jobs as inevitably they will, then on to Africa. Everyone's a winner.
Actually, minimum standards are imposed by America, albeit not the same as Western equivalents.
A few years ago, I met a young American woman in Bolivia who was taking a break from her job as an inspector, overseeing Caribbean factory and labour standards.
If they weren't up to scratch she could block their exports to the US. Her concerns were wages and working conditions.
America has similar inspectors in Asia following a public clamour after revelations of some Chinese factories' then-appalling standards.
So accepting that low Asian labour costs are mutually beneficial, the answer to attaining a mass supply of housing in one fell swoop, is to emulate Dubai and, as a one-off exercise, import an army of cheap sub-continent labour.
Dubains reject manual work, aside from which they're too small in population to achieve what they have without outside help.
Fletchers recently announced they're going big on housing. We should allow them to build confined barracks to house several thousand sub-continent building tradespeople they can import, who, motivated by money, will work six-day weeks.
It's not all plain sailing. Not long ago an English architect based in Dubai told me sub-continent workers need several layers of supervisors to ensure Western standards, but those would come with the package.
David Shearer was rightly ridiculed when he announced Labour would build an extra 10,000 homes annually, simply because it's not possible with the current under-pressure building industry.
But as a one-off exercise, by importing say 10,000 Indian building tradesmen, we could quickly create whole new suburbs, targeting first-home buyers and doing so much cheaper than currently.
If there are concerns about competence given that building Dubai's towers amounts to semi-skilled labouring, the skilled sub-trades of joinery, plumbing, electrical are also done by the Indian workers as no Dubain would sully himself with such toil. Obviously, therefore, they're up to it.
Another option lies with high-rise apartment blocks, currently being promoted by the Auckland City Council. But they'll be uneconomical for buyers given the inevitable looming surge in building costs, brought about by the imminent commercial construction boom. So why not let developers negotiate with Chinese construction companies, skilled in building high-rise apartment blocks, and allow them to fly in armies of workers and knock these up.
The Chinese Government is currently pressuring their banks, concerned at the amount of speculative high-rise construction, so it could be a timely move.
Importing construction tradesmen in dribs and drabs from all over the world, but mainly Britain, as has been done in Christchurch, is far too slow a process to deal with the looming Auckland supply crisis.
We need a one-off wholesale measure to knock the top off the problem.
It's no different in principle from our seasonal importing of Melanesian labour to pick and process Hawke's Bay fruit, or buying children's leather shoes for less than $10 and televisions for a fifth of the cost if made here.
As I've said, everyone's a winner.
