New Zealand's Maximum Potential

New Zealand has always stood out to me for the potential it had and has. It is relatively lush compared to Australia, and is a good starting point for a solid island country (it is similar to the United Kingdom in terms of size).

What is New Zealand's maximum potential population, economics, and politics possible? Especially population, which is a branch for all others.
 
Difficulties:
  • We're in the middle of nowhere, and have no strategic value. Our nearest neighbour is 2000km to the west.
  • Related to the above, we've only had human settlement since about A.D. 1200 (early 19th Century for Europeans). Which means getting a critical mass of people is difficult.
  • We lack Australia's mineral wealth. Coal, and a bit of gold, and that's it.
  • Yes, we're bigger than the UK. Problem is, quite a bit of our landmass is taken up by mountains.
Wanking New Zealand is very hard, unless you want to go down the "Third World War, with only New Zealand left standing" route.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Boosting population requires providing free steerage passage plus a promise of opportunity (job or land). NZ did this for a while and had quite a good size spike in immigration. From memory, seemed like an almost 5 to 1 spike in immigration. So the key is finding someone who wants to fund the project or quite a few decades.
 
New Zealand has always stood out to me for the potential it had and has. It is relatively lush compared to Australia, and is a good starting point for a solid island country (it is similar to the United Kingdom in terms of size).

What is New Zealand's maximum potential population, economics, and politics possible? Especially population, which is a branch for all others.

You can wank it, but do really want to? Do you want to ditch liberal democracy for it?
What are restrictions in terms of politics?
 
For real fun have a few Dhow from India, Arabia, and China get trapped on the island much earlier with a few skilled passengers or travellers and some livestock. Polynesians arrive a few centuries later and intermix. Unique population arises that might decide to go exploring a century or two later and maybe colonize afar. By 1800 they are holding large parts of Southeastern Australia, Hawaii, Easter Island, and points in between.
 
The only thing I think be possible seeing for a New Zealand wank would have it be taking more of the Pacific Islands and maybe annex Tasmania for having a similar climate like that of New Zealand's South Island. But overall I can only see New Zealand expand further by taking more of Polynesia.
 
The New Zealand government made it quite clear that they don't want the likes of myself and the wife settling to retire in their precious country. The French have made us very welcome however. Now if we had been rich, New Zealand would have welcomed us with open arms (for a price). Some change in immigration policy will be needed to seriously bump up the New Zealand population. I might point out that we are British, I served under the Colours for two engagements, have no criminal record and we have adequate pensions to live comfortably in France and more to begin paying us next year, own our own house and have no debts. Yet, whilst spending a couple of months in New Zealand, I found everyone delightful (as is the country) and (unprompted) asking why we emigrated to France and not New Zealand? I remain puzzled with the dichotomy.
 
The only thing I think be possible seeing for a New Zealand wank would have it be taking more of the Pacific Islands and maybe annex Tasmania for having a similar climate like that of New Zealand's South Island. But overall I can only see New Zealand expand further by taking more of Polynesia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belitung_shipwreck

Hence the Dhow reference. They can go very impressive distances and occasional shipwrecks rewrite the history books. Besides the idea of a polyethnic civilization from India, China, Polynesia, Arabia, and maybe Indochina sounds neat.

Yulzari: my interactions with New Zealanders is limited but their focus on immigrants looked to be skewed towards engineering and medical services if not already independently wealthy as you mentioned. They also seem very fiercely independent of *everyone* with the Aussies being the friendliest and going from there. France is using the political climate to try to lure talent from the US to Europe but are supposedly very picky about who they actually take (as are the Swiss and Japanese who are doing the same to a lesser degree if you know where to look).
 
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Some thought on New Zealand

Energy. New Zealand still has a massive untapped hydroelectric potential of course the environmentalists won't let further development happen without a massive fight, but there was a report done in the 70's (oil shock) that I read that documented all the significant potential hydroelectric sights in New Zealand, and there is a massive untapped potential.
There are massive coal reserves in New Zealand that were mapped in the 70's (oil shock) much of it is low quality, and or under crown owned protected land.

Land. Nearly 30% of New Zealand is publicly owned protected land.

People. If you want to boost the population then there are a number of historical changes that could be taken.
Allowing Chinese immigration during the gold rushes, large numbers of Chinese men worked on the gold fields but very few Chinese Woman were allowed, and the Chinese faced massive legal discrimination, and very few stayed after the gold run out.
Encourage settlement of British returned service men post WW1, and WW2.
Encourage Indian immigration, during and after Independence/Partition of India. New Zealand restricted the immigration of Indians during this period, due to them being non-white.
Allow more Pacific immigration, and make it easier for them to stay. The dawn raids and deportation of the 80's come to mind.
While New Zealand has historically encouraged and subsidized the immigration of whites it's polices have been to discourage other races.
 
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