Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I move, That the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.

Today marks a significant milestone in this Government’s work to stamp out temporary migrant worker exploitation here in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill will significantly strengthen our immigration and employment systems by introducing a fit-for-purpose offence and penalty regime. The research is clear: we need legislation like this in order to deter exploitation from happening in the first place and to hold those who exploit their migrant workers to account more effectively. It complements a suite of measures we have taken to prevent the occurrence of exploitation, protect those who have been exploited, support them to leave such employment situations, and enforce immigration and employment law to deter employer non-compliance more effectively. This is not an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff; instead, it’s an extra line of defence at the top.

Exploitation has serious negative outcomes for migrants, businesses, New Zealanders, our communities, and our international reputation. Migrants who experience exploitation can suffer financial hardship and both serious physical and psychological harm that often also affects their families. Exploitative work practices also negatively impact businesses and the economy. Exploitative employers using illegal practices to get ahead undercut and disadvantage good employers, and migrant exploitation can contribute to wage suppression and job displacement in lower-paid industries. In September 2018, Cabinet agreed to take serious action on stamping out migrant exploitation in Aotearoa. A temporary migrant worker exploitation review was then undertaken by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, with the goal of reducing the exploitation of temporary migrant workers, including international students in New Zealand.

In August 2020, the Government announced a coordinated end-to-end package of legislative policy and operational changes to stamp out this sort of exploitation. The changes were accompanied by a $50 million commitment by the Government to help ensure that Employment New Zealand and Immigration New Zealand were better resourced to respond to reports of exploitation and to take action. The first initiatives came into force on 1 July 2021. These were new dedicated reporting tools to make it easier to report migrant worker exploitation as well as the migrant exploitation protection visa that supports migrants to leave exploitative situations quickly and to be able to remain lawfully in New Zealand. These initiatives have seen a significant uptake since being launched and are supporting migrants to report and to leave exploitative workplace situations. Last month, I also announced a new community-led education pilot.

Research has shown that migrants most at risk of exploitation often lack basic knowledge about their employment rights. We are making this information more accessible to migrant workers and to those who employ them. Working with community and industry networks that already support migrant workers and employers of migrants was an obvious step that we could take to bridge that education and awareness gap. This Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill will implement the remaining changes from the temporary migrant worker exploitation review. Once passed, this legislation will amend the Immigration Act, the Employment Relations Act, and the Companies Act to introduce a fit-for-purpose offence and penalty regime to deter employers of temporary migrant workers from non-compliance with their obligations under both immigration and employment law.

Currently, there are gaps in the enforcement regime that exists to ensure that employers of migrant workers are complying with their obligations. This bill fills those gaps, to establish a more proportionate and efficient enforcement tool kit for immigration officers and labour inspectors to deal with lower-level offending before it becomes more serious. The bill also helps align the powers of the labour inspectorate and Immigration New Zealand to support greater collaboration between the two regulators to undertake compliance and enforcement activity. Once this bill is passed, immigration officers will be able to compel employers who have supported a visa to produce documents that are relevant to a migrant worker’s employment and remuneration, to verify that those employers are actually complying with their obligations. These records would allow immigration officers to assess, for example, whether a migrant worker is being paid the salary stated in their employer-supported visa application. This will also help ensure that the new accredited employer work visa system is working as intended.

At the moment, there is no required time frame for employers to comply with requests for information from the labour inspectorate or from immigration officers. We know that employers may take advantage of delays to create records to satisfy their legal obligations. To give this requirement teeth, employers who fail to provide information within the new 10-working-day time frame will be issued with an infringement notice. Currently, Immigration New Zealand doesn’t have mechanisms outside of criminal prosecution before a court to be able to address low-level non-compliant employer behaviour. This is time consuming, it’s expensive, and it’s an inefficient response that undermines the effectiveness of immigration and employment law and places migrant workers at risk of more serious exploitation. This bill will also establish a new infringement regime that will address this gap by creating enforcement tools for Immigration New Zealand that don’t rely on court proceedings. Immigration New Zealand has estimated that it would issue between 500 and 1,000 infringement notices to non-compliant employers per year under this new infringement regime. This will be significant in our efforts to stamp out exploitation in this country, and it will send a clear message that this behaviour will not be tolerated.

Currently, employers who breach their obligations under the Employment Relations Act are published on the stand-down list, but this isn’t currently the case for employers who breach their obligations under the Immigration Act. The stand-down list is a crucial tool to ensure that employers who breach their obligations cannot access migrant labour, and allows both prospective and current migrant workers to know whether an employer is compliant with our employment law. The current situation means that employers who have breached the Immigration Act can still support visa applications and access migrant labour despite the risks that they pose. This bill will expand the stand-down list to include offending under the Immigration Act, giving greater transparency and consistency across the system. This means that employers who are found in breach of their obligations under the Immigration Act will no longer be able to avoid the consequences of being stood down.

Migrant exploitation is a particularly appalling form of offending from which the public should be protected. Therefore, the final component of the worker protection bill is to amend the Companies Act to allow the courts to disqualify people who are convicted of migrant exploitation or people trafficking from managing or directing a company. This change will prevent individuals from leveraging corporate structures to avoid personal liability and detection while exploiting their migrant workers. Exploitation and people trafficking are serious criminal offences that migrant workers are acutely vulnerable to. It is only right that we don’t allow people who commit these offences to continue to manage companies and employ potentially vulnerable people.

Stamping out migrant worker exploitation was a commitment made by this Government in our 2020 manifesto, and I am proud of the work that we have done and that we continue to do to improve the lives of our migrant workers. No one, stand-alone action will address migrant worker exploitation entirely, but, with the more rounded-out approach of education, awareness raising, reporting tools, and the deterrent effect that these new powers and offences will create, we can tackle migrant worker exploitation in Aotearoa New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am happy to rise and speak to this bill. I’d like to start by saying that National are tentatively supporting this bill, with great trepidation and many concerns which I’ll outline in my contribution today.

Can I just start by saying that we get this bill on the back of a story today by Radio New Zealand in which they state most migrant exploitation complaints have been uninvestigated in the past year. Only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints received by the labour inspectorate were investigated in the past year: 1,018 reports received in the 2021/22 financial year, 28 investigations complete, 80 ongoing, enforcement actions against 10, and none have reached a hearing. Since 2017, investigations have fallen by 70 percent. That is the background to this.

In this, we get stories of migrants owed tens of thousands of dollars or charged thousands and thousands in illegal fees—all uninvestigated. So the question we have to ask today when we get this bill is: how does this bill address these serious breaches? How are problems with resourcing of Immigration New Zealand and compliance officers going to be solved? How is a lack of staff at Immigration New Zealand compliance going to be solved? How is a lack of resource of the labour inspectorate going to be solved by this bill? In fact, none of those things will be solved.

So what does this bill actually do? Well, it goes after the very, very minor breaches—none of the things that were mentioned in the story today. Basically, it allows—as Priyanca has mentioned today; the Minister, I should say—warranted desk-based officers to request wage and employment documents.

It then gives employers 10 working days to supply these documents and allows a new fine regime to give those officers the power to implement fines basically in three areas: for not producing those documents in 10 days, for hiring a migrant who does not have the ability to work for that employer, or hiring a migrant who does have the ability to work there but breaches the conditions of their visa. For which an employer can be slapped with a $1,000 fine.

So, overall, what this bill does is it goes after the very low-level offending when the Government knows from their own Kantar research that was outlined in the Minister’s press release that the majority of employers—97 percent—want to do the right thing but 91 percent of them just don’t understand the myriad changes to immigration instructions and immigration law that’s been thrown at them in the last couple of years.

The third point is that these same employers are working under extreme labour shortages—the worst in 50 years—and they need flexibility of workers to keep the doors open. So that’s the backdrop to what we are receiving this bill into.

What this bill does is ignore the real problems with the under-resourcing and enforcement at the higher end, and targets the good employers—mostly small businesses—trying to do the right thing, unsure of all of the changes of immigration law and instructions that have been thrown at them in the last couple of years, who are up against it in terms of staffing.

So when a really good education campaign would have sufficed, we get this bill and employers stung with fines. Let’s take the example of an employer who, under extreme workforce shortages—let’s take a restaurant, and we all know in what desperate need the hospitality sector is with the inability to find staff—asks his cook to cover a front-of-house shift. That would be in breach of the visa conditions; they would be pinged with a fine by a desk officer sitting at his desk requiring wage and employment documents. Make no mistake: that is what this bill will target.

Instead of focusing on getting workers into the country more quickly—which is what we need to relieve the severe shortages—this Government is obsessed with making it more difficult, more costly, taking longer, having a much more bureaucratic process to get workers into New Zealand, putting these businesses under massive stress. And then they have the audacity to come out today and say, “Well, we’re going to fine you for a minor breach of visa conditions when you don’t have any workers.” So the real problems are not being solved; instead, we get this bill.

When we look more closely at the bill, one of the areas that we will be arguing against at select committee that I believe needs to be changed—and our support will hinge on this—is the fact that there is no reasonable cause for those desk-based officers to make those requests.

Now section 2, I think it’s 277, of the Immigration Act: when a compliance officer walks into a business and requires documents to be produced, they have to have reasonable grounds to do so. Reasonable grounds to believe that those documents are there and that there is a breach of the visa conditions or something else going on. They must have reasonable grounds.

What this bill does is allow a desk-based officer at Immigration New Zealand to go on a fishing expedition, to require documents—

Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: No, it doesn’t.

ERICA STANFORD: Well, there’s no reasonable grounds written into the bill. So unless you’re willing to put that into the bill, Priyanca, then, unfortunately, it is going to be fishing expeditions where a desk-based officer can decide, “Well, I’m going to go against every single Subway in the whole country and require all of their employment documents.” That’s what could possibly happen under this bill because there is no reasonable clause added into this bill. Now, our support of this bill will hinge on that being in the bill. As I said, the law as it stands at the moment is for immigration officers to make sure that they have reasonable grounds when they walk into a premises.

The National Party is also concerned that Immigration New Zealand lacks resource of field compliance officers who physically go into premises and get records. We know this from the story today about the lack of prosecutions and the lack of follow-up, and from just talking to compliance officers in the field. This is really important because we know that when a compliance officer walks into a business, they’re able to eyeball the employers, they’re able to eyeball the migrants, they’re able to eyeball the documents and say, “I want that and that and that, and what’s that book up there? I want to see that as well.”

Now, a desk-based officer can’t do any of that. A desk-based officer can only say in email, “I would like these documents, please.”, giving the employer 10 days—and if they are a poor employer, 10 days to send them, potentially, some documents that have been jimmied up and fixed up.

A compliance officer with boots on the ground can walk in, demand it right there and then, and say, “Hey, what’s that, that, and that? I want those as well.” What I am worried about from this bill is that because we have such a lack of resource in Immigration New Zealand for those boots-on-the-ground compliance officers, we are potentially replacing them with some desk-based officers who will not have the same ability to seek out those who are really doing some serious offending. This will further allow these businesses—some of them who are doing some serious spending to hide that serious offending.

Potentially there’s an oversight in the bill as well. The Minister should take this into account. The stated aim of the bill is to align the Employment Relations Act with the Immigration Act. Now, the bill amends the Employment Relations Act to require an employer to comply with the document request in 10 working days if not practicable to provide those documents immediately. This is in section 229 of the Employment Relations Act, where the labour inspector is physically on the premises requesting those wage documents.

So he walks in, he eyeballs them, and says, “Do you have those documents?” They say, “No.” He can now say, “Well, you need to get them to me.”—he or she—“You can get them to me in 10 days’ time.” Yet in section 277 of the Immigration Act, which is the equal and opposing piece of legislation that they’re trying to make the same, allows an immigration compliance officer to enter the premises, ask for the documentation, and there’s no 10-day clause in there.

I don’t know if this is an oversight by the Minister in drafting, but it needs to be looked at because it doesn’t align the two. It aligns a desk-based officer asking for documents with a labour inspectorate going in and physically asking for documents, but what it doesn’t align is the immigration officer—compliance officer—physically going into the building. There’s no 10-day clause in that, and that may need to be looked at by the Minister.

The other issue is that there is no right of appeal for those fines. If a business feels they’ve been unfairly targeted, there’s no way at all in this bill for them to argue that or to put their case.

There’s also, concerningly, the removal of the defence—and this is not for the fines; in section 350(3)(a) and (b) of the Immigration Act, currently it stands that if you didn’t know that the worker wasn’t able to work and you took all reasonable steps to check, that was a defence. That has been stripped out now, so completely gone from the offences. Not this new part, which introduces the fines but the actual offences, that has been stripped out. So now you have absolutely no way at all to oppose that.

So as I said, we will be supporting the bill through to select committee.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege to take a call in the first reading debate of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. Listening to Erica Stanford, the previous speaker, you could be forgiven for thinking that National are the great defender of workers’ rights, and never mind that the changes they brought in during their nine years in Government eroded workers’ rights severely. When they talk about things like flexibility, they talk about taking away workers’ meal and rest breaks. But, anyway, we have already put that right and we are putting more things right like we are with this bill.

This is a very important piece of legislation that aims to improve compliance and enforcement legislation to deter employers from exploiting migrant workers. There are gaps, obviously, in the enforcement regime that exist to ensure employers of migrant workers are complying with their obligations, and we are putting that right.

The previous speaker also had quite a few of the facts wrong. I know that my colleagues will speak about that a little bit more in depth, but, for example, the resource that the previous speaker mentioned is not all desk-based, so that is wrong. Also, what we all know is that the labour inspectorate at this stage is still severely under-resourced thanks to the previous Government’s stopping of investment in things. We have been working on increasing that resource ever since we have been in Government, and thanks to that investment of our Government, that labour inspectorate resource will be doubled by the end of the year.

So thank you to the Hon Minister Priyanca Radhakrishnan—I can say her name properly, with “Minister” in front of it. We have this bill in front of us, which will be dealing with a system that has been operating with a proper lack of oversight, which has allowed exploitation to flourish.

So this bill, again, addresses a very important Labour 2020 manifesto commitment, which is that Labour will continue our work to stamp out migrant exploitation with a focus on exploring the implementation of modern slavery legislation in New Zealand to eliminate exploitation in supply chains. I look forward to chairing the Education and Workforce Committee, which will be considering this bill, and we will then report it back to the House and have another kōrero. I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is rather disappointing that the Labour Party, who, apparently, support the rights of the workers, are taking only very short calls, and I’d like to compliment my colleague Erica Stanford, who has actually spelt out our concerns. I think it is very legitimate that when members of Parliament have concerns about a particular piece of legislation that we can debate it in the House, and stating those very clearly I think helps the process in this House.

One of the things that I’d like to say to that member who just sat down—Marja Lubeck—is that when she wants to attack the former National Government or the current members on this side of the House, then perhaps she should actually get her facts right. I’d like to find out what her thoughts are in relation to how satisfied workers are under this current Government, considering the fact that we have more strikes under this Government than we have ever had under the National Government. I think that actually goes to show how unhappy those workers are under this Government.

One of the things that the Minister spoke about, which got my ears pricked up, was when she said that the reason why this bill was brought to this House was to deal with the smaller offending of employers who are actually employing migrant workers, to make sure that they do not breach the conditions or they’re not exploiting those employees. She said that is because the small offending graduates into a bigger, more serious criminal activity by those offenders. I say this Labour Government and the Prime Minister should appoint Minister Radhakrishnan as the Minister of Police, because perhaps then she could deal with the smaller offending that is being committed by younger people who will, effectively, graduate to serious crime, like the ram-raiding that’s being done by the younger people.

It is a real concern. Nobody in this House wants exploitation of migrant workers or, actually, exploitation of any workers. Nobody wants that, but this current bill that has been produced in this House basically shows how out of touch this Government is with employers and people who create jobs, with the reason being that especially now under the circumstances where a lot of businesses are struggling to find staff members, and sometimes people have to jump from one activity to the next because there aren’t enough of them in the shop.

Let me give you an example. My parents used to run restaurants, and I remember as a younger person dreading the idea of having to go and work in Mum and Dad’s shop. I would be in front of the counter, as a cashier, I would actually work, and then I would be told that I had to go to the kitchen and bring out the food and serve customers. Then sometimes I’d have to work as a security guard to make sure that Mum was actually safe so that we could actually go home late at night. So if I was properly employed and if I happened to be a migrant worker at the time, I’ve literally gone from one job to the next to the next in the same place, and my mother would have breached the employment contract. She might have to pay fines. [Interruption] Yeah, that’s ridiculous.

Sometimes when you’re really busy—particularly in hospitality, as Erica Stanford has basically explained—you have to jump from one job to the next, and sometimes it is not always stipulated very clearly in an employment contract. If it was, they would be breaching it and they would be pinged by this Government, which makes it more difficult for employers, who are already struggling to find staff members to run their businesses, grow the economy, and create more jobs. I think that is a real shame. Hopefully, this is something that the select committee could explore and expand and actually fix, because I think that is what the select committee should do.

The other thing that made great sense to me and really impacted the way that I was thinking was when Erica Stanford mentioned the fact that only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints are ever investigated. How does this bill increase that number? So a desk officer who has no reasonable clause written into the bill to actually say that this particular shop is breaching the rules—how are they supposed to know? So if somebody says, “OK, well, I’m the desk officer. I’m going to pick A, B, C, D.”, how are they going to choose those supposedly potential breaches in the employment contract and how are they going to figure it out? Apparently, they’re going to call in documentation like wage payment data, holiday records—

Joseph Mooney: A fishing expedition.

MELISSA LEE: So it’s a real fishing exercise and an expedition to ping those employers who are trying to do their very best.

If they are owner-operators of a small business, sometimes paperwork gets left until a little bit later. Sometimes they’re doing the paperwork late at night, especially if they’re open from 6 o’clock in the morning until 11 o’clock at night and all they are doing is having enough time for sleep. They have to catch up on paperwork, and it could take weeks before they actually record those things. They might have recorded it wrong, and, if that’s the case, they could be pinged.

They could be paying fines or whatever else that they’re going to do to these employers, and I think it is rather on the nose that when the inspectorates without any reasonable reasons why they might investigate it—it’s almost like saying, “OK, so which particular groups in the business sector are they going to target?” Is it going to be the ethnic restaurants that they’re going to target or is it the flash European restaurants that they’re going to target? OK, maybe it is going to be the ethnic community - run businesses—obviously. You know, maybe they actually think that they abuse their own people—I mean, there are some stats that say that. But I think every business in this country—employers as well as employees—actually works really, really hard to grow their businesses so they can employ more people; work really, really hard; and actually earn a living for their families; and I think this bill could potentially make it very, very difficult for people, especially after having had such a horrendous time during COVID-19, where businesses ended up folding.

These are people who have poured their hearts and life savings into a business, and they eventually had to close because of COVID-19 and because they could not find staff members. Even in the digital sector, lots of people have closed their businesses because they cannot find staff. I’m not so sure if this bill will actually help our businesses to continue to grow and expand.

I’m really, really quite concerned that, yeah, as Erica clearly stated out, only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints are ever investigated. That is a really tiny percentage, and you wonder how many more people this Government will employ within immigration and grow the public sector—more bureaucrats to investigate this—so that we can increase the investigation rate from 10 percent to, potentially, 20 percent to 30 percent. How many more immigration officers are in fact needed to do this? I mean, they couldn’t even deliver cost of living payments to people after having how many people employed in IRD?

My goodness, I actually encourage all of my colleagues in the select committee—although I’m not actually part of that select committee, best of luck in your deliberations because I think you have a big, huge job in front of you. As Erica said, on this side of the House we support it with a bit of caution and with a lot of concerns about this particular bill, and I wish the select committee the best of luck.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this excellent bill, the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill, and I wanted to start with, perhaps, a little bit more of a conciliatory note. It’s great to hear that the National Party will be supporting this bill to the select committee. It’s great to hear that on both sides of the House we condemn exploitation, and I think we can be confident to say that the House in its entirety is opposed to these practices that we know can be so corrosive and so damaging when new migrants come into New Zealand. So I think that’s a good place to start.

Just in terms of a few of the other comments made by members on the other side of the House, there are a few concerns around the reasonableness—or whether there is a basis, I think—for putting requests to employers for information together. I think that’s a fair point to raise. One point that I would offer as a counter, perhaps, to that proposal, is the changes that are made to the Employment Relations Act—as this is an omnibus bill—obviously will go into the existing Act, and the existing Act has very robust and well-understood duties of good faith, meaning that all of the actions undertaken by any of the parties that are taking action under that piece of legislation would have to do so under good faith, and that’s in section 4. So—

Erica Stanford: But not in the Immigration Act.

CAMILLA BELICH: —that would apply, yes, for the Employment Relations Act, as I said. But I think that is a good point for us to look at, specifically in select committee and so I thank members from the other side for raising that point, and it is something that I look forward to examining more closely at select committee.

Some other things that were brought up were the right to strike—this is a fundamental human right. Obviously we want to be able to protect that no matter what Government is in power, so I don’t think criticisms of that nature help the debate go forward.

On the whole, I think this bill is a brave bill. It addresses an issue that we raised as part of our Labour Party Manifesto to address the exploitation of temporary migrants in New Zealand, and I think this bill does an excellent job of providing additional powers to allow those types of investigations to go ahead. I look forward to considering it at select committee, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise, on behalf of the Green Party, to speak on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

Just echoing the sentiment from the previous speaker, Camilla Belich, it is good to see the House, in its entirety, condemn migrant exploitation, because we know that migrant exploitation has been rife and that successive Governments have failed to take substantive action to tackle it. Whether it has been Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) workers living in overcrowded conditions; people on employer-bound visas being, effectively, paid less than the minimum wage because of, frankly, practices of modern-day slavery; bullying and harassment that goes unreported because, again, of employer-bound visas, and because of the lack of confidence that our community has that, once they report exploitation, it will actually get followed through on—I know that one of the speakers previously talked about those really low rates of reports of exploitation being followed through with an investigation, and that does create the conditions where our migrant communities do not feel like they can have faith in the systems that are supposed to be there to protect them.

So when we know that we’ve got a raft of issues, the response requires action, both on the prevention side of things as well as addressing exploitation once it has happened. I acknowledge that this Government has brought in changes such as the migrant exploitation protection work visa, which supports migrants once they have been exploited. With this bill, there are, predominantly, measures to address exploitation, once it has happened, in the forms of infringement offences and the publication of names of employers that are convicted of immigration offences or issued with infringement notices. And, yes, that may help future workers to know which employers have bad practices, but it doesn’t necessarily protect those workers that have experienced exploitation in the first place.

Having just come, as a Parliament, from the inquiry on migrant exploitation, where we had a cross-party group examine the issue of exploitation a little bit in-depth, I do find it somewhat disappointing that we could have had an opportunity here to address some of the policy settings that enable exploitation to happen in the first place. The fact that employer-bound visas remain in place here, despite unions, despite the Productivity Commission, despite migrants themselves raising them as something that is deeply problematic, is really concerning.

I also note that in the research that was used to get this bill together it was identified that groups such as international students, essential skills visa holders, and working holidaymakers are some of the most vulnerable to exploitation. When are we going to have the conversation, as a country, about the fact that, despite the doubling of the working holiday visa numbers, we continue having countries that can only work for the same employer for three months, creating the conditions for that transient nature of employment and the ability for people to, basically, be shifted around jobs that are not paying enough and for those people to not feel confident, again, with raising exploitation.

So while this bill does have some really good components, and I do think, particularly, the publication of exploitative employers will result in better awareness by the community, there are also some concerns that we have around the increased search powers for immigration officers. Without evidence that the restrictions imposed on their current powers unduly affect their ability to perform their role, in this instance, the concern that we have is that the powers being granted for immigration officers to request documents from employers in relationship to their obligation, rather than from employees themselves—but this is, basically, what is provided for in the Immigration Act, but only where the officer enters the premises first—could result in some really perverse outcomes for, say, overstayers.

So while there may be increased powers and that may result in cracking down on exploitative employers, the reality is that overstayers could be facing increased rates, and without the support mechanisms to actually support overstayers who have been exploited, what we’re going to be seeing are some of the situations that I myself as an MP have been working on with constituents, which are overstayers who face exploitation, their workplace gets raided, and those overstayers just get told, “Well, see ya later.”, or you may be invited to participate in the judicial process to hold those employers to account and, once you finish, you’re just treated as expendable evidence.

I think this bill could have addressed some of those safeguards to ensure that overstayers, for example, feel like they will be supported as we increase those punitive measures towards employers. There is nothing here around that, and that is something that the Greens will be looking closely at, in terms of the feedback that we receive at the select committee stage, because, otherwise, what we’ll be creating is, once again, an environment of fear, where overstayers will feel like these measures are not there to protect them. They may be there to hold exploitative employers to account, but the wellbeing over those overstayers isn’t taken into account or factored in. Actually, all that that creates is further pushing the exploitation underground.

I did want to comment on some of the contributions from one of the National Party members, and I wanted to, sort of, address those because we don’t have that many people in this House who come from migrant backgrounds, let alone who have experienced being on a temporary visa. I was quite disappointed, actually, to see the member talk about, I guess, normalising exploitation and talking about exploitation as though it is just the migrant experience in, say, sectors like hospitality. I think we’ve got to be really careful about normalising exploitation in our migrant communities like it’s just a thing that we experience as a, sort of, rite of passage in migrant families, because it is not the case. We should not tolerate exploitation. But, equally, to my friends on the other side of the Government side, I also want them to take some responsibility on how policy settings and visa settings can create supportive environments or can create environments where exploitation is allowed to happen.

So this bill could have been more holistic. It is not just about holding employers to account; it is also about reflecting that if we’re all committed on ending exploitation, we would have decoupled work visas from single employers, we would have explored an amnesty for overstayers, we would have done far more than what is here. And it is an omnibus bill, right. It was recognised, in the bill, that we needed to take just more than a single amendment and one piece of legislation and, rather, to look at a raft of issues. So I do see this as a missed opportunity.

Equally, it was raised, in the research that informed this bill, that migrants do know little about their rights. And I would say, as somebody who was—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: So Mr Menéndez-March, you’ve talked about what’s not in the bill; let’s have three minutes of talking about what’s in the bill, shall we?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Yeah. I’m talking about the research that informed this bill and that it is in this paper—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good. Well, I’ll be looking for that.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Yeah. I assume the Speaker has read the paper as well. So I’m talking about this. [Holds up the paper.] So in this paper, in the cover sheet, it talked about the research that helped us build this bill—it was identified, actually, by the first speaker, the Minister, Priyanca Radhakrishnan—that part of what informed this bill was that migrants did not know enough about their working rights. Again, one of the things that I do see missing here, while the Minister talked about—and I’m addressing the previous contributions by the Minister—some other initiatives that are in place—but what we can do to strengthen this bill in the select committee stage, and I do hope that I hear from submitters on this issue, is ask whether those same questions are true, that migrants are better aware of their rights.

So, once again, just to talk about the, I guess, more punitive side of the bill, punitive measures do not prevent crime from happening. Punitive measures have very little evidence of actually discouraging exploitation from happening in the first place, and we know this. When we put tougher penalties on certain crimes, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that crime will go down. We do know that by addressing the factors that lead to people committing those crimes in the first place, that is how we can reduce crimes, once and for all. So just simply putting in those punitive measures won’t be enough.

I just want to say that, you know, in the same way that some members are able to reflect on their experience growing up in the restaurants of their families, I do want to reflect on the lived experience of those of us who have been on temporary visas. The reality is that it takes more than just punishing employers; it takes a raft of support measures, and throughout the passage of this bill in the select committee stage, we’ll be ensuring that those measures are strengthened. Kia ora.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to make a few comments on this bill. I’ll start off by saying that ACT, too, is tentatively supporting this omnibus bill at first reading, as it does contain some provisions that can be used to strengthen existing laws, in particular, in New Zealand that combat migrant exploitation. The issue of migrant exploitation is, obviously, very real, and migrants deserve a voice and an opportunity to help craft a law that does directly affect them. The select committee is an opportunity for this to take place, which is enough for us to support the bill at this stage.

We do, however, call on the select committee to give a great deal of consideration to the new infringement regime, in particular, and particularly the likely outcomes, or, as some might say, the unintended consequences versus the overall purpose of this bill. The powers that will be granted to immigration officials and the labour inspectors to be able to go around, carte blanche, to whichever businesses they like, on pretty marginal grounds and require documentation to be produced within 10 working days is, on the face of it, a bit problematic.

I note from the bill’s explanatory note, “The kind of records and documents that immigration officers could request from employers”—I’m quoting here—“include wages and time records, leave records, employment agreements, bank statements, and financial statements.” This power does have the potential to be abused, in the sense that it could create fishing expeditions to identify and deport migrant workers, which I hope is not the point of this bill. With regards to the timing of documentation being produced that I noted, I would like the select committee to just consider whether 10 working days is fair and reasonable in the context of natural justice. I mean, it would be absolutely incredible to get written questions back in 10 working days.

There is a further risk that these powers could result in officials busying themselves by targeting good employers—the easy targets, those ones that’ll actually comply with the law—and, basically, just being a general nuisance without actually solving anything. This bill is, arguably, a significant expansion of Government power, and if Immigration New Zealand (INZ) and the labour inspectorate just assume everybody is bad from the outset, it’s going to be an incredibly disruptive and ineffective law.

As an aside, I should also note that the explanatory note of the bill may need a bit of proofreading as well. One example is: “persons convicted of exploitation under section 351 of the Immigration Act 2009 or people trafficking under section 98D of the Crimes Act 1961 cannot not be directors, promoters, or managers of any company”. I’ll repeat that: they cannot not be directors. I’m fairly sure that’s the opposite of what is intended, so they may want to fix that. It’s sort of assuming that if you’re convicted, the Government’s going to force you to be a director of a company, so maybe the plain language police will be all over that one.

I’ll move to the potential consequences for employees, and this is the particular part of the bill where, fundamentally, we’ve got a big problem, and it’s a balance issue. In its current state, it appears to simply be a tool for the enforcement of the accredited employer work visa scheme in that it seeks to ensure that migrant employees have the right visa and aren’t breaching their conditions—fine. But my question is: where’s the focused targeting of exploitation? This bill, if left unamended, could disproportionately affect migrant workers. Specifically, the infringements include (1) an employer that allows a person who is not entitled, under the Immigration Act 2009, to work in the employer’s service—so that’s ensuring that the employee is indeed tied to that employer—and (2) an employer that employs a migrant in a way that breaches their visa conditions. So, once again, the second infringement focuses on the employee. The scope of these new infringements is fairly narrow, and its focus may just be in the wrong place. That’s quite important for the select committee to consider.

If the objective of this bill is to go after dodgy employers and slap them with a $1,000 fine for every employee that they hire unlawfully, that may indeed be an outcome and it may work just fine, but what about the flow-on effects for those workers? Further, how does this new infringement regime, which is aimed at the lower end of the migrant exploitation spectrum—specifically that part of the bill—feed into the migrant exploitation protection visa, or otherwise encourage whistleblowing? The point is, what migrant employee is going to dob in their employer at this level of offending? The risk to the employee is significant. If they speak up, they will be admitting to Immigration New Zealand that they are in breach of their visa conditions, and that leads to one thing: they’ll get a DLN—they’ll get a deportation liability notice. In such a scenario, a DLN is a totally disproportionate response, and a huge disincentive for whistleblowing.

Building on that, I would ask: will migrants get some sort of grace period once an investigation kicks off, or an interim visa of some type, or perhaps an invitation for some sort of fast-track version of the migrant exploitation protection visa? It doesn’t actually talk about it. Or will they just be booted from the country? What is this bill actually designed to do? The explanatory note of the bill even alludes to this—we’re talking about the power to obtain documents, specifically “documents that relates to non-compliance with the Immigration Act 2009 or the deportation liability of the worker.” On the other side of the equation, I’d also just note that the Government needs to ensure that there’s natural justice here; that an employer can appeal if there has been a misunderstanding, because it does happen.

So what about the protection for migrant workers, how’s that going? Others have alluded to this, but I’ll just add a slightly different take on it. In terms of INZ’s dedicated phone line, the migrant exploitation reporting phone line, in the year to August 2022, there were over 1,700 calls to that number. From the year to June 2022—so it’s pretty much the same time period—the Government reported that there were 956 formal reports of migrant exploitation, and, in that same time, 119 migrant exploitation protection work visas were granted. So if we look at it as a bit of a funnel—I know it’s a slightly informal way of doing it, but if it’s kind of a funnel with people ringing in at the beginning and visas being issued at the end of it, it’s about 7 percent. So there’s a fair bit of work to do, and it does take about eight weeks to get that visa. So, really, how does this all fit in with this bill? Where’s the bridging here? Is it a sufficient safety net? I would argue that, in its current form with this bill, it probably isn’t.

On a somewhat related note, I’ll just ask: can migrants have confidence in the decision-making skills over at Immigration New Zealand? I ask this because almost half of the appeals to the IPT, the Immigration Protection Tribunal, get overturned, right? The immigration officer has made an error, usually, in examining the case, and an IPT appeal is done, and they get it. So it’s half of them—that’s not a good look for INZ.

In terms of the other aspects of this bill, particularly around ensuring that the notices have in fact been received, I think we possibly need to look at that. It’s a little bit blasé to say “Oh, we posted it in the mail, therefore they must have received it.” I think some sort of follow-up—given the documentation supposedly had to be done in 10 days, some more follow-up would be a bit better there. Regarding the Companies Act 1993 changes where their information will be published if they’re found to be breaching, and that’s on the more serious end for those that have been prosecuted—look, we’re fine with that. We think that’s fairly reasonable.

So, to finish, I will just reaffirm that there is a gap here between the lower-level infringements that this introduces and the higher-level offending that is prosecuted under existing law. At what point do these new infringements escalate to the point where, for instance, the Companies Act comes in and the provisions kick in? Our issues predominantly rest with the infringement regime, who it’s targeting, and why. What’s the purpose here, because, on the face of it, it’s going after the employees, the migrants, and the end result is going to be bad. There are all manner of reasons—and I’m not encouraging it—that an employee may be in breach of their visa conditions, and in some cases, it’s just because Immigration New Zealand is taking far too long to process their visa or their employer’s accreditation, or maybe it’s just a variation of conditions. Maybe there’s a mistake been made—it happens, that’s why immigration lawyers exist and why licensed immigration advisers exist, to help people through that process. Problems do arise, and I think issuing this process, which will be an infringement one, and the DLNs, probably, for the migrant at the end of it is just not a good thing. Some migrants are just in a state of desperation, and they might be getting a good pay cheque until they sort things out, so we do need to be careful.

To help reduce exploitation, as ACT has been calling for, the Government should stop tying migrants to employers, give them the freedom to easily change jobs if things don’t work out with that employer, and, at the very least with this bill, provide more protections for migrants so that it’s clear that this bill isn’t just about punishing them. Give them a bridge to a safety net so that they can actually be encouraged to whistle-blow.

So, as I said, ACT will be supporting this bill to select committee so that migrants and employers can participate in the process together with the Government, and hopefully that will result in better law. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. We’ve heard a lot tonight about this very complex issue. As my colleague Camilla Belich pointed out, it is great to hear that everybody is in agreement that we need to better protect our migrant workers—all workers. It’s great to hear on the other side of the House that they support investing in our Public Service so they can do a better job at serving those vulnerable workers.

We heard in select committee, in the Education and Workforce Committee, many submissions in our inquiry into migrant exploitation. It was clear, the message was clear; the stories were distressing and graphic. This piece of legislation sits alongside a whole pile of tools that we are working to improve to ensure that workers and their employers are best able to make the most of having these fine people in their workplaces.

So alongside the immigration rebalance with our improvements to Accredited Employer Work Visa and the Migrant Exploitation Protection Work Visa, we are hearing about these other tools. We will be exploring these and making sure that they are as good as they can be when it comes to select committee.

We heard tonight from the Minister talking about education. The Opposition did acknowledge that we have employers who don’t know what their obligations are and that we need to support them to be the best employers that they can be. It is about protecting our migrant workers. It was great to hear ACT supporting legislation, and, again, making it as good as it can be to protect them. It is also about having the best deterrents to make sure that everybody is doing the right thing.

Employers have rights and responsibilities, and so does all of New Zealand: to look after our migrants; to look after all of our workers. They contribute to their communities and our economy. We need to work together to make sure that they and all of New Zealand can reach their potential as we grow and prosper. I really look forward to this bill coming to select committee. I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill in this its first reading. As has been pointed out, National is very tentatively supporting this bill at its first reading because we do, of course, agree, like everyone else, that migrant exploitation has no place at all in this country.

It’s a concern that with all the major issues occurring in the immigration area that this pretty marginal bill is what we’re discussing when we’re talking about immigration. This Government has caused so many problems in the immigration space: immigrants separated from families; uncertainty of pathways to residency—we could have had workers like nurses—industries crying out for workers, unable to get workers to harvest fruit. The list goes on and on. I look to my colleague Joseph Mooney’s area, the Southland electorate where the tourism businesses in Te Ānau are just screaming out for immigration settings to be improved so that they can keep their tourism businesses open. We’ve seen horticulturalists and orchardists who have left fruit on the vines and trees because they couldn’t get workers, hospitality businesses closing their cafes and restaurants early because they can’t get workers to staff them, the health sector overrun because of the nursing shortages, aged-care facilities at serious risk because of the care worker shortages, the primary sector screaming out for vets and dairy workers. So then what are we doing? We’re discussing this very marginal bill. This is the Government’s response to everything that is going wrong in the immigration space. It has all the hallmarks of fiddling while Rome burns.

One of the Government speakers on this was in fact the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, which will be looking at this bill, Marja Lubeck. I hope that she has a good read of the bill before it comes there, because in her short three-minute speech that she could manage on this, she spent most of her time telling my colleague Erica Stanford that she had got her facts wrong. Well, in fact, the chair of the select committee had her facts very much wrong, and I will read from the explanatory note where the chair of the select committee said that the desk-based immigration officer was completely wrong for us to be referring to that. Here, directly from the note: “The new document production power will differ from this entry and inspection power by allowing a desk-based immigration officer to require the production of documents and records”, etc. Sounds like a cost-cutting exercise, or, at the very least, a cost-shifting exercise—shifting the cost on to business, which this Government does so superbly well, because we all know they don’t like businesses.

So having a bit further of a look at this bill, it’s going after those low-level breaches of the law and our poor businesses that are trying to get migrants in to staff their businesses. Often the change has happened, they aren’t aware of changes, there are misunderstandings of how the changes are being applied, so instead of going after the very big offenders in terms of exploitation of migrants, they’re going to be going after our businesses, who are working hard to keep their heads above water to keep their businesses afloat. They make some minor transgression against the changes that have occurred and so they will be the ones pinged for it.

Most employers want to do the right thing, but they struggle to keep up with all the immigration law changes, because, actually, they are running businesses. They are keeping this country going by creating and making and selling things to pay taxes for this Government to keep up their addiction to spending, and so they do occasionally make mistakes. Now, as my colleague Erica Stanford said, only about 10 percent of the complaints against exploitation are ever looked into, and this desk-based investigation that’s going to take place is not going to improve that.

Rachel Boyack—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

I just wanted to make a point around what members on the other side of the House have talked about as low-level breaches. In my experience, having worked with migrants who’ve been exploited, I’ve got a few examples that I will just talk to briefly that would probably qualify as low-level breaches but that actually speak to a much greater amount of exploitation.

Recently, I had a local chef come into my office who had been duped into signing a sale and purchase agreement for the business that he was working for. He’s a migrant. One of the challenges in that particular situation was that the documents that showed how much money he had earned during that time were not available, so it is was very difficult for us to then work up a case because there weren’t actually good employment records in place.

I just note that keeping those types of employment records are required by law in terms of hours of work and how much is paid. We’re not asking employers to go above and beyond what’s currently required by law; what we’re saying is that there’s actually an expectation now that you can no longer stall that, but you need to provide that within 10 working days. It’s a very reasonable request, in my view.

Another example was around a worker who had complained, again, about hours of work and had gone to the labour inspectorate, and he was subsequently assaulted. So sometimes what we see is that things that the Opposition may call low-level breaches actually lead to much more serious types of migrant exploitation.

The most recent type of example that’s come to my attention is in Marlborough in the viticulture sector, where we’re seeing a number of workers being exploited in terms of being required to pay for their own transport and their own equipment, and, again, actually having records of that type of information will be important for the inspectorate. So it’ll be good to have a discussion at select committee about improvements to the bill, and I commend it to the House.

Mr Speaker, thank you very much. National will be supporting this but, again, with hesitance until the select committee does its job. I have to say we’re starting to see a pattern from the Government as we move towards election year. It feels to me like they’ve realised they actually haven’t done the work as Ministers of a Government that they should’ve and so they’re rushing things out of departments before they’re ready, bringing them to the House, and Government member after Government member after Government member is told to get up and read from the note that says, “We’re looking forward to getting this to committee to hear from the public to try and fix it and make it better.” Look, if they’d been working, as every single New Zealander had to, from home when they were doing whatever they were doing on their pushbikes around the country when we were locked away, then, actually, committees wouldn’t have to fix pieces of legislation. They may well be looking to improve them, but when we hear members say we’ll have to fix some of these things, it tells us it’s a Government that’s really lost its way.

I’ll tell you what’s even more disappointing: we didn’t hear from the Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety nor a single member of the Government stand up and talk about what else they have to do around the immigration system, which is getting it to work properly so good employers get the employees they need—skilled workers from overseas—into the country quickly and be able to look after them, pay them well, and run their businesses well. That’s what’s most disappointing in what the Government has brought to this House today. They’re not talking about solving the problems that good employers have to help them get back on their feet, pay off the debt, run their businesses well. What they’re doing is talking about people sitting behind a desk somewhere in Wellington—which is what most Government members do and they think that’s the role, the job of an MP—as they wave their papers at us from the other side with silly grins on their faces. Actually, what they’re saying is “We want officials to be sitting there, not going out into the real world, not helping businesses but burdening good businesses, in the search for the few that are not good employers, with extra bureaucracy, extra paperwork, and asking them to provide information without cause.” It’s such a scattergun effect.

We heard from our spokesperson Erica Stanford earlier that when it comes to businesses who have migrant workers there who are bad employers, the success rate of this Government in prosecutions is appallingly low. In fact, the number of prosecutions that have been taken is about 10 percent of all of the cases that have been identified of employers of migrant workers who are breaking the rules and are not good employers. But rather than going out and saying, “Well, here’s more resource.” or, actually, to the department, “Please get on and do your job properly.”, what they’ve done is come to this House and say, “We need more rules.” or “We need to make it easier for ourselves.” Actually, what the businesses in New Zealand want, what the public wants, and, I’m sure, what the migrant workers want is just a Government that will do its job, not thinking that more and more rules, placing burden upon companies that are good employers, that are not doing anything wrong, that actually can be left alone because they are responsible New Zealanders—you know, that bringing more rules to attach to them is actually doing your job, and, sadly, it’s not.

Anywhere in New Zealand where an employer is not a good employer—that’s abusing workers, whether they are migrants or they are residents—is wrong. The laws already deal with that. In most cases, what’s in this bill is already dealt with under the existing law. What we actually need is enforcement, but that’s not what this bill is doing. What this bill is doing is creating more burden upon good businesses and actually not altering the playing field at all for those businesses that are not good employers.

There are two bits in particular that give me concern: this “without cause” part of this bill, which really means that the Government can go on a fishing expedition at its will to look for those who may be doing wrong. Well, even the police are not allowed to do that, and the police are there to look after the most serious crimes. If the police believe that, actually, a worker is being abused in a workplace, they have to have cause to go in there. So, on the one hand, the police force that are there to uphold the law have to have cause if they actually want to go and look into an issue, but what this Government is doing is saying, “No, no, we know best. We have bureaucrats in Wellington sitting there in their offices without windows, and they can go out and ask anybody for information with any reason at all”—reasonably or unreasonably—“and they must comply, and if they don’t, they’re breaking the law and there’s a fine.” Well, here’s something novel for the Government: if there is a problem and you’ve identified it, target that problem, actually. Put in this piece of legislation that they must have cause—nobody would have issue with that. The police don’t have an issue with that. But, actually, members of this House, every Government member, have stood up and said, “When it comes to enforcing the law, actually, you have to have a reason to decide that you want to go and look into something, but not in this case, because of immigration.”

I hope what we’re not seeing here is a Government that realises that the immigration system is not working because they have taken their eye off the ball. It’s been underfunded, but, worse than that, during their first three years in Government they actually were saying, “We have too many people here in New Zealand. We don’t like migration. We don’t want people moving here. We don’t want workers to come in.” They virtually closed the system down; now they realise that, actually, there is a consequence to that decision: we don’t have the skilled workers we need; we don’t have the truck drivers. Actually, in Rotorua yesterday there was a protest of hard-working owners of bars and restaurants that just want to open and run their restaurants properly and well. They pay well, they are good employers, but they don’t have the workers that they need and they see no help from the Government. They were forced to actually—to be noticed—go out and protest and hold up signs. They didn’t want to do that, but they felt that they had to.

So, an immigration system that’s not delivering for hard-working business people—you know, that’s still not letting in anywhere near the number of students that we should be attracting to study in New Zealand, to better their lives, to get the skills that perhaps allow them to be in the workforce. But, actually, because the Government fears that that’s not working well—I hope this isn’t what they call a “squirrel”, that, actually, out here on the side we’re doing a whole lot because there are bad employers and migrants can be taken advantage of. If that’s the case, they should come back to what our spokesperson Erica Stanford said, that of all the cases that have been identified where there is exploitation of migrant workers, about 10 percent are followed up on and prosecuted. Well, that’s just appalling. So let’s say, on this fishing expedition with this piece of possession where members of Immigration can go without cause to start getting information, they find 10 businesses that actually are not doing what they should and are exploiting migrants. Well, based on the Government’s current record, they’re only going to prosecute one of those; the other nine will carry on with it.

National stands opposed to the exploitation of workers, and particularly the exploitation of migrant workers. It’s not a good thing; that’s why we’re supporting this to select committee to help the Government members who are having to stand up in this House and read out the note that says we’re going to have to fix this because it wasn’t brought to us in the shape that it should have been. But unless that and many other issues are fixed, unless the Government starts focusing on what the real problem is in New Zealand—an immigration system that’s ground to a halt so good employers, the vast majority of companies that employ in New Zealand, can’t get the workers that they need and they deserve, and the other issues found in this bill—it would be very hard for us to support it, because, in the end, whilst the Government’s intention may be well-meaning, if it doesn’t deliver solutions, all they’re doing is giving false hope and wasting the time not only of this House but of the businesses that are actually hoping for something better. We will be supporting it, but we’re going to look for a lot of the changes in the committee. I feel sorry for the next member from the Government who’s going to have to stand up and say, once again, “It’s a good piece of legislation; I commend it to the House, but we’re going to have to fix it at committee.”

Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mr Speaker. It’s always great to be back in the Whare after recess. As always, it’s an honour and a privilege to take a short call in the Whare as the member of Parliament for the beautiful Ōtaki electorate on this, the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

This bill is about ensuring that our migrant workers are protected, have good working conditions, are offered competitive wages, and are treated with dignity and respect. This bill is about doing the right thing. As we have heard, there have been reports of modern day slavery, where migrant workers have been forced into labour and treated really badly. These are crimes, and it violates migrants’ human rights. It traumatises these migrants, who are already vulnerable. They’ve come over here knowing that Aotearoa is the place that will support them, and then they get treated like that—not good.

The actions that we’re taking to tackle the exploitation of migrant workers—under the three pillars of prevention, protection, and enforcement action plan—look to raise awareness and provide training, eliminate modern day slavery from supply chains, provide effective and efficient support services to these victims, strengthen policy and legislation to enhance enforcement and prosecution, and work with others internationally to support effective prevention and enforcement.

Part of the Immigration Rebalance and the accredited employer work visa—the work that we’re doing on this side of the House—is to ensure that New Zealand can attract those high-skilled migrants, offer competitive wages, and have a process that ensures employers who do sign up to this are compliant and are looking after their workers. With regular and tight checks, this process will reduce the chance of worker exploitation, which, we all agree in this House, we don’t want to see here in Aotearoa.

New Zealanders want to know that the goods and services that they purchase in Aotearoa, in New Zealand, are ethical and do not contribute to the exploitation of migrant workers. That is what this bill ensures, and for that reason it’s a great piece of legislation and I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.