Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill. [Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The very senior members down there should know much better. Start again, please.

I present a legislative statement on the Immigration (COVID19 Response) Amendment Bill.

💬 SPEAKER: The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and will be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported back to the House by 29 April 2021 and that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during an evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, despite Standing Orders 193 and 196(1)(b) and (c).

💬 SPEAKER: Sorry, can the member just repeat those numbers, please.

Despite Standing Orders 193 and 196(1)(b) and (c).

💬 SPEAKER: Now, is the member aware that that differs from the advice that I have received previously?

I’m looking at my sheet, Mr Speaker, and I may have to add Standing Order 195.

💬 SPEAKER: All right. OK, that having been done, that’s clear and we’ve now got notice of what the member’s going to move later, thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It has been almost a year since Parliament unanimously supported the passage of the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Act of 2020. It amended the Immigration Act of 2009 by establishing eight administrative powers to allow the Government to respond effectively and efficiently to issues arising due to the imposition, obviously, of the global pandemic. The bill was considered by the Epidemic Response Committee in the previous Parliament. When we in this House considered the bill last year, it was not clear how long the impacts of the global pandemic would last for, and we hoped it would be brief so that eight powers would expire on 15 May of this year.

However, the House will be aware that while New Zealand’s domestic situation has improved since the introduction of the powers, the global circumstances under which the powers were initially passed have not changed as much as we had hoped. New Zealand still has closed borders to much of the world, and the global pandemic is still infecting and killing large numbers of people, and there is a risk that future variants of the virus could impact on visa operations again.

The arguments for continuing to maintain the flexibility that these powers give will remain until border restrictions can be lifted. The bill only changes the duration of the powers of the bill passed last year. It does not propose any changes. The bill therefore seeks to extend the duration of those eight administrative powers and shifts their appeal date to the close of 15 May 2023.

It does not propose to change any of the aspects of the powers, although it does look to extend the maximum duration of any associated regulations from a three-month maximum to a six-month maximum. I propose this because the frequent renewal of the regulations is costly and the short time span of each renewal of those regulations is causing uncertainty. The time frame for the passing of the bill reflects the upcoming expiry of those eight powers, and it will also enable the select committee to consider the case for an extension and, obviously, to take any submissions from those who have any comments to make about the use of those powers and any potential changes they might like to see because of its use over the last 11 months.

The bill does justify an efficient select committee process. As I said, it doesn’t introduce any new powers. It extends the same settings with a technical change to the length of the maximum duration of the regulations. Last year, when the bill was submitted on—and I believe the Hon Michael Woodhouse may have chaired that or was certainly on the Epidemic Response Committee at the time—there were 13 written submissions and the select committee heard oral submissions over two days. We do want to make sure that this does have public scrutiny and public input. As I say, it was unanimous when the bill passed last year, but there may be some input around how the powers have been used over the last 11 months that the select committee may want to hear.

This year, stakeholders have already been engaged on the extension of the current powers, and there are existing safeguards on the use of the powers that will remain in place. For example, the powers relating to classes of persons can only be exercised by special directions made by the Minister of Immigration, and they have to be made public and they can be overturned. So, in summary, this is about ensuring we continue to have the legal and legislative tools we have had in the past 12 months to adapt to changes presented by COVID-19.

I won’t go into the powers and detail as the legislative statement has been tabled already. But broadly, they enable the Government in response to COVID-19 to amend visa conditions for large groups of people. They also extend the visas of large groups of people for varying periods of time, and that power certainly has been used. Through regulations, it is able to stop people from overseas from making applications for visas while we have our border restrictions, and it can revoke a deemed—and that means an automatically granted—entry permission or visa while we have our border restrictions in place; in other words, telling people who have tried to arrive on the likes of marine vessels or by private planes that they have to leave. Most of the powers have been exercised over the last 12 months that they’ve been in existence, with the exception of the ability to revoke the entry permission of a person deemed to hold entry permission.

Over the last year, Ministers of Immigration have exercised the special direction powers a total of 18 times. One of these uses benefited around 20,000 people by extending temporary visa entry class visas held by certain employer assisted workers and their family members. And also, in February, I extended the temporary visitor visas of 9,500 people for two months so that they could remain lawfully in New Zealand while they were organising travel home or applying for further visas.

The regulations which prevent most people offshore from applying for a temporary entry class visa unless invited to apply, they’ve also been renewed every three months since they first came into effect in August of last year. And these regulations have stopped the inflow of applications which wouldn’t meet border exceptions criteria to allow the applicants to enter New Zealand.

Most non - New Zealanders who wish to travel to New Zealand now gain approval to do so through qualifying for a border exception, then being invited to apply for a visa, and a visa is granted on condition that the person has a critical purpose, as laid out in the border exception instructions for travelling to New Zealand. As we have seen, there are always debates about which critical skills or humanitarian circumstances should be prioritised for entry, but I note that New Zealand has been admitting about twice as many people per capita as Australia has.

As I said, the powers in the current Act are subject to safeguards. The major safeguard is that the powers relating to classes of persons can only be exercised by special directions made by me, and I cannot delegate these functions. And the special directions must be tabled with the House of Representatives here in the House and are disallowable. This means they have to be made public and the special directions can be overturned. Together, these form safeguards against any Minister of Immigration using these powerful and sweeping powers in ways that Parliament did not intend when the legislation was passed.

Generally, the exercise of the powers has to be clearly tied to COVID-19 or the effects of the responses to current COVID-19. The two exceptions to those protections are the power to suspend the ability of certain offshore persons from making temporary entry class visa applications and the ability to tell people planning to come here by marine craft or private aircraft that their deemed entry permission will be revoked if they try.

Obviously, all of the powers are also subject to the two-year sunset clause if the bill is passed, which we obviously plan to do. The bill maintains important powers to enable the Government to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak as it might develop over the next two years.

So I move that the bill be reported back to the House by 29 April 2021, and that the committee, as I said, have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, during an evening on a day in which the House has been sitting, on a Friday in a week which there has been a sitting of the House, despite those Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196(1)(b) and (c). I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill under much better circumstances, can I say, than we originally passed a similar bill a year ago, when I wasn’t able to be in the House. We were under strict lockdowns, and there were just a few of us here to debate this legislation originally.

A year ago, there was a need for this legislation. We had a thousand or more Immigration New Zealand employees who were unable to work from home during lockdown and unable to process visas. Even under level 3, we had only 20 percent of those workers allowed back to work, and at level 2, 50 percent, so there was a need for extraordinary powers to be passed to the Minister in the absence of Immigration New Zealand officials not being able to go to work. With around 350,000 temporary visa holders onshore at the time needing help from Immigration New Zealand, again, this legislation was necessary. We had 200,000-plus work visa holders with employment conditions that needed variations, 70,000 student visa holders needing their visa conditions relaxed, and 55,000 visitor visa holders needing extensions.

It was a radical bill that we passed a year ago. There were significant powers that were transferred to the Minister to alter whole classes of visas at the stroke of a pen, affecting tens of thousands of lives, and we were under no illusion at the time that this was a spectacular transfer of power to a Minister. But, given the circumstances at the time, it was necessary, and we were satisfied somewhat that there were sufficient safeguards in the bill to act as a check on these significant powers. Most of the powers can only be exercised by special direction—as Minister Faafoi outlined—through disallowable instruments made by the Minister, and the ability to suspend applications offshore have to be made by Order in Council. Six of the eight powers can only be exercised to the advantage, or at least not to the disadvantage, of visa holders, and, importantly, there was that sunset clause of one year.

Over the last year, to be fair to the Minister, the powers under this Act were used 18 times, and for entirely appropriate reasons. The way in which they were communicated at times was not desirable, but I will speak about that later. But in credit to the Minister, he has used his powers well to extend work visas, extend visitor visas, extend working holiday visas, and ease conditions to allow those holders to remain in New Zealand and work in the horticulture industry, for example. He’s waived fees for onshore Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) workers and waived the requirement for chest X-rays for RSE visa applicants.

This bill today asks us to extend these very significant powers for another two years, and there are a number of problems with this request. We need to be very clear about the reasons that the Minister wants to grant such extreme powers for such a long time.

The reasons that this Parliament agreed to grant these powers in the first instance was, as I mentioned, that those Immigration New Zealand workers were unable to work from home, but now we’re in a situation where we have a thousand-plus Immigration New Zealand officials who are all able to work from their place of work. They’re not at home, or they shouldn’t be at home—I assume they’re all working from home and have the ability to process visas—and the question for the Minister is: what work has he undertaken in the last 12 months to enable his staff, the thousand-plus staff, to be able to work from home?

Granting extraordinary powers to the Minister for two years means we need to be asking these questions. We’ve had a year for these immigration officials to be able to be working from home, and with the fact that they are actually now able to work from their place of work, we have to question the need for this bill when they are able to do their jobs.

At the time we passed this bill a year ago, we had 350,000 visa holders onshore—a significant amount of people that needed the conditions of their visas changed, potentially. But those numbers have changed, and we heard nothing from the Minister today—there was nothing in his speech—to indicate what those numbers are now. We know that a significant amount of those people have left. The question for the Minister is: why can’t those Immigration New Zealand officials who are now working from their place of work process these visas in the normal way that they normally would? There haven’t been any numbers from the Minister on this to give us any reason to grant him these extraordinary powers for such a long period of time, and you’d think that he would have given them today, given that he is asking for such a lot for such a long time.

The other reason that we granted him these extraordinary powers was that there were people who were stuck in New Zealand and they were unable to get home. Many of those people have now left. There are flights out, they are able to get home, and there’s also visas available to be able to cover those people. We will be raising these questions at select committee and at committee stage, because they do need to be answered. The Minister, I think, was not forthcoming enough today on the reasons that he wants this power to be extended for such a long time.

The extension for two years raises two questions for us—or it leads us to two assumptions, I suppose. The first is that two years leads us to think that New Zealand’s borders are going to be closed for a lot longer than this Government is letting on, and the second thing that it leads us to assume is that there is no plan from this Minister in his portfolio.

Addressing the first point of the borders being closed for a lot longer than we expected, two years is so much longer than what anyone expected. Even at one year last time, you had people like the Law Society questioning whether or not that was too long a time, and they raised serious concerns about that. Now, we see in the Cabinet paper that he was actually thinking about three years, or having no sunset clause at all. So we must consider, in light of the Government’s comments also around the need for purpose-built managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities—we’ve heard the Government saying, “Look, we don’t need MIQ purpose-built facilities because even if we started now, by the time we’d have them built, it’d be 18 months and we won’t have a reason for them in 18 months.” Yet here we are, being asked to give the Minister of Immigration two years of these very, very special powers, and the question is: why does he need two years?

He didn’t give us any reason in his initial speech as to why two years is required, and why on earth was the Minister considering three years, or no sunset clause? These questions need to be answered at committee stage. A check on these powers was one year, originally, and two years is a lot to ask.

On that second point, about no plan from the Minister of Immigration, we haven’t seen anything from him in the last year that gives the ability for Immigration New Zealand staff to be able to work from home. If resourcing is a problem, then why hasn’t he done anything in that area over the last 12 months to allow Immigration New Zealand officials to process visas in the way that they normally would? What has he done about upgrading Immigration New Zealand’s ability to process things online? These are questions that need asking, because if we’re going to be just giving extraordinary powers that we wouldn’t normally give to a Minister, we shouldn’t be doing so because he’s been lazy for the last 12 months.

What we need to know also is why Immigration New Zealand is in such a mess. There’s a revolving door, a high staff turnover. Residence applications are taking two years to be processed, there’s a backlog in the expressions of interest pool, residence files aren’t being processed, and their own Minister forgot to implement the residence programme numbers in January 2020, causing all of these problems. Immigration New Zealand officials are on a go-slow because of this Government’s ineptitude around immigration settings, and, on top of all of that, we’ve had the Minister ignore split migrant families. And here we have a Minister saying, “Hey, transfer me all of these extraordinary powers, please.”, after being completely lazy in his immigration portfolio for the last nine months. This is—

💬 Hon Members: Ooh!

Well, the truth hurts.

We are being asked to do a lot, and we will talk about process, or my colleagues will talk about process, because I’m running out of time. But what I do need to say is that, with reservations, we will support the bill, not because of the Minister doing a great job in his portfolio, but—but—for the many visitor visa holders who we cannot send home to COVID hot spots who are frail, elderly, immunocompromised, and vulnerable, and who are spending money here, for those RSE workers that we desperately need, for those work visa holders that need the conditions of their visas changed, and for those working holiday visa holders.

But we will ask the Minister to be more clear in his processes and his communications. He talked earlier about giving a visitor visa extension. We have to remember, he gave that five days before all of those visitor visa extensions were about to expire.

So we support this bill, with serious reservations, and my colleagues will have more to say.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Isn’t that speech an absolute example of why the National Party keeps going down in the polls? Because they’re out of touch, completely disconnected with actually what New Zealand is about and what New Zealanders want. New Zealanders want to be safe in their country. New Zealanders don’t want the borders opened all over the place, as this National Party has been calling for from the beginning. We were standing here a year ago saying, “No, we shouldn’t be opening the borders.”, when they were calling for it.

Now, the previous speaker did mention a couple of questions which I think common sense would easily be able to respond to. The question from the member was: what are the immigration staff doing now? Well, if anybody has any illusions on the fact that this is an extremely busy department, they are on another planet. But, obviously, most of those staff who were previously processing the normal visa applications are now dealing with the border exemption applications. So there is your answer.

The other question was: why two years? Well, I think we do this for two years because we don’t have to spend this time in the House again if this pandemic is raging on a year from now, which is very well possible. Nobody would hope so, and, in fact, when we were going through the last bill, we were hoping that by this time we would be no longer needing these powers, but we are. So who knows where we are this time next year—so, hence it is two years.

So the Minister outlined very clearly that this is a really simple bill. It doesn’t introduce any new powers. In fact, all it does is extends the same settings. It extends the repeal date of the Government’s temporary powers. It needs to do so because otherwise that initial original bill that I just mentioned would expire next month. That original bill was passed unanimously by Parliament.

So what this bill will do: it will maintain the additional immigration system flexibility approved last year by Parliament. The previous member, Erica Stanford, was trying to scaremonger around the wide-ranging powers, which, by his own admission, the Minister totally mentioned the powerful and sweeping powers of this particular bill. But the bill has major safeguards in it, and they will continue to be implemented. Again, the Minister outlined those very clearly in his speech. I’m quite happy to reiterate, as the previous member didn’t pick those up.

Firstly, the majority of the powers cited within this particular bill are disallowable instruments. So that means that those instruments—or, in layman terms, the powers as delegated to the Minister—can be disallowed by the House. So, basically, that means that there is a really clear precaution in place to provide that accountability mechanism to use these immigration powers.

Secondly, the exercise of those powers also needs to be really clearly tied either to COVID-19 or the effects of any responses to COVID-19. So, really, they can only be exercised in relation to COVID-19. So it’s a really simple bill, and I think it’s a helpful reminder for all of us—in particular, the previous speaker—that while our response to COVID-19 has been very successful, there are still global circumstances under which these powers were initially passed, and they still stand.

We in New Zealand are not immune to what happens in the rest of the world, and we’ve certainly seen that over the last year. But because of this Government’s action to stop COVID-19 at the border, we are able to enjoy all those freedoms that we have—and the interaction—in New Zealand. We are able to go to our markets and have our events and hug and meet our families and friends, and that is a really different situation in so many other countries in the world. In fact, New Zealand is, to date, still the envy of the rest of the world. And if the previous member were maybe to have a look outside of Aotearoa New Zealand and see what it’s like for people in other countries, they might have a clear understanding of how fortunate we are.

My parents in the Netherlands just celebrated—celebrated?—their second Easter in lockdown. It’s a third wave in that country despite having had the lockdowns, despite starting their vaccination programme. They still have thousands of new cases every day. So since March 2020, they’ve been inside. They can’t go and see their family. They can’t see their friends. They’ve been cut off from their grandchildren and children. Many like them, all the elderly and vulnerable, are afraid to go out. They are unsafe and so they’re staying home. So that is the reality for most of the country. So let’s count our blessings for where we are and what we have, because COVID-19 continues to rage around the globe.

What this bill does is it maintains those really important powers that have enabled our Government to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak as we’ve seen it and as it will, perhaps, develop over the next two years. So it has given our country a real opportunity to build back better, and that is thanks to that strategy that our Government developed to eliminate COVID-19 from our communities and to keep New Zealanders safe.

I always really like to think back to what our Minister Grant Robertson said in his 2020 Budget speech. He said—and he spoke to the “glimmer of silver lining on the darkest of clouds”, because we have that opportunity here in New Zealand to build back better. So as chair of the Education and Workforce Committee—

💬 Chris Bishop: Oh, are you? Oh my Lord!

Yes. Indeed I am. In fact, Mr Bishop, that committee was referred to recently by one of the Ministers as not only the hardest-working but also the best-looking select committee in Parliament. So there you go.

So as chair of that particular committee—despite being an extremely busy select committee—I am indeed looking forward very much to receiving submissions on this bill over the next couple of weeks. We are going to report back to the House, I understand, at the end of this month, on 29 April. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Well, that was a typically mediocre contribution from that Government member Marja Lubeck. I’m quite staggered to discover Marja Lubeck is a chair of a committee, but, anyway, I suppose, happy days for her.

💬 Marja Lubeck: The only chair you’ve got is to cheer up!

Yeah.

We support this bill, but with reservations, and I want to make a serious point, because there was really no engagement with the substance of the issue by the speaker who just spoke before me, and that’s the reason why I described it as a mediocre contribution, because I think if members on the other side were reasonable and fair—and I know there are some smart members on the other side—they would acknowledge that the powers being given to the Minister through this bill are substantial. They’re eight temporary powers to impose, vary, or cancel conditions for classes of temporary entry class visa holders; the power to vary or cancel conditions for resident class, extend the expiry date for visas, to waive any regulatory requirements, to revoke entry permissions—I means, these are literally huge powers. It wouldn’t be fair to characterise them as “Henry VIII” powers—“Henry VIII” powers in the legislative parlance in New Zealand refer to giving the Minister the power to actually change the law passed by Parliament. So it probably wouldn’t be fair to call them “Henry VIII” powers, but they are big and they deal with who can come into New Zealand, the conditions upon which they can come into New Zealand, and the conditions upon which they can stay.

Now, we backed the legislation back in May last year, and the Minister has pointed out it passed the Parliament unanimously, and the reason for that is that, you know, no one knew what was going to happen back in May last year—you know, we were in the middle of the lockdown, extraordinary circumstances, it felt like the world was crashing down around us in the island of New Zealand—or islands, plural. So I think that was the right decision.

But things are different now, and I acknowledge what Ms Lubeck says around the fact that COVID is still running rampant around the world, and we still don’t know much about the future. And that is why, on balance, we are backing the bill, because we do still think the Minister needs to be able to respond flexibly, and we generally think the Minister has used the powers given to him in a good way. We support the various orders that he’s made, pursuant to the Act.

But I just do want to make the serious point that we granted the Minister these powers for a year, and now he’s gone for two years, so we object in principle to that—two years looks like an overreach to us; it looks like an extension that is too long. Possibly, we could support another year, in which the Government would then have to come back and legislate again, but, you know, there’s nothing actually wrong with that in principle. In fact, I would argue, constitutional principle would dictate the Government should come back and seek a further mandate from the legislature for the granting of extraordinary powers.

So, you know, two years—I can see why the Government’s done it, because it’s convenient for them and it’s convenient for the officials, because we’ll just abrogate the power to the Minister and to the Government and, you know, we can sort of sort things out later, within the two-year window. But it’s not good lawmaking; it’s not good lawmaking. So we object to the two years, and we’re going to argue through the committee process—the shortened, truncated committee process—that the Government’s powers should be limited down to one year, and I think that’s a reasonable request. I think it’s consistent with constitutional principle, I think it’s consistent with good lawmaking practice, and I think it should just be a one-year extension.

The other thing that sort of arises from the two-year extension is, you know, respectfully, what has the Government been doing for the last year in relation to the future policy settings in relation to migration? So, you know, again, back in May last year, it was very difficult to predict what would happen into the future, so let’s retain some flexibility, give the Minister the power to do these variations, to do these alterations, because we don’t know what’s going to happen. We do have more certainty now; there’s no doubt about that. We’re in a more certain environment compared to where we were in May 2020, and I think the Government should have done some work around what immigration policy settings should look like into the next year and the year after that. And it may be that if that work had been done, we could have a much more tailored bill, because this bill, essentially, just replicates everything that we passed last year. And, again, bad lawmaking—we could have got a more tailored bill if we’d done the work in relation to exactly what is required for our immigration policy settings. So I think objectionable in principle and objectionable in practice, but, you know, we will support the bill to the committee to try and get some changes to it.

I do want to talk about the truncated select committee process. It’s just unacceptable that we are having a shortened time frame again. I know members opposite will say, you know, the National Party was guilty of that when we were in Government, and blah-blah-blah. You know, there’s some truth to that, but two wrongs do not make a right, and it is not legitimate to continue with a shoddy select committee process just because you can.

And what I fear with this Government is the power that accrues from 65 seats is vast, and the temptation is always to use the power. You know, that’s the whole point of Government; it’s to use power. For the first time, we have, under MMP, a Government with 65 seats. You know, Geoffrey Palmer said it would never happen. In fact, I think I’m right in saying that Geoffrey Palmer said it was impossible for anyone to ever achieve an absolute majority under MMP. Well, he’s been wrong about quite a few things recently, not the least of which was last night in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and he was wrong about this as well, because this Government does have that, and we respect the mandate. I’m not arguing with the mandate, we respect the result of the election; I’m just making the point that with election results that are extraordinary, like that, comes extraordinary power. We don’t have a strong legislature in New Zealand in comparison to the executive. We have an executive that is taken from the legislature. And when you have that, and when you have 65 seats out of 120 to one party, that results in enormous power accruing to the executive and accruing to the party that holds the executive at that time. Of course, that flows down into the legislative measures that are taken in terms of process. And it is wrong, I believe, that a bill like this goes to a shortened time frame.

You know, I come back to the point: we’ve had a year. We’ve had a year to sort this out. We could have had a bill introduced in November-December last year, after the election. I acknowledge that would have required some quick work by the officials. But, frankly, no disrespect to the immigration officials, and no disrespect to the Public Service more generally: not a lot of work gets done by the Public Service during the election campaign; I’m telling you that for free. Not a lot happens in terms of substantive policy work, because everyone’s waiting to see who’ll be back in Government.

So that work could have happened at any time in the last year, and then the Government could have turned up with a more tailored bill after the election and put it into the House for a select committee process. But they haven’t done that, and that does concern me. Instead, what we’ve got, right at the very tail end of the one-year limit expiring, is the Government going, “We’ve got to do something about this. Oh, we’ll just extend it for another two years.”

And that does concern me, because I’ll tell you what I reckon happened: what I reckon happened is that everyone kind of forgot about it, everyone kind of forgot Parliament had passed this bill, and it expired, and then, at some point, some smart official went, “Um, Minister, do you realise that the Act actually expires at the end of April? You should probably extend it, and so on.” And the Minister Kris Faafoi said, “Yeah, that’s a good point. We probably do need to do that. We’ll just quickly ram it through and we’ll go for the two years.”

And that’s the point around the power, right? That’s the point around what happens when you have 65 seats and you have all the power, because in that environment, what happens is what the Minister wants, the Minister gets, because the Minister takes the paper to Cabinet and says, “Here’s what I want to do.” As long as Cabinet signs it off, it goes to the caucus, and I’m telling you now, to the Labour backbenchers, it’s not in your career best interests to oppose what a Minister takes to caucus—good luck to you if you do; I admire your courage and your spirit, but I don’t think many of you do. I’m not having a go at you; I’m just saying that’s the way the place works, and so the things go through the caucus, and then the Minister turns up to the House, and with 65 votes for a bill, and then it can happen. It can happen, and it’s going to happen, because the Government’s got 65 votes.

So that’s the reality. But my point is a better process would have been to introduce the bill to the House after the election and allow a much longer time for select committee scrutiny, because these are enormous powers we’re giving to the Minister, and we’re just allowing three weeks. It’s not good enough, we’ll vote for it, but we’ll try and improve it at committee. Thanks very much.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Can I first acknowledge the Minister of Immigration, who is very hard-working and, in fact, not lazy, and he works around the clock—so just to say a quick thankyou to our Minister.

Although we had a successful response to COVID-19, my colleagues on this side of the House and on the Opposition side as well will know how the border closures have impacted immigration and the devastating effect it had on our communities, in migrant communities. Every day, I receive hundreds of emails from people about their visa difficulties. Because of that, we must ensure that this legislation is extended so our immigration system is equipped well to deal with the ongoing complexities and continues to be responsive and flexible.

I just want to share a quick story about the importance of the border closure and why we are seeking the extension of this bill. A friend of mine, who I have known, travelled overseas for a family emergency last December, and he just got back two weeks ago. So as soon as he landed at the airport, he tested—well, before he left the country, he tested negative, and as soon as he was taken to the managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facility, he tested positive again. So this person was someone who is not political, and he was one of the people who also opposed the MIQ system that we have in place, the quarantining system that we have in place. After what happened to him, he called me and he said, “Now I know why we have what we have in place. Now, in fact, I appreciate not only what this Government is doing, but”—he also encouraged that we must continue to do what we’re doing while this virus is raging around the world.

While we spend time in this House today discussing the details of the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill, I would like to make sure that we don’t overlook who this extension deeply affects. Yesterday, a colleague and a member on the other side made an accusation that we don’t care, that we don’t listen, that we are not involved with the migrant community any more. Actually, I refute that—I refute that. While the accusation was being made, myself and my colleagues on this side of the House—every day, we are deeply involved with our migrant and ethnic communities, and we understand their struggle, we listen to them, and we are committed to them.

In saying that, I’d like to pay a tribute to the role of the migrant workers in getting us through this pandemic. I’m speaking about cleaners, security guards, supermarket workers, caregivers, and nurses, who—many of them, I had the privilege of working at their organisation to advocate this time last year, when we were in a deep, deep lockdown. We always respect and love them.

In saying this, I would like to focus on the positive impact that this extension of immigration powers legislation will have on our migrants who will be able to stay in New Zealand and work for longer. The past year has been very difficult and challenging for us. We have had to come together as a nation, as individual communities, to fight back and defeat this pandemic, and we did so very well, with bravery. Extending the COVID19 immigration powers will continue to allow businesses to retain migrant workers, the migrant workforce, and make them available for our industries who are facing labour shortages, and give our Government the ability to extend temporary visas for migrants.

Earlier today, also, Hospitality New Zealand, in a press release, said that they welcome this move to extend immigration flexibility by two years. They need their existing essential workers to be able to stay and to also have the ability to extend visitor and working holidays. This bill, through the ability to waive application requirements, just will ensure that. We need to make sure our immigration system has the powers and tools to adequately respond to the dynamic situations that present themselves in an unprecedented period.

Lastly, this bill will underpin the Labour Government’s strategy to eliminate COVID19 from our communities and to keep New Zealanders safe. Our border settings are a critical part of the plan, and this bill is very, very important for maintaining those settings.

On that note, I commend this bill to the House. I will also be looking forward to seeing this bill in a select committee, and I’m very open-minded and I’m very positive to engage with the speaker on the other side of the House to make sure that we have got a bill that’s going to serve our communities for the next two years. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

The next call is a split call.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens, in this split call, to talk on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill. The original amendment of this bill, when passed last year—and I just wanted to acknowledge the context in which this bill was passed. We were moving into lockdown and things needed to move quickly and fast, and the Government did that. So I wanted to acknowledge that context. In terms of trying to keep our country safe and moving forward through the COVID crisis, the amendment Act created eight time-limited powers, and we are looking to extend those powers. But I was just reflecting on what my Uncle Ben said to me once. He said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”, so with this great responsibility, I think it’s also a time that we need to actually reflect on what the future policy settings for immigration could look like.

The immigration system has been broken for quite some time and there have been voices that have been excluded from the immigration conversation. I was thinking about where the voice of tangata whenua is. Where is the voice of the people that hold the mauri of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, within their immigration conversation? I also was thinking about all of this in the context of Pasifika peoples, because, yes, we have the COVID crisis, but we also have the climate crisis as well. In those future policy settings I think it’s really, really important for us to actually think about that in that wider context, because we need to have an immigration system, I think, which is more welcoming to Pasifika peoples, who are becoming more and more displaced because of climate change. This is, I think, an opportunity for us to rethink that within the context of the time frame of the two years.

There are some questions around what will happen if, all of a sudden, the unemployment rate drops and these jobs disappear. What happens to those workers? So we need to actually think about the workers and the people getting these visas, within the context of communities, within the context of them becoming deeply rooted within those communities as well. So I support what was said earlier about the role that essential workers played in getting us through the last year. Within the context of making sure that we are not exacerbating worker exploitation, it’s really important that we think about that within this context.

I was thinking about it because some of the things that have been said to me, within different communities that I’m connected to, they look at immigration and they think about it and they think about that in the context of things that have happened before in the past. One of those things that happened in the past is around the dawn raids, where Pasifika peoples were invited into the country because there were labour shortages, but as soon as those jobs dried up, next thing you know, whole swathes of them were, sort of, rounded up and deported. So we need to make sure that whatever we do within this two-year period, those workers’ rights, those rights of people that have come here to build lives and to build communities and to work with families, are protected.

I commend this bill to the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to take some time, in this split call, to address the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill and the extension of the powers that it grants the Minister. The Green Party will be supporting this bill, but we do want quite a few issues noted. As my colleague Teanau Tuiono noted, this is an opportunity to address the many issues that our broken immigration system has had since before the pandemic and that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.

I want to pay tribute to the many people on temporary visas, onshore and offshore, who have been generous in sharing their hurt—their experiences caused by the pandemic and our immigration system—because what we’ve currently got is an immigration system that discriminates against people based on country of origin, that discriminates against people based on whether they’re disabled or otherwise, that discriminates against people based on wealth. And I think the Minister has an opportunity to use his powers to close the gap on this discrimination that exists in the immigration system.

One of the things that I think the Minister can do is change the conditions that people from non-visa-waiver countries face that mean they have more barriers to even apply for an expression of interest to apply for a visa. We hear all these stories of people from non-visa-waiver countries having to do things like fetch missions to even be reunited with their families. The Minister could actually change the conditions for people in those countries to be able to apply. Now, that does not mean that we stop taking a health approach to COVID-19. It does not mean that we’re saying, “Let’s not put those security measures at our border in place.” But what we are saying is that our immigration system and the settings that we’re now going to be putting in place should not discriminate against people from countries such as India simply because of where they are from.

I do also think, as my colleague Teanau Tuiono explained, that we have to address the issue of migrant worker exploitation, and exploitation in general. As the Minister has rolled over visitor visas and working holiday visas, we have to acknowledge that people who have no working rights in this country are put into a vulnerable position. People who do not have access to State services by nature of their immigration status are also put in a vulnerable position, and so we do hope that the Minister uses the powers granted by this bill to grant pathways to residency so that people onshore are not having to apply for emergency benefits that are currently really difficult to access or that they’re put in situations where they are working illegally and taken advantage of by employers in industries like the construction sector and subsequently detained and deported. I do think this bill presents an opportunity to transform our immigration system that underpins community, workers’ rights, and our families.

I want to pay tribute as well to the many groups who have been calling for these changes from the grassroots, whether it’s the Supreme Sikh Society, who presented a challenge to parliamentarians when they opened the sports centre—for us to reunite families, for us to decouple work visas from single employers, for the Government to stop visa delays. The Migrant Workers Association has been calling for pathways to residency, and I think that, ultimately, this presents an opportunity for the Minister to listen to these calls from the grassroots, with the powers that he is going to be given by the nature of this legislation. There’s also unions, Unemig, and many Pasifika communities who understand the pains that have been caused by subsequent Governments, by nature of our unpinned white immigration policy, that, ultimately, we are facing the legacy of.

Lastly, I think that, while these powers will allow us to act swiftly and take a health approach to the pandemic in relation to immigration settings, we also have to acknowledge the structural issues that Immigration New Zealand faces currently. I think it’s unacceptable for people who currently have visas to face delays when they’re transitioning from one visa to another, or when they’re applying for a visa in the first place. As we look forward to transforming our immigration system to one where no one is exploited and where human rights are upheld, I do hope the Minister takes a proactive approach in addressing the many calls from migrant communities that have been raised since the pandemic started. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. In considering this bill to extend the extraordinary powers granted to the Minister of Immigration, we thought it prudent to reflect on the overall performance and outcomes achieved by Immigration New Zealand on the direction of the Minister since the enactment of the original legislation. ACT supported that legislation, as has been stated already, given the high degree of uncertainty caused by the novel coronavirus and, of course, the lack of an obvious vaccine—in fact, no one really knew if we were even going to get a vaccine in those days.

Like many in this House, we put our trust in the Minister to use these extraordinary powers to work hard to protect families and livelihoods in the context of a global pandemic. We had high hopes for a smart and compassionate border, but the Government achieved neither. It’s also not just about the border; it’s about the treatment of migrants already here in New Zealand. The global pandemic has obviously brought about many challenges, especially with regards to New Zealand border management in the context of an elimination strategy. Those who are directly affected by the Government’s immigration policies were suddenly caught up in all that uncertainty, and we owed it to them to get it right.

What has, unfortunately, occurred repeatedly over time is that the Minister has leaned on COVID-19 as a convenient sole excuse for a department that has long performed appallingly and is only getting worse. Migrants and employers are well aware that the problems at Immigration New Zealand started well before the pandemic. As a co-owner of an immigration law firm, I myself have seen a department that is steadily falling apart at the seams, and the negative impact that this has had on migrants and businesses over the years.

This bill brings us to where we are today, with a promised, hopefully, widespread vaccination campaign under way that gives hope to all New Zealanders and prospective New Zealanders. We are in a very different place to where we were at the passing of the original legislation, and, in ACT’s opinion, an extension until May 2023 is asking too much—especially given the performance of the Minister. The world will look very different in 2023, and it is irresponsible for us to support such extraordinary powers to the Minister to act unilaterally for almost the rest of this parliamentary term.

For those migrants looking for a pathway to live and work permanently in New Zealand, they were disheartened by the suspension of the expression of interest programme, which closed off the skilled migrant category of residency. There are now more than 7,000 people waiting in that queue, and it’s growing rapidly and going absolutely nowhere fast—talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Given that application wait times for just the existing skilled migrant category applications can exceed two years and is most likely getting worse, I think the Minister needs to be upfront to those waiting in the queue. Will they actually ever have their applications looked at, let alone processed to completion—I find it hard to imagine—or will the Minister have to face a reality of the calamity that he himself has caused?

What the Government has, effectively, done is lock thousands of skilled migrants into temporary visas, all the while pretending that we have a proper system in this country. This is also bad news for employers, who reach out to me on a daily basis to express their frustrations over the lack of skilled people available for work. And with families being split, many migrants are giving up and leaving New Zealand.

On the other side of the equation, the border exemption process is an absolute lottery, it’s a shambles, and it barely evaluates people’s circumstances properly. I heard from one migrant who actually won that lottery, and good on her. She made more than 40 applications, all saying exactly the same thing, and then finally got approved. I mean what planet is Immigration New Zealand living on, seriously?

On Tuesday of this week, I attended the peaceful demonstration by split family members outside Parliament. Many of them are highly skilled migrants, healthcare workers, teachers, scientists, and so on. Their stories are heartbreaking: years without seeing their loved ones, including very young children. Resolving their desperate situations doesn’t even require extraordinary powers, and there’s certainly enough capacity in managed isolation and quarantine. In fact, there are a thousand spaces today—unbelievable.

If the Minister had been doing his job properly and using his extraordinary powers for good, he’d be responsive in granting visas and entry so that families can be reunited with their loved ones. It should have happened months ago, yet here we are without a plan from the Government—well, they don’t have a plan—and without hope. Unfortunately it’s gone into the Minister’s overflowing too-hard basket.

The Recognised Seasonal Employer situation, as we all know, is dire, and the policies of the Government to try and address this have been totally insufficient, with fruit rotting on the ground season after season, growers closing down after decades of being in business, and with our exports suffering while many Pacific Island countries have been COVID-free for a long time or have never even had COVID. The Government’s efforts to fill vacancies with Kiwis have utterly failed, and we’re now even seeing health and safety taking a turn for the worst as farmers and long-term workers are at the point of exhaustion—“beyond desperate” in the words of one farmer whom I spoke to. It’s a straightforward fix, but clearly it’s just all too hard for the Government.

Common themes emerged in my conversations with immigration advisers and lawyers up and down the country: desperation, no plan, no transparency, and a complete demise of Immigration New Zealand’s credibility. One well-known immigration adviser and, I’m happy to say, former Labour Party supporter said to me, “I thought this was a listening Government, caring, kind, but that has long been eradicated.”

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Richard Prebble!

Others in the sector told me that people are on the brink of mental health breakdowns—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: We got rid of him a long time ago!

—with counsellors overwhelmed with migrants in crisis. And I hope the migrants in crisis with mental health issues know that the Minister is laughing at them right now. Many are entering poverty—living in vans because they have to look after their families at home. The result will be a long-term traumatised migrant population.

With extraordinary powers, there needs to be extraordinary accountability and extraordinary performance. This bill removes a layer of accountability that, frankly, should be reinstated. The primary legislation, despite its shortcomings, should be respected. And I would also note that the supposed safeguards in the bill are relatively meaningless given the make-up of the Labour-led Government. A two-year extension of these powers could simply extend the pain that migrants will have to endure under this Government’s watch.

We’ve had enough of Immigration New Zealand, we’ve had enough of this Minister, and we are opposing this bill.

Kia ora, thank you, Madam Speaker. I wasn’t in this House when this bill was passed by everybody, but, as a member of the public and a citizen of this country, I was really relieved to see the evidence of an ability to work across the House and respond to this pandemic in such a way. This bill—or the renewal of this bill, a continuation of what was established a year ago—is evidence of our ability to work across the House and be nimble and responsive, something that is absolutely essential when every day the context within which we are working changes—every day. You know, the reflection about not knowing whether or not we would have a vaccine is absolutely true, and, as we look externally and look across our borders, we notice that things are still pretty precarious in the rest of the planet. So this isn’t just about how safe we feel right now—and the reason we can feel safe right now is because of the decisions that were made in the House a year ago.

So what I’m really pleased to consider is that this bill will come to my select committee, and the proposition that it is going to continue in the state that it was originally in is because it was effective. We have heard that from across the House. It has worked. It has enabled a nimble and responsive processing of these issues over the next 12 months. So it retains the safeguards, and it ensures some greater certainty, actually, in such uncertain times.

I know that there were concerns raised about the truncated process, but what it does is it continues the prompt response—it means that we can continue to be nimble and responsive, but we still have an opportunity to collaborate. I’ll just remind you that there were changes made. The explicit condition around the exercising of powers was added on the recommendation of the Epidemic Response Committee last year and reflected the submissions to the committee. So this idea, this implying that there will be an abuse of power, just doesn’t cut it. The evidence is not there. We are collaborators in this House—you have proven that when you passed this last year—and we will continue to do that. We will collaborate in the select committee, because we’re pretty good at that, actually, and we will make sure that things continue to work for our people and we can continue to be able to be responsive and nimble. So I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. I call Stuart Smith.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. Well, that was an interesting contribution. It talked about a prompt response. Actually, if it was a prompt response, the Minister of Immigration would’ve brought this bill to the House last year and had enough time in front of the select committee to go through a proper process. Unlike the member that just took her seat, Angela Roberts, I did actually sit on that committee, the COVID response select committee, last year and listen to all of the submissions that we had. It was a very quick and fast process to get this through. No one’s denying we needed the bill at the time, and we probably need it now, but I do have some serious concerns about this.

What we’ve seen with the pandemic around the world is a grab for power—a grab for power from Ministers, like we’re seeing now—and I think we should all be concerned about this no matter what side of the House you’re on. Very, very attractive if you happen to be a Government Minister, but is it a good political process? I don’t think it is—I don’t think it is at all. Having the power in a Minister’s hands on things at a time of an emergency we understand, but we are reaching far further than that. This is not just about opposing for opposing’s sake. We are, in fact, voting for this bill—

💬 Hon Member: Support it, then.

Well, unfortunately, we are supporting it. I think it is needed, but only just, and it is not needed for two years, however. I think one year is more than enough, and the Minister could bring it back to the House. To go through it in such a truncated process when we did exactly that last year in a time of emergency I think is not justified. We’ve not heard the justification for that at all. It’s been very weak, actually. I think the speeches from the other side of the House have been nothing more than grandstanding, actually. We needed to hear really good, sound arguments about why this is going to be such a short process, why we’re not going to be able to have the adequate scrutiny that a select committee could bring to it, because we didn’t do it last time because of the state that the country was in at the time. We’re not now, and we owe it to the people who are affected most by this. So we’re going to have a short process, we’re not really collaborating, I don’t think—if we were collaborating, as I said, we would’ve been talking about this a couple of months ago.

When we have this in place, it’s all very well that the Minister can make decisions, and the argument is that this will all happen quickly, but let me remind you that last year we had in Central Otago a large number of Recognised Seasonal Employer workers who were almost begging for food because the Minister wouldn’t make a decision. All they had to do was utilise the powers in this bill to allow those people to go up to Marlborough where they had a job, where they could be paid. Instead, they were living off the charity of the people in that area who kept them in warm clothes and in food. So we have the Minister now saying he needs this bill because he has to be able to move quickly. Well, you don’t have a track record of doing it, actually, and it is appalling. We have these people in our country who’ve come from overseas to work here, to do us a favour, actually, and also to have an opportunity for them to make money in their own homes and make a better life for themselves, and then we treat them like we did then. I think it’s appalling. It’s embarrassing, and the Minister should be—I know he’s covering his eyes; he must be appalled. He needs to take responsibility and move quickly. We’ve heard—and we still hear it—every public servant when things are slow: “Oh, it’s COVID. Oh, it’s COVID—it’s a pandemic.” What a load of nonsense. The whole immigration system is a mess, it’s poorly led, and it’s poorly run by—and the leadership I’m talking about is starting at the political level. We have to do much better than this. I think we’re very bad hosts in our country, and I think that’s because of the way we’re getting the leadership from the top and the Minister of Immigration. He needs to pull his socks up and do the job properly.

This bill is being supported, albeit reluctantly, and let’s hope that we might see some better performance out of the Minister. I don’t know how that’s—I mean, you’ve got lots of people in the caucus now; surely there’s someone that can make a decision in a timely manner. So it’s with reluctance that I commend the bill to the House.

Kia ora, e te Mana Whakawā. I’m surprised that Te Paati Māori isn’t taking this call, but I’m very happy to stand in its place to take this call on this important bill. And, Stuart Smith, I don’t know where he’s been, but if he hasn’t been listening to the news today, only today we’ve shown that we have to be very quick on our feet when it comes to immigration issues, because things change rapidly, and the need for these powers to be nimble and responsive is acute. So we absolutely need to pass this bill to give the Minister—and a very good, very competent, and, if I may say so, a very compassionate Minister—

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Hard-working.

—I forgot hard-working, Angie Warren-Clark—the powers needed to properly administer. And, look, we do have broad support for this bill, across this House, which does acknowledge that we recognise that. I thank most of the Opposition members for that. I commend this bill to the House.

It’s an absolute privilege to stand here to make a short contribution to the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill. My short contribution will take us down memory lane to last year, but before I do that, I want to acknowledge the excellent Minister the Minster Kris Faafoi. Thank you for your leadership in shepherding this through the House at this time, which is really, really required and needed by the country.

On 28 February 2020, we had our first case of COVID-19. On 14 March 2020, arrivals were asked to isolate. On 19 March, gatherings were restricted to 100 and borders closed. On 21 March 2020, the Prime Minister, our leader, the great Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, announced four tiered alert levels. On 23 March, we went into alert level 3. On 25 March, we went into alert level 4. On 31 March, we extended the state of national emergency. On 20 April, we went back to alert level 4 and we stayed there for five days, then we stayed for two weeks at alert level 3. And on 11 May 2020, we were at alert level 2.

I have been thinking: why wasn’t I in the House during that time this bill was debated in the House? That’s because we were at home and this work was done in a time that was needed to be done, with prompt, fast efficiency. So I want to acknowledge Parliament, all of Parliament, who have agreed that this is an important bill that needed to be addressed.

But also, what we do forget is the public servants that had worked through that time that I have just spoken about, that have worked night and day to ensure that New Zealand is safe. I want to say to the Minister, in his work with his officials, to extend our thanks to the public servants who have done that in bringing this bill to the House.

I’m not going to go and respond to any negativity on that side—we’ll just put it like that—but I think that some of them are a bit confused. Last year, it was a good idea to do this, and today it’s not such a good idea. We’ve heard from the Minister himself that it had gone through a select committee process and that all of Parliament had agreed to it, and this is extending the eight powers without any further changes.

I want to end my speech with acknowledging Prakash Pabla, who was in India during this time last year. Prakash usually goes through three pairs of shoes doorknocking or delivering pamphlets in Papakura for elections, but this year he couldn’t do it. When he came back to the country in February, he said to me, “Can you extend this—if you get a moment to say thank you, could you please thank the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, her Cabinet.”—which includes the Hon Kris Faafoi here—“Thank them for keeping New Zealand safe. Thank the staff at managed isolation.”, because they provided excellent care of him, and now he’s back in Papakura, within the Labour Party in Papakura. I just want to say—I’ve spoken too long—I commend this bill to the House. Mālō.

Great speech, indeed, said Deborah Russell. I think I heard Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki say last year, in criticising the National Party’s position on this, that we thought it was a good idea last year; why do we not think it’s a good idea now? Well, the answer is quite straightforward: the conditions that warranted the emergency powers—and they were emergency powers; significant transfer of power to the Minister—worked for the conditions that existed then. As a former Minister of Immigration, I’ve got a reasonable amount of knowledge about those powers and the instructions—the mountain of instructions, that the Minister gives to Immigration New Zealand in order to be able to give effect to the Immigration Act 2009. It cannot be said that those conditions still exist. Now, on balance, the National Party will support this bill at first reading and send it to select committee—we’ll talk about the process when the motion for the report back is moved—but we did have over a thousand Immigration New Zealand staff unable to process in the manner in which they normally would; that’s not the case now, and we have to acknowledge that.

So the question has to be: why does the Minister seek not only, I should add, powers for two years but the Cabinet paper, as I read it—Mr Faafoi took a Cabinet paper to remove the time limit altogether. And, obviously, there was a Cabinet discussion where he was overridden. I have the Cabinet paper here, and the Cabinet paper makes it very clear—if I can just find the appropriate paragraph—at paragraphs 15 to 18: “I propose the removal of the expiry date from the powers.” No expiry date whatsoever. He said, at paragraph 18 to the Cabinet, “I consider the power to suspend the ability to make visa applications remains critical as long as borders remain closed. Under the Immigration Act, visas cannot be granted if the holder is unlikely to be allowed to enter, but they cannot be declined if they meet the relevant policy settings.” And that was his reason for removing any time bar on those significant powers he was given. Cabinet, clearly, didn’t agree with him, because the Cabinet minute and the bill we are discussing extended it by what he would say is “only” a further two years. I would suggest, and the National Party believes, that, if this bill is appropriate, it is appropriate for no more than 12 more months.

The Minister is right, and he mentioned it in his first reading speech, that, actually, the way in which immigration instructions are framed, if somebody meets the policy criteria for the acceptance of a visa, there are no legal grounds to decline that visa. We know we can delay them for a long, long time; look what is building up and the backlog to the residence class visas, skilled migrant, partnership, family—every one of those categories is now in quite significant backlog and delay. But, if that was the problem, solve that problem. And the Government can do that by one of two ways: (a) they could pass a bill with a much, much narrower term of reference to enable the Minister to be able to suspend those criteria, or (b) he has the power to do so under the immigration instructions. He can simply issue a new instruction suspending those criteria. Now, it probably would be better for the Parliament to give that power rather than for the Minister to act unilaterally, but nevertheless that should not be used as a reason to extend the powers much more broadly to whole classes of visas, even if that is not unfavourable and can be favourable to the visa holder or the class of visa holder.

Remember, I think there were 30,000-something what are now called “employer assisted” work visas that were extended by the stroke of a pen. Now, employer assisted visas—temporary visas—require a significant criterion to be met, and that is that there isn’t a New Zealander able to do that job. And in many cases that’s the case. In a lot of cases now, because of COVID and because of our increasing numbers of jobseekers, people who have lost their jobs in tourism and hospitality, who are looking for work, with the stroke of a pen may have that opportunity to work usurped because an overseas worker has their visa extended. We have over a thousand Immigration New Zealand staff who are back at work, who could be able and have for years considered those visa applications independently and on their merits, who now will not have to do that. And my question is: if they’re not doing that—

💬 Erica Stanford: What are they doing?

What are they doing? They are very, very good people. I know a lot of them, and they perform outstandingly well in their core business: saying yes or no to a visa application based on its merits and the immigration instructions and law. So why are we just saying—the Minister wanted it indefinitely—for two years that won’t happen? Because it may well be affecting New Zealanders and their ability to get into the job market.

Now, with apologies to the Minister if he did send me the data, I was very interested in the comment in the Cabinet paper that there was no financial implications to this—paragraph 28: “There are no direct financial implications arising from the proposals in this paper.” I cannot accept that that could be the case because—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: It’s a few hundred thousand dollars each time we change.

A few hundred thousand? Well, that’s very interesting because, I think from memory, Immigration New Zealand earns a couple of hundred million dollars a year in visa applications.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: What do you think has happened to that revenue right now?

Well, it’s probably gone down the karzy! There’s probably none. So the financial implications are that, currently, the taxpayer is now funding the work of Immigration New Zealand because the revenue from visa applications has dropped away dramatically. But to say that the continuation of this has no financial impact is quite wrong. It means that the New Zealand taxpayer is funding the application process for another couple of years, at significant cost, and I think it behoves the Minister to tell this House, and for the select committee considering the bill to know, what that number is.

One thing I think we have done is lose sight of any fiscal probity when it comes to COVID response. We talk about multibillion-dollar initiatives now as if they’re chump change, as if debt does not matter, as if another few hundred million here or $3.8 billion there or whatever the Budget 2021 will bring can continue without consequences. The Minister might scoff and say, “Well, there’s going to be no change”, but that means the taxpayer will continue to pay, and I think we need to know what the impact of that is.

This is a challenging one for the National Party. We will support it at first reading, but I don’t think it should be taken as read that we’ll be able to continue to do that if we don’t get a curtailment of the duration of these powers, and actually I think it speaks volumes for the lack of confidence, what the Government calls the abundance of caution, that they have in responding to COVID. At some point, we have to move from a pandemic situation to an endemic situation, and this week we’ve seen a significant step forward in that with the opening of the trans-Tasman bubble, but going into lockdown, closing our borders, difficult though the Government might have thought that was, was the easy part. The difficult decisions about how we transition to treating COVID as endemic and getting back to whatever new normal it might be is going to be far, far more challenging, and simply continuing the powers for another two years is, I think, a recognition that the Government doesn’t have a plan to get out of where they’re at and they just want to continue the status quo. If that’s the case, I think my party will struggle to support this bill past first reading. But I’ll be fascinated at the submissions, at any changes to the bill that might be able to be made to curtail the duration and nature of those powers, and I look forward to that process.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, and it’s my pleasure to rise to take what is the final call on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill. I have to say that over the course of the afternoon, we’ve heard a number of contributions, some more interesting and valuable than others.

I guess what’s really important is that we need to reflect on, well, what does this amendment bill actually seek to do? Quite simply, it seeks to amend the principal Act that was enacted last year, which has eight powers that are, in essence, time limited powers that exist. I want to concur with colleagues that have already commended the Minister the Hon Kris Faafoi on the sterling job that he has done in protecting our country and those—

💬 Hon Michael Woodhouse: Sterling? Did the Minister write this speech?

Yes, sterling, indeed. I am delighted that the Opposition concur with that.

I say that the Minister has undertaken and performed a sterling job, because even the Opposition accept that on the 18 occasions under which the Minister has exercised those special direction powers, the Opposition accept that they have been appropriate in every single one of them. So that is why he is a fantastic Minister who is doing an excellent job. And the Minister himself also, this afternoon, indicated that at the time that this principal Act was enacted, it was not clear, actually, as to the impact of the global pandemic at the time, and we are still, obviously, learning through that, and that uncertainty is also accepted by the Opposition. So that is pleasing to hear.

But, in essence, this is a very simple and straightforward bill. It comes in two parts, but I just want to touch on two of them. The first is that it will extend the repeal date of those temporary powers by two years, and much has been said around that. The member opposite inferred in her contribution earlier today that the Government, in setting that two-year time frame, is seeking to hide or suggest that the borders would be closed for longer than we might suggest. Now, that is not the case. If the member had a look at the Act, those powers can be rescinded when it is safe to do so, within the two-year time period, if that is the case.

Secondly, it also amends the maximum duration of a suspension for some persons who are offshore to make these applications, from three months to six months. And what I would suggest is, in response to the honourable member who had recently resumed his seat: why is that? Well, do we need to reiterate that perhaps they’re missing the point? Immigration New Zealand staff, who were processing normal visa applications, are now dealing with border exemption applications. That is a huge workload, and those members here who have constituents that come and meet with them to discuss that—perhaps the Opposition don’t realise that because they don’t have many constituency seats, but the reality is that that is a huge level of workload that the staff in Immigration New Zealand are undertaking, and that’s why it’s so important that we move to amend that three-month time frame to one of six months.

In summary, this is really important. It will be an amendment bill that will be subject to public scrutiny, and, as one of my colleagues commented earlier, New Zealand’s immigration system does need to be flexible, yes, but, in my view, it also needs to maintain its currency and its value. We are perceived and seen and received around the world as having a strong response to COVID, and our immigration settings, our immigration approach, is a key part of that. It is a keystone, a cornerstone, part of that. And so on that basis, I am delighted to commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

Point of order. I seek leave for the Education and Workforce Committee’s consideration of the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill to include amendments relating to new powers allowing the Minister to create a class of visa for the purposes of reuniting split migrant families, which would otherwise be out of scope.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Instruction to the Education and Workforce Committee