Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a great pleasure to rise and take a call on this third reading of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.

Just like the last bill that we passed, the Deposit Takers Bill, this bill is the third in a series of bills that have resulted from a significant piece of work culminating from the temporary migrant worker exploitation review. We’ve heard a lot of concern in relation to this bill that this is some big heavy-handed thing that isn’t going to solve anything.

It’s actually got to be seen in the light of the suite of reforms that have come into play. This is about making sure there’s an opportunity for low-level intervention; an opportunity to establish a more proportionate and efficient enforcement toolkit for immigration officers to make sure that we can intervene before things get out of hand and exploitation becomes something that is—we’ve heard the stories—really quite awful and unacceptable. It is a sensible thing to do.

We’ve got three new employment infringement notices that really nip things in the bud. “Can you produce a payslip?” is a very valid question to be able to ask any employer. It’s a legal requirement and it’s really simple, and it’s a really good way of starting to ask questions of employers about the responsibilities that they have. Those low-level, early interventions to help to educate—rather than waiting for things to get completely out of hand—means that it is with great pleasure that I recommend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to take a call on the third reading of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. As ACT has already stated in prior readings, we are going to oppose this bill. The Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, in the opening statement, said that this is a fit for purpose, gradual infringement regime—or words that effect anyway. I’d just like to touch on a few issues that we have with the bill, as to why we don’t think that is particularly the case. I would also mention that the case that the Minister mentioned at the start of the third reading, highlighted at the beginning of her speech. Sympathetic as I am to that case, that is a situation which is already in breach of the law, in breach of the Immigration Act. These are cases that frequently go through the system, so not something that this bill would especially be focused on.

The Minister also, when explaining the justification or need for this bill, stated that immigration officers can only resort to criminal offences. I heard that and I thought, “It’s almost as if the Immigration Act 2009 doesn’t exist at all if we take that statement literally.”, because immigration officers have significant power. Anyone who has dealt directly with Immigration New Zealand (INZ) over the years will know that that power trip can be quite real, and migrants are often terrified of officials. And that’s not to mention the Labour Inspectorate. With their powers, they can go in there and, effectively, end business operations overnight on a whim if they see fit for right reasons, wrong reasons—whatever.

Regarding the document request powers—which we’ve labelled “fishing expeditions” previously and will continue to do so—the idea that requesting payslips and employee records will effectively identify bad employers is quite naive because, in many cases, there will be no documentation or the documentation will be completely falsified, like it is already. I would also ask if such a power of information request will end wage recycling. This is something that is quite common in the migrant space, and especially in cases where the migrant has worked with their employer and has set up this wage recycling arrangement with them, and they’re happy to do that—well, “happy” is probably the wrong word, but they’ve been put to a point where they have to do that in order to fulfil visa requirements or residency requirements, and so on.

I would also just mention the lack of the reasonable grounds. I’m kind of in two minds about this—the fact that reasonable grounds hasn’t been covered for these inquisitions. I don’t think, based on my experience with INZ, that it would actually make much of a difference if it is zero or not. If we take, sort of, a more extreme example—look at the dawn raids. And when I say the “dawn raids”, I’m specifically referring to the 29 of them that have happened since the Government made its apology in August 2021. The Government can have its view of how they want the system to be run, and INZ can get carried away and do things regardless. And not a single application to the national compliance manager was declined in that time—they were all approved. So were those grounds met? Who knows?

So if we look at the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme, which is a scheme that, in our opinion, will not help with migrant exploitation in the way it’s set up, it has been watered down substantially and has done little to address worker shortages. The scheme is effectively a self-assessment, with little to no review of the employer, and mandates that employers watch some self-help videos that were produced by bureaucrats in Immigration New Zealand. Now, I don’t know how many businesses have actually watched those videos or how many thorough self-assessments have been done, but I suspect not many. If that’s one of the cornerstones to find good employers, then that’s just not reasonable.

What migrants are looking for is a pathway to residency, ultimately. Specifically the skilled migrant category is a big part of that, especially now that it’s reopened. The Government’s announcement, though, of the changes that are forthcoming this year shuts the door on a lot of those migrants who are not considered high skilled, according to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations system, the antiquated list of occupations that the Government said they were going to stop using, but they’re still going to use it.

This will lead to more rule breaking, because suddenly a whole lot of migrants on temporary work visas no longer have that pathway to residency. So therefore, there is a greater incentive to actually infringe the rules and there’ll be more migrant exploitation as a result. The new skilled migrant category has a built-in disincentive for even trying, because if those migrants don’t qualify, their one-time work visa expires and then they’re effectively shut out. They can’t come back; they can’t get another visa. It’s a stand-down period. So I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help with migrant exploitation, but that’s the Government’s immigration system.

Regarding the publishing of company names, practically speaking—I mean, I’m not opposed to it, but what’s the point? Because at the end of the day, INZ can stop—and it’s in the bill—those employers hiring migrants anyway, right? So it literally says they get fined, they get the infringement notices, they pay the thousand dollars. The thousand bucks to them is meaningless. Really, the point is they can no longer hire migrants. So this public register thing—again, fine. Not opposed to it, but really, what’s the point? So that’s one issue there.

Regarding the Supplementary Order Paper, we’re pleased to see some focus on this. That was introduced, according to the Minister, to ensure that information obtained from the employer under that section cannot be used by an immigration officer in future to prejudice that application. Now, this is good in theory. Practically, what will it mean for that migrant further down the track especially? They may not use that information right there and then and they may try to help them, as was discussed in the committee stage, to get a migrant exploitation visa—or rather, a work visa or a resident class visa, but further down the track will this actually affect their future applications? Because as soon as something goes wrong with a visa application and you get into sort of appeals territory, it gets insanely complicated and the likelihood of success just diminishes over time. So this is quite tricky. I’d just say, look, compliance officers, immigration officers are human after all, and, you know, they can’t unsee something they’ve seen. So how will this actually roll out? I’m not confident this is going to work very well.

The Minister admits that this will not eliminate migrant exploitation, which is a very obvious fact. But the question is: could this make it worse? And I’ll just point out that many nefarious employers who are nefarious in their violation of the immigration system, they’re getting even more sophisticated, and have done so for many years, at getting around INZ’s compliance officers, at breaking the rules, at going undetected. I just wonder if this sort of system is going to actually give them even more reason to get even more sophisticated, because at the end of the day, if you look at the Accredited Employer Work Visa system, it’s a continuation—just like “essential skills” back in the day—of tying migrants to their employer.

To change even role types within the same organisation, they’ve got to go through a bureaucratic process. To change employers, they’ve got to go through an even bigger one. So locking them into that arrangement is a cause of migrant exploitation that I just wish the Government would look into and admit that there is work to do here. And certainly, from ACT’s point of view, we would remove that requirement and, in time, abolish the accredited employer work visa system as a whole, because it is a total rort.

So, look, we’re opposing the bill. We’ll take the ideology out of the system. We’ll make it simple: a viable option so that businesses can get on with it and that we can finally once and for all eradicate migrant exploitation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support the third reading of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. As other speakers have noted and traversed in the previous readings, this creates a regime to aim to tackle low-level offending, and wraps around other measures to discourage exploitation, and, I think, most importantly, to also create a regime that creates consequences for employers. I think this is what will contribute in this bill to addressing exploitation, particularly the publishing of names of employers convicted of immigration offences. We’re going to have to do a lot more work to prevent the phoenixing of companies who are caught in these offences, but I think that the move towards actually having a register of employers who are caught exploiting workers will actually help create more awareness and accountability in order to send a message to employers that exploitation won’t come without consequences.

Through the passage of this bill, one of the key things the Green Party raised—and I feel really stoked that we successfully secured amendments to the bill—was the use of information by immigration officials and how that information could be used. It’s really good to see an acknowledgment that, in order to create a robust system, we need to take workers’ experiences and migrant experiences into account, and for this regime to work, in practice, we need to give migrants a certainty that they’re able to raise matters of exploitation without them fearing that they or their colleagues will face adverse consequences. So we do welcome the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), which comes from our own SOP, as the Minister has acknowledged, to tackle this.

But there are unresolved questions. Look, the ACT Party and the Greens may not have a lot in common on many topics, but the previous speaker, James McDowall, raised some really valid points in terms of having to keep a close eye on how this will end up working in practice. I think that Immigration New Zealand will need to take a really robust approach to ensuring that the SOP will work as intended, because, as Mr McDowall said, once the case manager sees some information, they can’t unsee it. That is so true in terms of, then, what may drive decisions within Immigration New Zealand regarding how further investigations may happen in practice.

The other thing we wanted to touch on as this regime will start being put into practice is addressing the core drivers of exploitation. Yes, again, the consequence component is really, really important, and this bill does go some way towards addressing this, but, ultimately, one of the key drivers of exploitation is how we set up the visa system altogether. I think, unlike the other side of the party that wants to abolish the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme, I want to make sure that we build it in a way that enables this bill to work as best intended so that a lot of the low-level offences that are being caught by this bill are not a direct result of the way we’ve designed the visa system—right?—because so much of the low-level offences that we see, and, actually, more serious offences that we end up seeing, come from the binding of workers to single employers. That in itself creates the power dynamics and the situations where we end up having a bill like this trying to address some of those offences, right? So I do urge—well, and this will fall on Minister Little more than the Minister in charge of this bill—to address employer-bound visas, so that, actually, we can focus on the offences that come from employers’ behaviour and not because of the way we’ve designed the visa system.

But, overall, we do support this bill and we do think, actually, that this will be an evolving piece of work, right? We will need to see how the infringement regime actually—whether they’re punitive enough to discourage exploitation happening, whether we need to tweak those settings in the future, whether we are also creating the wraparound support for migrants who are raising exploitation, to enable this bill to happen, and therefore we’ll need to have a conversation about the settings of the Migrant Exploitation Protection Work Visa and whether those themselves are enabling workers who are in workplaces that are being affected by this bill to adequately be supported into other forms of employment, because right now it’s a six-month visa and there’s no entrenched support for people who need to leave their visas to that one in order to escape exploitation.

So I think the key message that we want to send is that, in order for this bill to work as intended, we need to look at the broader settings of the immigration system, and, at all levels, we need to incorporate workers’ voices and migrants’ voices because the SOP from the Minister and the contributions towards this SOP were coming from constituents that we talked to, who they themselves said, “I’m really scared of raising these matters with Immigration New Zealand because of fear of them being put into a limited visa.”, which that visa then doesn’t allow you to apply to other visas in the future, right? That is the experience that many migrants are facing right now.

So I’m really keen to see the passage of this bill, really keen to see this working in practice, and really keen to continue to work with the Minister to make any further amendments that may be required.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. There’s a saying that goes: “Don’t confuse justice with the law.” Justice is about fair outcomes and about equity; the law is the tool that helps to get us there.

But sometimes those tools don’t reach into the shadows and, unfortunately, that is where many of our migrant workers are working. Migrant workers are more likely to be underpaid, denied leave, work excessive hours, and denied basic employment protections—although these are already law. So measures like requiring document production, while they might seem small; while, as my ACT Party colleague said, they might be considered “fishing expeditions”, in my view, in this side of the House’s view, it’s about equalising access to justice. It’s about creating tools that can and do reach into those shadows to protect migrant workers’ rights. I commend this bill to the House.

I understand this is a split call. Todd Muller—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think one of the key reasons that we are opposing this legislation and this bill this evening is based on the contribution from the previous speaker, Vanushi Walters, when she said that from their side of the House this is all about justice; however, she acknowledged that some could critique this as creating the conditions for fishing trips, essentially, by overzealous immigration desk officers. At one level, when you hear that, you think, you know, what’s that all about? But from my experience in the New Zealand kiwifruit industry over the years, and particularly when you hear their very strong resistance, along with Business New Zealand, to this bill, they are very clear about the fact that there has been migrant worker exploitation in that sector and in others, that when it occurs there should be the full force of the law, particularly when it is at the more egregious side of, you know, impacting individuals poorly.

But rather than dealing with the significant and harder and more complex issue of egregious migrant worker exploitation, the Government has, through this bill, created a mechanism that, essentially, gives a desk officer in Immigration New Zealand in Tauranga the ability to say, “Well, actually, it’s the kiwifruit harvest season. This is a sector where perhaps a couple of contractors at the margins might be, you know, not following every single rule. I’m not exactly sure where that is, so what I’m going to do is I’m now just going to go out and demand this documentation from every single contractor in the middle of a harvest when you have six weeks to, you know, to pick a $2 billion crop.”

On the one hand, the Government will stand and crow about the growth of the primary sector and the importance of those export returns to the New Zealand economic story, but where the sort of rubber hits the road, when a business is trying to get kiwifruit picked under pressure and you’ve got a whole lot of people in that space trying to follow the rules and do the right thing, the Government’s view is “No, what we should do is create this power for desk officers to really get their faces in everyone’s business when they’re under the most pressure.”, trying to be able to give every single piece of documentation that is expected—names, addresses, locations; all the detail of every single person that’s on their orchard at that time.

I can see this creating significant cost and frustration, and it’s likely, frankly, to have the perverse effect when you will find—and I’m sure this will happen—that in time when the desk officer for Immigration turns up, there will be people scampering, and so you end up not actually being able to sit with the sector and work with New Zealand kiwifruit growers, Zespri and the like, to actually identify the real challenges, the real culprits, if you like, but instead creating frameworks that that simply won’t deliver for New Zealand when, frankly, we need resources and we need people and we need labour, particularly for some of those rural sectors.

So we think the Government has got their focus wrong. Typically, there’s high-end rhetoric around the importance of ensuring that migrant worker exploitation is reduced, but then they go to the low-hanging fruit, if you like: administrative obligations that will only frustrate and cause, I think, significant disruption for sectors when they’re at their most stretched. So, poorly thought through and actually won’t deliver the big changes that are needed to reduce significant migrant exploitation at the larger end, and that’s why the National Party opposes this bill.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. There’s been some good, robust debate today on this piece of legislation. As was said by our Green Party colleague, we want to see this enacted so therefore—on that case and that matter—I will commend this bill to the House.

I just want to tell one anecdote which will help the New Zealand public understand this. I had a case that involved three chefs; they were Indian chefs. They were really scared about what Immigration would do when they raised issues which were absolutely exploitative practices. They were working 92 hours a week, they had their passports taken away, and when they complained, they were kicked out on the street.

They were really concerned about that, and I know that this law and this Supplementary Order Paper will help people come forward. I know that people going in and demanding basic information will also help make New Zealand a better place to work. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I once remember a proud Labour Party that stood for migrants, that actually believed in migration—

We do.

And one of the members said, “We do.” Well, we have experienced the worst period of migration in New Zealand’s history under this Government. OK, they might blame Winston Peters because he campaigned on anti-immigration rhetoric, but the reality is when they had a chance, they kept it going. The union movement took over the Labour Party members and decided it didn’t want migrant workers in New Zealand. They will do anything to stop migration and they have shown that over the last two terms.

And New Zealand has suffered from that failure of the Labour Party. I remember years ago when I was first elected and we would go to all these events and the Labour Party members were there every Friday, Saturday night and they were telling all the migrant communities, “We are for you, we’re for you.” And as soon as they got in Government, they turned the tap off—they turned the tap off—and they stopped migration. Pre-COVID, they stopped migration; post-COVID, they stopped migration. They’ve only let in migration this year to try and get the economy looking good for an election; that’s all they’re doing. And migrants are well aware that post-election, if Labour gets back in, they will stop migration again, because the unions don’t want migrants.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Poto Williams): Order! Mr Bennett.

I am on the bill, because this bill can essentially hurt migration, because it’s going to be harder for employers to want to take that risk: there’s the risk that there will be people coming after you in another Government department trying to inhibit your business.

The ability of current processes to deal with these things is possible. Nobody wants to see any exploitation of workers’ rights, and nobody wants to see exploitation of migrant workers’ rights, and there are processes now to do that. But the Labour Party doesn’t want migrants in New Zealand—they have made that very clear. And that is the nub of what we see in the Labour Party. That is why the migrant vote will come back to National at this election, because the migrants—

💬 Hon Kieran McAnulty: Ha, ha!

And Kieran McAnulty laughs, but, you know, I don’t know too many Filipino dairy farm workers in the Wairarapa that are going to vote for the Labour Party, and I don’t know too many dairy owners that are going to vote for the Labour Party, or businesspeople who have had to do it really hard and who know that their safety and security have been put at risk because of the Labour Party, and who know that they don’t have the ability to stay long term.

💬 Hon Willie Jackson: Stick to the subject.

Wow—Willie Jackson sticking to the subject! This is the man that took half an hour at question time to tell us the story, you know? Ha, ha! Go back to sleep, Willie, it’s OK. We’ve only got 10 minutes to go and you can get out of here.

The reality is that the greatest injustice we do in this country is we don’t let migrants stay. We as a country have got a very poor record of allowing people to stay. We put up all these barriers around income levels you have to have, skill levels, English language requirements—all those sorts of things. And we take away the very people who are the future of this country, and their children, who will build this country even more. We should be enhancing migration in New Zealand. We should be welcoming people who want to come to this country, because they add so much to this country. We shouldn’t be trying to pass legislation to make it harder for migrants to come to New Zealand.

The Labour Party wants to make it harder for migrants to come to New Zealand. They’ve said that; they’ve proved it. [Interruption] And I say to Ibrahim Omer, a great member for the Labour Party: stand up against the leadership of the Labour Party, stand up against them for the last six years when they stopped migration, stand up for those migrants that want to come here and be part of New Zealand.

So this bill we are opposing, but the big problem we have in New Zealand is that we don’t welcome migration. We can say it all we like, but the reality is that we don’t let people come here and make their future here, and that is the problem. The Labour Government is the worst party in this Parliament at doing that. The Labour Government have shown over the last six years that they are anti-migrant and they are anti - the future of this country. That should not be allowed going forward. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. It would be remiss of me not to comment on that last speaker, I think it was four minutes full of filibustering that we didn’t need to hear. Anyway, it’s an honour and a privilege to speak on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. It’s in the name: protection, protection, worker protection. This completes the Government’s manifesto commitment of 2020 in terms of continuing to stamp out migrant worker exploitation. Judge us—if there’s a statement I remember from leaders on this side it’s, “Judge us by our actions”. This is our action. We said that we would continue to stamp out migrant worker exploitation, and this is going towards that—stamping out migrant worker exploitation. I commend the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill to the House. Mālō.