Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to speak to—and it's a rather unfortunate topic but also a very very important topic in terms of exploitation of our migrant population in New Zealand. I guess nobody's actually suggesting that all migrants are being exploited or that all employers are terrible employers but it does actually happen in New Zealand. I think it is a very very sad indictment on our country and our systems where we have a situation where migrant workers who come to New Zealand—often with the grand hope of growing their personal wealth for a better future for their family potentially for their children to have better opportunities than themselves which is in fact often the hope of migrants who move to this country like my parents had for myself and my brother—often find themselves being exploited. I endorse part of what the previous speaker Marja Lubeck has said in terms of one of the reasons why and that is that often most issues are related to things like the visa status of the migrant whether it's actually a student or employer assisted visa rather than a residency visa or whether the migrant comes from lower income source countries poorer countries in effect or has very poor English proficiency and lacks the independence in terms of support. They don't actually have the support network around them—no family network—for them to seek assistance and potentially they're working outside of their visa conditions which means they're actually working illegally so they're too afraid to seek assistance and so they often are targets of abuse I guess in a way; it is abuse and they actually need the job to support themselves to remain in the country. I think it is very pertinent to put some of the numbers to bring context into the exploitation issue that we have. I think according to the report going back to 2011-12 year there were 31 allegations or complaints to immigration. By 2018-19 there were 390 complaints to immigration of exploitation. And with the launch of new reporting tools in 2021 the number of complaints rose to 855. I guess it actually means that that's making it easy for people to complain—and obviously with certain complaints they will be wrong; you know allegations of abuse that which may never been proven—but the fact that people feel comfortable to bring that abuse and exploitation to the authority for them to investigate I think is very very good progress going from 2011 to now. New Zealand has had a huge number of temporary migrant workers. We currently apparently have 170000 which is down from 235000 before the COVID pandemic. One of the problems is that we do have a lack of employees in this country. We need more workers for businesses. And when I read the report submitters described the causes and most common forms of migrant exploitation to be the power imbalance that exists between employers and migrant workers. The imbalance is often compounded by cultural differences the migrants' isolation from family and friends and the unfamiliarity with New Zealand laws. As a migrant who has actually moved to this country—I know it was a little while ago that I moved to this country but coming to New Zealand even having lived in Australia—and in Australia I would have thought our trans-Tasman cousins were more similar to New Zealand than anywhere else in the world. But even then I found New Zealand when I first arrived different to what I was used to in Australia. The terminologies were different. For example in Australia the dairies as we know as dairies are called milk bars. And in New Zealand if I said Where's the milk bar?" people would go "What?" Exactly. It's terminologies that are different. Our cultures are different. And I think for a new migrant coming in from countries where they have a lower socio-economic background are poorer countries not proficient in the English language and they have no familial support they are exposed and have no concept of where their rights are in this country. I think it is ripe for them to be exploited and I'm glad that this report actually exists. One thing that actually does concern me about the report particularly since there is cross-party support to make sure that we highlight the issue—normally that's what happens with inquiries at select committee. But it does actually concern me that there were things that I actually put on the report that weren't part of the select committee process or the inquiry. For example the National Party does not support the recommendation that Immigration New Zealand should consider involving the views of the union at the accreditation stage of the accredited employer work visa process because nobody who submitted to all the officials at any stage during the inquiry said that; it was added at the end of the process by Government members without any chance to question officials submitters or in fact the unions themselves. I think it is rather sad that we did that because I think often inquiries from select committees are about the submissions and what was actually said at select committee and I don't think things that are not said should be added for ideological reasons. New Zealand has a cost of living crisis and we also have an employment shortage crisis. Many employers who actually want to employ people from overseas have to be accredited employers and the kind of hoops they have to jump through to prove that they should be included as an accredited employer is actually a way to stop them from wanting to be accredited because there's so many things that they have to tick. It's like a tick-box exercise one after the other to prove to Immigration that they are accredited qualified to employ people from overseas. And yet every day even in the ICT sector there are about 3000 jobs that are being advertised because we can't get enough people in New Zealand to work. The issue is that for example the visa category for partners—New Zealand competes with the rest of the world for people who have the skills to come here. One of the things that they look at is whether their partner their wife or their husband can work in this country. And when the Government decides to get rid of the previous immigration setting for automatically being granted the work right is being removed by this Government which makes it harder. What it means is that people who are looking to New Zealand to come to to do work see that their partners don't actually have an automatic right to work here and they have to in their own right have a job at a particular level and a particular pay before they can have the work right. To me that actually restricts them from thinking New Zealand is a good place for them to come and it may even open the partner up to the kinds of exploitation that we are looking to prevent. Because often when people have certain restrictions they are open to potentially working under the table and although it is illegal it does actually happen in this country and everywhere else. I think the settings really need to be right and we need to protect the vulnerable community who come here who actually work and they work really hard. We need to protect them from exploitation because any exploitation is bad in my opinion. I commend the work of the select committee and the members who have actually listened to the submissions. I wasn't one of them but I just want to acknowledge the work that they have done."