McDowall JamesDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. In 2017 the Labour Party campaigned to reduce net immigration to 30000 annually—an extremely ignorant policy but I'll get to that later. However in the year to March 2020—before COVID-19 took hold and that's quite important—the net arrival figure was over 90000. Sometimes policy failure isn't such a bad thing after all! However COVID-19 actually did what the Labour and New Zealand First Government promised and much more. So we unintentionally got to see what these sorts of policies would do in the real world.We have labour shortages that are slowly but surely killing the economy with more and more businesses desperately waving the Help wanted" signs up and down the country. We've got one of the big four accounting firms in Auckland has 90 vacancies at the moment. So all over New Zealand we've got cafes small restaurants in different cities that have done things like stop opening on certain days simply because they can't get the staff. The construction sector is desperate as are the primary industries. The Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme has been a complete disaster. The tourism sector is dying and hotels are grappling with both a lack of visitors and the threat of new taxes.It's an economy-wide problem and we're unfortunately reminded today here in Wellington of just how precarious the situation is. How can we ever reconnect to the world when we can barely handle the situation when our vaccine roll-out is so slow compared to other countries? As an aside house prices went up 30 percent during this period over 14 months. It turns out limited supply and low interest rates are enough to drive the market nuts without immigration. Perhaps the never-ending blame game really is just a populist excuse for failed housing policy.The immigration Minister was away the day that the Hon Stuart Nash filled in for him reading out his sort of vague announcement about an announcement—or something like that—speech. The mood amongst the migrants and business community prior to that speech could accurately be described as terrified; luckily their worst fears were not realised though the speech definitely generated more questions than answers. That speech called COVID-19 a change point for a once-in-a-generation opportunity to change immigration. The Government described immigrants as increasingly low-skilled and that COVID-19 starkly highlighted our reliance on migrant labour. Then nothing happened.Nobody knows what immigration will look like when COVID-19 is out of here and we return to normal. The Government suggests that they're against 90000 net arrivals but with their track record who know? We just don't know what it will look like. Are they planning to cap it at 30000 like they campaigned on in 2017 but didn't do anything about? More importantly what should New Zealand's immigration policy actually be? There are of course arguments out there for cutting immigration but they're ultimately wrong. Some argue that there are too many people here already and they talk about the demands on infrastructure. They say "Yeah roads and houses and schools still get built but"—apparently—"immigration stops us from specialising because too much capital is tied up in providing the basics."The truth is we don't know what the future holds and it's pointless for the Government to try to guess what the population should look like in 30 years' time when the economy will be completely different. New Zealand businesses need skills to grow and to be globally competitive which funnily enough lets them employ more locals and get them into higher paying more interesting jobs. They just can't do it with the population or the migrants that are already here especially when so many skilled migrants here are now leaving the country for better opportunities and to be treated fairer offshore. No economy in the world functions well like that.So the Government needs to get far better at planning funding and pricing infrastructure as ACT has long campaigned for. That's true no matter what happens with immigration. The Government also needs to sort out Immigration New Zealand (INZ) who have somehow managed to escape the technological revolution. Its staff stopped working through last year's lockdowns due to a lack of supporting IT. They still work with paper-based applications—in addition to online of course—and they continue to drive more complaints to MPs' offices than any other department. And I'm sure many members here know what that's like. But if one thing's for sure at INZ it's that they are slow at everything.Most of all though the Government needs to stop the uncertainty around immigration. They should tell us what they actually mean by "once-in-a-generation reset" because the skills shortage is getting dire and businesses are desperate. And while they're at it having a plan to reconnect with the world out of COVID-19 would help too. Thank you Madam Speaker."