Moroney Sue: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 26 November 2014. Volume:702;Page:918. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour):I rise to speak on behalf of the Labour Party on the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2). Regretfully the Labour Party is unable to support this bill even though it is a core issue for the New Zealand Labour Party to address the exploitation of all workers—in particular relevant to this bill migrant workers. The Government just has not got this right. It has not got this right. It just shows I think how out of touch it is with what happens in the modern workplace. Even though I am just 2 days into this portfolio even I can work out that in a workplace if employees who are migrant workers are getting ripped off probably the last people they want to report that to is Immigration New Zealand—probably the last people they want to report that to is Immigration New Zealand. That is in fact what this bill forces them to do if they want to have their exploitation at work sorted out.Why does the Government not just get real and resource the labour inspectorate properly to actually do this work instead? The labour inspectors are the people who ought to be looking after people’s rights at work. They ought to be looking after people’s rights at work but that Government will not resource the labour inspectorate properly. So what is the Government doing instead? Instead it is pretending that it will do the right thing by migrant workers by asking them to report to Immigration New Zealand if they are being exploited at work. Well immigration officers are good at all sorts of things but this is not their area of expertise. For many of these workers they will be fearful of reporting to Immigration New Zealand. Unless the Government understands that—until it gets to grips with the very real situation that these people are faced with—then it has correctly identified the problem but it has incorrectly identified the solution. So sadly the Labour Party cannot support this particular solution to the problem and yet we feel very strongly about addressing the problem.I know that the Minister of Immigration has been in this role for some months now so he is not one of the Ministers who is newly into this role and perhaps just getting to grips with it and you could excuse him for not quite understanding what the implications are of this bill. He has actually been in this role for many many months and should have been able to see the situation that is going to unfold here. Although it might look as though the Government is trying to do something to address the exploitation of migrant workers in fact it will not work. The Government does need to understand the power imbalances that go on not only in the workplace but also with people who are heavily dependent on Immigration New Zealand for their ability to continue to work in this country for their ability to actually be in this country. There are far too many issues that migrant workers would have in reporting this to Immigration New Zealand.I fail to see why it is not the labour inspectorate that is actually doing this work. I would like to hear from members opposite during the course of this debate about why it is not the labour inspectorate that is dealing with the exploitation of workers. Of course that is the very same inspectorate that is going to have its hands full dealing with this very same group of workers actually who are probably going to be the people most at risk of meal breaks and tea breaks being taken away from them. This is exactly the same group of workers who are going to suffer from that. So the labour inspectorate is already going to have its hands full dealing with that issue but it should be resourced properly to actually deal with all levels of exploitation including of migrant workers.I was not able to sit on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee to hear the submissions on this but I hear that there were a number of very very good submissions that pointed out to this Government the stupidity that was going on in this bill. But of course the Government sticks its fingers in its ears because all it really wants to do is make it look as though it is dealing with the issue when in fact the Government knows that the exploitation will continue long after this bill has been passed by this Parliament. But it will not pass with the support of the New Zealand Labour Party because it is not a realistic solution to the problem that has been identified.Debate interrupted.