Strange JamieJAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Mr Speaker I appreciate the opportunity to speak this afternoon. Before I move to the bill I would like to acknowledge the passing of Hamilton city councillor Margaret Forsyth. Margaret Forsyth unfortunately passed away yesterday after a short illness. Margaret Forsyth was a Hamilton city councillor in the ward in which my electorate resides. I knew her personally. She was also a member of the Silver Ferns from 1979 to 1987. I'm sure the House would join me in sharing our most sincere condolences to her family during this time. Like I said I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the third reading of the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill. As we've heard from previous speakers on this bill COVID-19 continues to rage around the world. I use that word rage" quite deliberately because I regularly speak to people who have friends in countries like India you know parts of South America where COVID-19 is effectively out of control unfortunately during this time and it's an incredibly difficult difficult environment for those countries. The reality is that in New Zealand we have a relative sense of calm. Obviously unfortunately we have had people die of COVID-19 but when we compare that context to the rest of the world you know the decisions we have made have certainly held us in good stead. I'm quite confused by the view of the National Party on this bill because the National Party are not supporting this bill. I believe that they need to lift their heads up and have a look to see what's happening around the world because this bill is required in order for the Minister to have the flexibility to respond to the COVID-19 challenges that are obviously happening around the world but they do affect us because no country lives in isolation. We heard from the National Party—to me what I found quite a staggering statement from Chris Bishop who said that they would have supported this bill except for the two-year time frame. So basically what the member was saying was that he agrees the bill is necessary but that they're not supporting it simply because of this two-year time frame. The reality is—so what they're doing is then putting people at risk who need visas extended or people who need to move around the country or come to New Zealand or have various freedom of movement. They're putting all of that at risk because of this two-year time frame so I'm going to start my speech by talking about that. It's not certain that the impacts of COVID-19 will be over by mid-May 2022 and that's one of the key reasons for this two-year time frame. So a one-year extension would be likely to imply that the Government would be prudent to introduce a further bill during this year to enable the powers to be continued if necessary later into 2022. Now this would obviously not be an efficient use of the House's time. But further than that if COVID-19—and this is a point that the previous speaker made—is overcome earlier the requirement that the exercise of the powers must be reasonably necessary to address the impacts of COVID-19 means that those powers would effectively expire at that point. I'm not sure that the National Party understand that because we are in an incredibly dynamic environment as I outlined before at the start of my speech—the fact that COVID-19 continues to rage. Yes we have vaccines and we're making really very good progress as a world on those vaccines but the reality is COVID-19 will be with us for quite a long period of time.The fact is if we touch on those words there: "reasonably necessary"—the powers must be "reasonably necessary"—I have faith in the Hon Minister Kris Faafoi to interpret the fact that when the powers are no longer reasonably necessary the powers will not be used. There is a natural time line of COVID and of these powers and as we've heard previously the Regulations Review Committee will play a key role in that if we are obviously more successful than we think we may be in terms of COVID time frames. But the reality is we don't know the exact time frames for COVID. We haven't got a crystal ball. We're doing well. As a country we're doing well. The vaccine is starting to roll out but we don't know those exact time frames. So that's the point I'd like to mention first—that two-year aspect—because I do find it staggering that the National Party are forgoing their support for this bill and all of the important aspects of this bill simply because of this two-year period.Hon Member: Politics.JAMIE STRANGE: To me it does seem like politics as my colleague has alluded to.I'm on the Education and Workforce Committee at this time—a very very good hard-working select committee. We appreciated the opportunity to meet in recess to hear from many of these submitters. We had 168 submissions on this bill so there's certainly quite a bit of engagement in the parliamentary process which was good to see. Forty-three of these submitters submitted oral evidence and quite a few of these oral submissions were actually around personal circumstances and it was certainly harrowing to hear some of these stories but particularly around the split families aspect. As people will know I have children. Many people in this House have children and we can only imagine how difficult it must be for those families who are separated from their loved ones. Actually up in Hamilton I recently hosted a meeting for split families and we had around 150 people turn up. It's certainly a very challenging environment for them and rest assured the Minister is working hard to support those families and we continue to feed through to the Minister those stories as we hear them.I'd like to touch on a couple of aspects of what the bill does. As we've heard it extends the powers granted under the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Act 2020 until 15 May 2023. The National Party supported the bill—the first bill. Now they have revoked their support for a bill that is effectively the same. So I think there's a bit of confusion over the other side and I look forward to the next speaker on the other side giving us a little bit more clarity on that—just to clarify: is that the reason why they're not supporting this bill this two-year provision? I do find that staggering that they would put visa holders at risk in New Zealand for that purpose but we look forward to the next speaker—we look forward to the next speaker from the Opposition side.In my final two minutes I would just like to highlight some of the powers that this bill grants the Minister and just talk through some of those. So the first aspect is the power to amend visa conditions for large groups of people. Now why is this important? The reason this is important is because we are in a volatile environment both globally and in New Zealand because we are affected by COVID-19 you know in terms of people travelling from other countries. People are here on work visas working hard and we appreciate their contribution to the economy. At times those work visas need to be extended and we have seen that happen. So this basically you know it's a very practical piece of legislation because what it does is that it provides opportunity for the Minister to respond in real time to the effects of COVID on New Zealand. The second point is that it extends the visas of large groups of people for varying periods of time. The third one is that through regulations it can stop overseas people from making applications while we have border restrictions. Our borders are constantly being monitored. We've seen recently a travel bubble open with Australia. We don't know what the future will hold so the Minister of Immigration needs the flexibility to respond in real time to what's happening with COVID. A key aspect of that is around visas it's around the borders. Effectively it's around the movement of people and that's what this Government is doing: we're making very careful decisions to ensure first and foremost that the health and safety of New Zealanders is paramount but at the same time working where we can to enable the movement of people. This is a practical piece of legislation and I commend it to the House."