Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill under much better circumstances can I say than we originally passed a similar bill a year ago when I wasn't able to be in the House. We were under strict lockdowns and there were just a few of us here to debate this legislation originally.A year ago there was a need for this legislation. We had a thousand or more Immigration New Zealand employees who were unable to work from home during lockdown and unable to process visas. Even under level 3 we had only 20 percent of those workers allowed back to work and at level 2 50 percent so there was a need for extraordinary powers to be passed to the Minister in the absence of Immigration New Zealand officials not being able to go to work. With around 350000 temporary visa holders onshore at the time needing help from Immigration New Zealand again this legislation was necessary. We had 200000-plus work visa holders with employment conditions that needed variations 70000 student visa holders needing their visa conditions relaxed and 55000 visitor visa holders needing extensions.It was a radical bill that we passed a year ago. There were significant powers that were transferred to the Minister to alter whole classes of visas at the stroke of a pen affecting tens of thousands of lives and we were under no illusion at the time that this was a spectacular transfer of power to a Minister. But given the circumstances at the time it was necessary and we were satisfied somewhat that there were sufficient safeguards in the bill to act as a check on these significant powers. Most of the powers can only be exercised by special direction—as Minister Faafoi outlined—through disallowable instruments made by the Minister and the ability to suspend applications offshore have to be made by Order in Council. Six of the eight powers can only be exercised to the advantage or at least not to the disadvantage of visa holders and importantly there was that sunset clause of one year.Over the last year to be fair to the Minister the powers under this Act were used 18 times and for entirely appropriate reasons. The way in which they were communicated at times was not desirable but I will speak about that later. But in credit to the Minister he has used his powers well to extend work visas extend visitor visas extend working holiday visas and ease conditions to allow those holders to remain in New Zealand and work in the horticulture industry for example. He's waived fees for onshore Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) workers and waived the requirement for chest X-rays for RSE visa applicants. This bill today asks us to extend these very significant powers for another two years and there are a number of problems with this request. We need to be very clear about the reasons that the Minister wants to grant such extreme powers for such a long time. The reasons that this Parliament agreed to grant these powers in the first instance was as I mentioned that those Immigration New Zealand workers were unable to work from home but now we're in a situation where we have a thousand-plus Immigration New Zealand officials who are all able to work from their place of work. They're not at home or they shouldn't be at home—I assume they're all working from home and have the ability to process visas—and the question for the Minister is: what work has he undertaken in the last 12 months to enable his staff the thousand-plus staff to be able to work from home? Granting extraordinary powers to the Minister for two years means we need to be asking these questions. We've had a year for these immigration officials to be able to be working from home and with the fact that they are actually now able to work from their place of work we have to question the need for this bill when they are able to do their jobs. At the time we passed this bill a year ago we had 350000 visa holders onshore—a significant amount of people that needed the conditions of their visas changed potentially. But those numbers have changed and we heard nothing from the Minister today—there was nothing in his speech—to indicate what those numbers are now. We know that a significant amount of those people have left. The question for the Minister is: why can't those Immigration New Zealand officials who are now working from their place of work process these visas in the normal way that they normally would? There haven't been any numbers from the Minister on this to give us any reason to grant him these extraordinary powers for such a long period of time and you'd think that he would have given them today given that he is asking for such a lot for such a long time. The other reason that we granted him these extraordinary powers was that there were people who were stuck in New Zealand and they were unable to get home. Many of those people have now left. There are flights out they are able to get home and there's also visas available to be able to cover those people. We will be raising these questions at select committee and at committee stage because they do need to be answered. The Minister I think was not forthcoming enough today on the reasons that he wants this power to be extended for such a long time. The extension for two years raises two questions for us—or it leads us to two assumptions I suppose. The first is that two years leads us to think that New Zealand's borders are going to be closed for a lot longer than this Government is letting on and the second thing that it leads us to assume is that there is no plan from this Minister in his portfolio. Addressing the first point of the borders being closed for a lot longer than we expected two years is so much longer than what anyone expected. Even at one year last time you had people like the Law Society questioning whether or not that was too long a time and they raised serious concerns about that. Now we see in the Cabinet paper that he was actually thinking about three years or having no sunset clause at all. So we must consider in light of the Government's comments also around the need for purpose-built managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities—we've heard the Government saying Look we don't need MIQ purpose-built facilities because even if we started now by the time we'd have them built it'd be 18 months and we won't have a reason for them in 18 months." Yet here we are being asked to give the Minister of Immigration two years of these very very special powers and the question is: why does he need two years? He didn't give us any reason in his initial speech as to why two years is required and why on earth was the Minister considering three years or no sunset clause? These questions need to be answered at committee stage. A check on these powers was one year originally and two years is a lot to ask. On that second point about no plan from the Minister of Immigration we haven't seen anything from him in the last year that gives the ability for Immigration New Zealand staff to be able to work from home. If resourcing is a problem then why hasn't he done anything in that area over the last 12 months to allow Immigration New Zealand officials to process visas in the way that they normally would? What has he done about upgrading Immigration New Zealand's ability to process things online? These are questions that need asking because if we're going to be just giving extraordinary powers that we wouldn't normally give to a Minister we shouldn't be doing so because he's been lazy for the last 12 months. What we need to know also is why Immigration New Zealand is in such a mess. There's a revolving door a high staff turnover. Residence applications are taking two years to be processed there's a backlog in the expressions of interest pool residence files aren't being processed and their own Minister forgot to implement the residence programme numbers in January 2020 causing all of these problems. Immigration New Zealand officials are on a go-slow because of this Government's ineptitude around immigration settings and on top of all of that we've had the Minister ignore split migrant families. And here we have a Minister saying "Hey transfer me all of these extraordinary powers please." after being completely lazy in his immigration portfolio for the last nine months. This is—Hon Members: Ooh! ERICA STANFORD: Well the truth hurts. We are being asked to do a lot and we will talk about process or my colleagues will talk about process because I'm running out of time. But what I do need to say is that with reservations we will support the bill not because of the Minister doing a great job in his portfolio but—but—for the many visitor visa holders who we cannot send home to COVID hot spots who are frail elderly immunocompromised and vulnerable and who are spending money here for those RSE workers that we desperately need for those work visa holders that need the conditions of their visas changed and for those working holiday visa holders. But we will ask the Minister to be more clear in his processes and his communications. He talked earlier about giving a visitor visa extension. We have to remember he gave that five days before all of those visitor visa extensions were about to expire. So we support this bill with serious reservations and my colleagues will have more to say."