McDowall JamesDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to talk about this issue and this report. This is a tricky topic. Migrant exploitation is an incredibly serious issue. In terms of the amount of it in New Zealand it is often hard to say though the causes can be varied.One of our primary concerns with the inquiry into migrant exploitation is that it could be used as a vehicle to justify the Government's immigration policies in particular those that have created significant distress over many years particularly throughout the pandemic. Such policies include obviously stranding people offshore splitting families up freezing pathways to residency—and the main pathway is still not open—and just tons of ad hoc policy-making along the way to try to make up for it.As I said this is a very serious issue. What I would add is that complicated immigration law and complicated immigration policy is often why those who are exploited end up at community law centres or talking to advisers or perhaps a lawyer pro bono getting help from them to work through the process even with the launch of the new visa. The complex system means that it's easier to cause these problems and it's harder to actually get out of them.So that's the backdrop: the closed border; work rights as the Green MP Ricardo Menéndez March mentioned; expired visas; people who are stranded overseas and can't come back when they've got belongings here and in some cases some family here—and we're still dealing with those issues.Now one thing I want to turn to is the Accredited Employer Work Visa. This is something that I've had concerns about since it was announced or detailed last year. It was good to see that it got delayed in the first instance because it clearly wasn't ready. That being said it has rolled out and one of the most perverse features of that scheme is tying visas to employers so making it particularly difficult for a migrant employee to get a job and then for them to move. In the whole scheme of our immigration system combining six visas into one where they're locked in and they can't actually get out without going through a whole lot of process is just absolutely the perfect recipe for migrant exploitation.To add to that the bill that was announced today in the press release from the Government is basically just a band-aid solution for a problem that's caused by the Government. You know it's a shame that that bill is actually needed because of a problem that the Government caused.So further with the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme in addition to making it hard to switch jobs you've also got employers. Somebody might be a bad employer—or on the margins—and there's an incentive to actually because it's so difficult avoid that accreditation scheme altogether and to just keep doing what they're doing and illegally hiring migrants. So you're going to get a bit of a two-phase system there.So overall it's just incredible that the Government has done this report into migrant exploitation and they say they take it seriously and they're doing this bill because as far as I can tell the vast majority of exploitation in my exposure to this sector is caused by Government policy just making things too hard too difficult too much interference and people get—Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: So out of touch. Clearly has no idea.Dr JAMES McDOWALL: So out of touch? I've been in the industry for many years; probably longer than you have so—anyway. In terms of the scale—Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: And you still have no idea.Dr JAMES McDOWALL: —of exploitation and the new visa that was launched and it's—the interjections; clearly the Government takes it seriously just laughing away at this.So in terms of the migrant exploitation visa that was launched there were 134 granted in one year. So I mean that's good 134 but in the grand scale of the number of migrants in New Zealand I would suggest that if that was the panacea to an exploitation problem something is going wrong there. Either people don't have access to it or they don't understand it or something.This clearly needs to be taken more seriously. From our point of view it's deeply ironic that we are having this conversation because migrants have probably never before been treated so badly by a Government in New Zealand as they have by this one. We'll continue to speak in favour of migrants in support of migrants and in support of good policy. Thank you very much Madam Speaker.