Radhakrishnan Priyanca; O'Connor GregWORKER PROTECTION (MIGRANT AND OTHER EMPLOYEES) BILLFirst ReadingHon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I present a legislative statement on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I move That the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.Today marks a significant milestone in this Government's work to stamp out temporary migrant worker exploitation here in Aotearoa New Zealand. The Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill will significantly strengthen our immigration and employment systems by introducing a fit-for-purpose offence and penalty regime. The research is clear: we need legislation like this in order to deter exploitation from happening in the first place and to hold those who exploit their migrant workers to account more effectively. It complements a suite of measures we have taken to prevent the occurrence of exploitation protect those who have been exploited support them to leave such employment situations and enforce immigration and employment law to deter employer non-compliance more effectively. This is not an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff; instead it's an extra line of defence at the top.Exploitation has serious negative outcomes for migrants businesses New Zealanders our communities and our international reputation. Migrants who experience exploitation can suffer financial hardship and both serious physical and psychological harm that often also affects their families. Exploitative work practices also negatively impact businesses and the economy. Exploitative employers using illegal practices to get ahead undercut and disadvantage good employers and migrant exploitation can contribute to wage suppression and job displacement in lower-paid industries. In September 2018 Cabinet agreed to take serious action on stamping out migrant exploitation in Aotearoa. A temporary migrant worker exploitation review was then undertaken by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment with the goal of reducing the exploitation of temporary migrant workers including international students in New Zealand.In August 2020 the Government announced a coordinated end-to-end package of legislative policy and operational changes to stamp out this sort of exploitation. The changes were accompanied by a $50 million commitment by the Government to help ensure that Employment New Zealand and Immigration New Zealand were better resourced to respond to reports of exploitation and to take action. The first initiatives came into force on 1 July 2021. These were new dedicated reporting tools to make it easier to report migrant worker exploitation as well as the migrant exploitation protection visa that supports migrants to leave exploitative situations quickly and to be able to remain lawfully in New Zealand. These initiatives have seen a significant uptake since being launched and are supporting migrants to report and to leave exploitative workplace situations. Last month I also announced a new community-led education pilot.Research has shown that migrants most at risk of exploitation often lack basic knowledge about their employment rights. We are making this information more accessible to migrant workers and to those who employ them. Working with community and industry networks that already support migrant workers and employers of migrants was an obvious step that we could take to bridge that education and awareness gap. This Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill will implement the remaining changes from the temporary migrant worker exploitation review. Once passed this legislation will amend the Immigration Act the Employment Relations Act and the Companies Act to introduce a fit-for-purpose offence and penalty regime to deter employers of temporary migrant workers from non-compliance with their obligations under both immigration and employment law.Currently there are gaps in the enforcement regime that exists to ensure that employers of migrant workers are complying with their obligations. This bill fills those gaps to establish a more proportionate and efficient enforcement tool kit for immigration officers and labour inspectors to deal with lower-level offending before it becomes more serious. The bill also helps align the powers of the labour inspectorate and Immigration New Zealand to support greater collaboration between the two regulators to undertake compliance and enforcement activity. Once this bill is passed immigration officers will be able to compel employers who have supported a visa to produce documents that are relevant to a migrant worker's employment and remuneration to verify that those employers are actually complying with their obligations. These records would allow immigration officers to assess for example whether a migrant worker is being paid the salary stated in their employer-supported visa application. This will also help ensure that the new accredited employer work visa system is working as intended.At the moment there is no required time frame for employers to comply with requests for information from the labour inspectorate or from immigration officers. We know that employers may take advantage of delays to create records to satisfy their legal obligations. To give this requirement teeth employers who fail to provide information within the new 10-working-day time frame will be issued with an infringement notice. Currently Immigration New Zealand doesn't have mechanisms outside of criminal prosecution before a court to be able to address low-level non-compliant employer behaviour. This is time consuming it's expensive and it's an inefficient response that undermines the effectiveness of immigration and employment law and places migrant workers at risk of more serious exploitation. This bill will also establish a new infringement regime that will address this gap by creating enforcement tools for Immigration New Zealand that don't rely on court proceedings. Immigration New Zealand has estimated that it would issue between 500 and 1000 infringement notices to non-compliant employers per year under this new infringement regime. This will be significant in our efforts to stamp out exploitation in this country and it will send a clear message that this behaviour will not be tolerated.Currently employers who breach their obligations under the Employment Relations Act are published on the stand-down list but this isn't currently the case for employers who breach their obligations under the Immigration Act. The stand-down list is a crucial tool to ensure that employers who breach their obligations cannot access migrant labour and allows both prospective and current migrant workers to know whether an employer is compliant with our employment law. The current situation means that employers who have breached the Immigration Act can still support visa applications and access migrant labour despite the risks that they pose. This bill will expand the stand-down list to include offending under the Immigration Act giving greater transparency and consistency across the system. This means that employers who are found in breach of their obligations under the Immigration Act will no longer be able to avoid the consequences of being stood down.Migrant exploitation is a particularly appalling form of offending from which the public should be protected. Therefore the final component of the worker protection bill is to amend the Companies Act to allow the courts to disqualify people who are convicted of migrant exploitation or people trafficking from managing or directing a company. This change will prevent individuals from leveraging corporate structures to avoid personal liability and detection while exploiting their migrant workers. Exploitation and people trafficking are serious criminal offences that migrant workers are acutely vulnerable to. It is only right that we don't allow people who commit these offences to continue to manage companies and employ potentially vulnerable people.Stamping out migrant worker exploitation was a commitment made by this Government in our 2020 manifesto and I am proud of the work that we have done and that we continue to do to improve the lives of our migrant workers. No one stand-alone action will address migrant worker exploitation entirely but with the more rounded-out approach of education awareness raising reporting tools and the deterrent effect that these new powers and offences will create we can tackle migrant worker exploitation in Aotearoa New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.