Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I am happy to rise and speak to this bill. I'd like to start by saying that National are tentatively supporting this bill with great trepidation and many concerns which I'll outline in my contribution today.Can I just start by saying that we get this bill on the back of a story today by Radio New Zealand in which they state most migrant exploitation complaints have been uninvestigated in the past year. Only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints received by the labour inspectorate were investigated in the past year: 1018 reports received in the 2021/22 financial year 28 investigations complete 80 ongoing enforcement actions against 10 and none have reached a hearing. Since 2017 investigations have fallen by 70 percent. That is the background to this.In this we get stories of migrants owed tens of thousands of dollars or charged thousands and thousands in illegal fees—all uninvestigated. So the question we have to ask today when we get this bill is: how does this bill address these serious breaches? How are problems with resourcing of Immigration New Zealand and compliance officers going to be solved? How is a lack of staff at Immigration New Zealand compliance going to be solved? How is a lack of resource of the labour inspectorate going to be solved by this bill? In fact none of those things will be solved.So what does this bill actually do? Well it goes after the very very minor breaches—none of the things that were mentioned in the story today. Basically it allows—as Priyanca has mentioned today; the Minister I should say—warranted desk-based officers to request wage and employment documents.It then gives employers 10 working days to supply these documents and allows a new fine regime to give those officers the power to implement fines basically in three areas: for not producing those documents in 10 days for hiring a migrant who does not have the ability to work for that employer or hiring a migrant who does have the ability to work there but breaches the conditions of their visa. For which an employer can be slapped with a $1000 fine.So overall what this bill does is it goes after the very low-level offending when the Government knows from their own Kantar research that was outlined in the Minister's press release that the majority of employers—97 percent—want to do the right thing but 91 percent of them just don't understand the myriad changes to immigration instructions and immigration law that's been thrown at them in the last couple of years.The third point is that these same employers are working under extreme labour shortages—the worst in 50 years—and they need flexibility of workers to keep the doors open. So that's the backdrop to what we are receiving this bill into.What this bill does is ignore the real problems with the under-resourcing and enforcement at the higher end and targets the good employers—mostly small businesses—trying to do the right thing unsure of all of the changes of immigration law and instructions that have been thrown at them in the last couple of years who are up against it in terms of staffing.So when a really good education campaign would have sufficed we get this bill and employers stung with fines. Let's take the example of an employer who under extreme workforce shortages—let's take a restaurant and we all know in what desperate need the hospitality sector is with the inability to find staff—asks his cook to cover a front-of-house shift. That would be in breach of the visa conditions; they would be pinged with a fine by a desk officer sitting at his desk requiring wage and employment documents. Make no mistake: that is what this bill will target.Instead of focusing on getting workers into the country more quickly—which is what we need to relieve the severe shortages—this Government is obsessed with making it more difficult more costly taking longer having a much more bureaucratic process to get workers into New Zealand putting these businesses under massive stress. And then they have the audacity to come out today and say Well we're going to fine you for a minor breach of visa conditions when you don't have any workers." So the real problems are not being solved; instead we get this bill.When we look more closely at the bill one of the areas that we will be arguing against at select committee that I believe needs to be changed—and our support will hinge on this—is the fact that there is no reasonable cause for those desk-based officers to make those requests.Now section 2 I think it's 277 of the Immigration Act: when a compliance officer walks into a business and requires documents to be produced they have to have reasonable grounds to do so. Reasonable grounds to believe that those documents are there and that there is a breach of the visa conditions or something else going on. They must have reasonable grounds.What this bill does is allow a desk-based officer at Immigration New Zealand to go on a fishing expedition to require documents—Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan: No it doesn't.ERICA STANFORD: Well there's no reasonable grounds written into the bill. So unless you're willing to put that into the bill Priyanca then unfortunately it is going to be fishing expeditions where a desk-based officer can decide "Well I'm going to go against every single Subway in the whole country and require all of their employment documents." That's what could possibly happen under this bill because there is no reasonable clause added into this bill. Now our support of this bill will hinge on that being in the bill. As I said the law as it stands at the moment is for immigration officers to make sure that they have reasonable grounds when they walk into a premises.The National Party is also concerned that Immigration New Zealand lacks resource of field compliance officers who physically go into premises and get records. We know this from the story today about the lack of prosecutions and the lack of follow-up and from just talking to compliance officers in the field. This is really important because we know that when a compliance officer walks into a business they're able to eyeball the employers they're able to eyeball the migrants they're able to eyeball the documents and say "I want that and that and that and what's that book up there? I want to see that as well."Now a desk-based officer can't do any of that. A desk-based officer can only say in email "I would like these documents please." giving the employer 10 days—and if they are a poor employer 10 days to send them potentially some documents that have been jimmied up and fixed up.A compliance officer with boots on the ground can walk in demand it right there and then and say "Hey what's that that and that? I want those as well." What I am worried about from this bill is that because we have such a lack of resource in Immigration New Zealand for those boots-on-the-ground compliance officers we are potentially replacing them with some desk-based officers who will not have the same ability to seek out those who are really doing some serious offending. This will further allow these businesses—some of them who are doing some serious spending to hide that serious offending.Potentially there's an oversight in the bill as well. The Minister should take this into account. The stated aim of the bill is to align the Employment Relations Act with the Immigration Act. Now the bill amends the Employment Relations Act to require an employer to comply with the document request in 10 working days if not practicable to provide those documents immediately. This is in section 229 of the Employment Relations Act where the labour inspector is physically on the premises requesting those wage documents.So he walks in he eyeballs them and says "Do you have those documents?" They say "No." He can now say "Well you need to get them to me."—he or she—"You can get them to me in 10 days' time." Yet in section 277 of the Immigration Act which is the equal and opposing piece of legislation that they're trying to make the same allows an immigration compliance officer to enter the premises ask for the documentation and there's no 10-day clause in there.I don't know if this is an oversight by the Minister in drafting but it needs to be looked at because it doesn't align the two. It aligns a desk-based officer asking for documents with a labour inspectorate going in and physically asking for documents but what it doesn't align is the immigration officer—compliance officer—physically going into the building. There's no 10-day clause in that and that may need to be looked at by the Minister.The other issue is that there is no right of appeal for those fines. If a business feels they've been unfairly targeted there's no way at all in this bill for them to argue that or to put their case.There's also concerningly the removal of the defence—and this is not for the fines; in section 350(3)(a) and (b) of the Immigration Act currently it stands that if you didn't know that the worker wasn't able to work and you took all reasonable steps to check that was a defence. That has been stripped out now so completely gone from the offences. Not this new part which introduces the fines but the actual offences that has been stripped out. So now you have absolutely no way at all to oppose that.So as I said we will be supporting the bill through to select committee."