McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. I can't say it's a pleasure to take a call in this debate because in an ideal world we wouldn't be having this debate. So I think that is something that we should remember.Migrant worker exploitation is a complete enigma to me. As an employer of some years of many many people I cannot for the life of me understand why an employer would exploit a migrant when we're desperate for people to work for us we're desperate to bring people into the country to grow our country and to help us run our businesses. Yet here we have a sector of our community exploiting those people who come into our country. We should also remember of course that we're a country built on migrants for hundreds and hundreds of years. We wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for migrants to New Zealand.Sadly I'm somewhat misguided in my thoughts that it's an enigma because in fact as the report that we've received from the Education and Workforce Committee well points out to us there are many things going on in this sector that shouldn't being going on. We've got unscrupulous employers—a few of them—adding significant cost compliance stigma and reputational damage to so many good employers. They also add reputational damage and potentially significant damage to our international reputation and consequently our market place. In many of those employers' cases the very industries that they are working in run the risk of being significantly damaged by the activities of those people.The main reason that we must take strong action in this area is because we want people to feel they can come to New Zealand safely that the country's a wonderful place to come to and live in work in and grow their families up in. If our international reputation in that respect is not very strong then we're inevitably going to have people not wanting to come to New Zealand and we're going to suffer significantly as a result of that. We cannot achieve those aspirations for those people who want to come to New Zealand to work and to live unless we have a very prosperous economy with a great international reputation.One of the earlier things I got to do in my time in this Parliament was to review a bill called the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. This bill was brought into Parliament specifically to deal with the conditions of workers on those foreign charter fishing vessels at the time. It was around 2013-14 that we reviewed that Act and passed a new bill primarily to improve conditions on those fishing vessels. The interesting thing for me was though that we got the opportunity to inspect some of those vessels as part of that bill being passed and the conditions on them were extraordinary. They used what they call hot beds" where three people would sleep in one bed per day—in other words they rotated through eight hours. It was no doubt quite fun for them. But not only that but those beds were four-foot-six long—and you'd have to be Andrew Bayly's size basically to fit into them! So it was quite a significant challenge. But I think that pointed out to me the conditions that we have in some of our industries in New Zealand were a long way from where they needed to be. [Interruption]Madam Speaker there's a lot of stuff going on in the background; I can't hear myself think.The whole point of that bill was to improve conditions for people working in that industry most of whom whilst they weren't migrants were foreign people working in New Zealand waters and under New Zealand conditions. That bill brought them into New Zealand conditions and significantly improved the conditions in that industry.One of the other things I find really interesting is that if you've come from a sector like I do where we've employed what were historically known as "shearing gangs" "forestry gangs"—we also have horticultural workers being employed in what you might call "gangs"; I guess there's better words for them nowadays but none the less they are effectively gangs—it's much easier for exploitation to take place in those kinds of conditions. I think that the changes the Government's made and the recommendations the select committee made with respect to employer accreditation will help a lot in that area. But I think also that for those people employing much as the workplace relations legislation puts the onus on the contractor and the employer of the contractor the same thing needs to apply in this case because we'd get much better behaviour in those gangs if the person who was employing them to do the work then insisted that that work was done in a manner that was sustainable and equitable.So I've run out of time Madam Speaker but thank you for the opportunity to speak on this. I just hope we get to the point where we fix it."