McDowall JamesDr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to take a call on the third reading of the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill. As ACT has already stated in prior readings we are going to oppose this bill. The Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety in the opening statement said that this is a fit for purpose gradual infringement regime—or words that effect anyway. I'd just like to touch on a few issues that we have with the bill as to why we don't think that is particularly the case. I would also mention that the case that the Minister mentioned at the start of the third reading highlighted at the beginning of her speech. Sympathetic as I am to that case that is a situation which is already in breach of the law in breach of the Immigration Act. These are cases that frequently go through the system so not something that this bill would especially be focused on.The Minister also when explaining the justification or need for this bill stated that immigration officers can only resort to criminal offences. I heard that and I thought It's almost as if the Immigration Act 2009 doesn't exist at all if we take that statement literally." because immigration officers have significant power. Anyone who has dealt directly with Immigration New Zealand (INZ) over the years will know that that power trip can be quite real and migrants are often terrified of officials. And that's not to mention the Labour Inspectorate. With their powers they can go in there and effectively end business operations overnight on a whim if they see fit for right reasons wrong reasons—whatever.Regarding the document request powers—which we've labelled "fishing expeditions" previously and will continue to do so—the idea that requesting payslips and employee records will effectively identify bad employers is quite naive because in many cases there will be no documentation or the documentation will be completely falsified like it is already. I would also ask if such a power of information request will end wage recycling. This is something that is quite common in the migrant space and especially in cases where the migrant has worked with their employer and has set up this wage recycling arrangement with them and they're happy to do that—well "happy" is probably the wrong word but they've been put to a point where they have to do that in order to fulfil visa requirements or residency requirements and so on.I would also just mention the lack of the reasonable grounds. I'm kind of in two minds about this—the fact that reasonable grounds hasn't been covered for these inquisitions. I don't think based on my experience with INZ that it would actually make much of a difference if it is zero or not. If we take sort of a more extreme example—look at the dawn raids. And when I say the "dawn raids" I'm specifically referring to the 29 of them that have happened since the Government made its apology in August 2021. The Government can have its view of how they want the system to be run and INZ can get carried away and do things regardless. And not a single application to the national compliance manager was declined in that time—they were all approved. So were those grounds met? Who knows?So if we look at the Accredited Employer Work Visa scheme which is a scheme that in our opinion will not help with migrant exploitation in the way it's set up it has been watered down substantially and has done little to address worker shortages. The scheme is effectively a self-assessment with little to no review of the employer and mandates that employers watch some self-help videos that were produced by bureaucrats in Immigration New Zealand. Now I don't know how many businesses have actually watched those videos or how many thorough self-assessments have been done but I suspect not many. If that's one of the cornerstones to find good employers then that's just not reasonable.What migrants are looking for is a pathway to residency ultimately. Specifically the skilled migrant category is a big part of that especially now that it's reopened. The Government's announcement though of the changes that are forthcoming this year shuts the door on a lot of those migrants who are not considered high skilled according to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations system the antiquated list of occupations that the Government said they were going to stop using but they're still going to use it. This will lead to more rule breaking because suddenly a whole lot of migrants on temporary work visas no longer have that pathway to residency. So therefore there is a greater incentive to actually infringe the rules and there'll be more migrant exploitation as a result. The new skilled migrant category has a built-in disincentive for even trying because if those migrants don't qualify their one-time work visa expires and then they're effectively shut out. They can't come back; they can't get another visa. It's a stand-down period. So I'm not sure how that's supposed to help with migrant exploitation but that's the Government's immigration system. Regarding the publishing of company names practically speaking—I mean I'm not opposed to it but what's the point? Because at the end of the day INZ can stop—and it's in the bill—those employers hiring migrants anyway right? So it literally says they get fined they get the infringement notices they pay the thousand dollars. The thousand bucks to them is meaningless. Really the point is they can no longer hire migrants. So this public register thing—again fine. Not opposed to it but really what's the point? So that's one issue there.Regarding the Supplementary Order Paper we're pleased to see some focus on this. That was introduced according to the Minister to ensure that information obtained from the employer under that section cannot be used by an immigration officer in future to prejudice that application. Now this is good in theory. Practically what will it mean for that migrant further down the track especially? They may not use that information right there and then and they may try to help them as was discussed in the committee stage to get a migrant exploitation visa—or rather a work visa or a resident class visa but further down the track will this actually affect their future applications? Because as soon as something goes wrong with a visa application and you get into sort of appeals territory it gets insanely complicated and the likelihood of success just diminishes over time. So this is quite tricky. I'd just say look compliance officers immigration officers are human after all and you know they can't unsee something they've seen. So how will this actually roll out? I'm not confident this is going to work very well. The Minister admits that this will not eliminate migrant exploitation which is a very obvious fact. But the question is: could this make it worse? And I'll just point out that many nefarious employers who are nefarious in their violation of the immigration system they're getting even more sophisticated and have done so for many years at getting around INZ's compliance officers at breaking the rules at going undetected. I just wonder if this sort of system is going to actually give them even more reason to get even more sophisticated because at the end of the day if you look at the Accredited Employer Work Visa system it's a continuation—just like "essential skills" back in the day—of tying migrants to their employer. To change even role types within the same organisation they've got to go through a bureaucratic process. To change employers they've got to go through an even bigger one. So locking them into that arrangement is a cause of migrant exploitation that I just wish the Government would look into and admit that there is work to do here. And certainly from ACT's point of view we would remove that requirement and in time abolish the accredited employer work visa system as a whole because it is a total rort.So look we're opposing the bill. We'll take the ideology out of the system. We'll make it simple: a viable option so that businesses can get on with it and that we can finally once and for all eradicate migrant exploitation. Thank you Madam Speaker."