SpeechHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): I thank the members for their questions of which there were rather a lot there. I thank the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee for her report and the diligent work of the committee and might I just say I found them to be a very impressive bunch as well. We did have a good discussion and worked through a good range of questions in the Estimates hearing there. If I can first turn to a number of the questions that my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse has raised—and he raised a number. Firstly he asked about some of the fundamental funding questions within the system which have obviously risen to the surface over the past couple of years. For those people who aren't so closely engaged with the immigration system it is very important to note that for the most part this has been a system which is funded by the people who use it. This partly goes to a question raised by Mr Menéndez March as well and we do think that is an appropriate and equitable way of funding the system for the most part. The alternative to that would be funding from the general tax base and that would put an additional burden and mean that there would have to be trade-offs made in terms of other things that the Government chooses to spend its money on. So certainly for those parts of the system which are primarily about economic migration—that is migration whereby a migrant worker is looking to take up an economic opportunity and advance their economic interests in New Zealand and an employer is looking to get complementary benefits out of that—we do believe that it is fair and appropriate for those people to make a contribution simply to the processing of those visas and making sure that the system can work through that and also subsequent oversight of the system in an appropriate way.What Mr Woodhouse rightly pointed out is that over the past couple of years with many visa categories being significantly reduced because of closed borders the revenue coming into the system has had to reduce. So in a way that is similar to other parts of Government's operations that are third-party funded—and wearing one of my other hats for example civil aviation—the Government has effectively had to step in over the past couple of years and bring in Crown funding to ensure that critical areas can continue to operate. Mr Woodhouse asked specifically about the memorandum account which is effectively the account that the system works from; money goes in money goes out from there. It did decline to a position of having a closing balance of minus $18.2 million as of June 21 last year. That has somewhat recovered to minus $14.7 billion as of 21 June this year. Members will be aware that we had phase one of a funding review that was completed around about the middle of this year. There were a range of changes to fees within the system that kicked in from 1 July. That was about stabilising the funding situation somewhat and there were increases to a number of the fees that we put in place. Phase two of the funding review which will be a more fundamental and systemic review of the funding settings to make sure that immigration is funded in a fair equitable and sustainable way in the years ahead will kick into place early next year. I'll be getting initial advice about the scoping of that probably within the coming few weeks to the next month or so. So there's considerable work that we'll be getting into in that space. Mr Woodhouse asked a number of questions as well around the 2021 Resident Visa (RV21). As I did comment earlier on in question time this is a very very large programme. I think it's important that members don't lose sight of that. It is the biggest residency programme that has been run in New Zealand and earlier on I pulled up some figures that illustrate this. If we go back over the last 10 years the biggest year for residency approvals in that 10-year period—before the most recent year—was 2015-16 when there were 52052 residency approvals. Quite commonly like in 2017-18 there were 37948 residency approvals. In the 2021-22 year primarily driven by RV21 we had 83203 residency approvals. So it is a very very large programme which does put significant pressure on the overall processing capabilities within the system. There's a team of around about 100 people who are purely focused on RV21 processing and the overall Immigration New Zealand processing team has been increased by around about 134 fulltime-equivalents over the last year to take account of that but also the additional demands that are coming on as the accredited employer work visa and other categories begin to open up with the reconnection process that is in train at the moment. Mr Woodhouse did point out that the original goal of 80 percent of the RV21 visas being processed was pushed back from the end of this year to June. That was effectively taking into account the fact that earlier this year the Government brought forward the reconnection staging to complete by 1 July this year. So originally reconnection was not going to be completed until October of this year. That was brought forward to July because there are important reasons for the benefit of our economy and society to do that and we believed it was appropriate to put resource into that. Effectively the trade-off there was a small push out in terms of RV21 processing but I would just note to the committee that the RV21 processing is actually reasonably well ahead of where we expected it to be at this point. We're at about 40 to 45 percent of the total applications. About 215000 applications have been successfully approved by this stage. So it's going pretty well overall but we do balance it against other needs within the system. In answer to Mr Woodhouse's question about how many of those workers were onshore I'll see if I can get a precise number to come back with later on in these discussions. The answer is: the vast majority. One of the criteria was about people who were onshore and were settled here. It was about recognising the contribution that those people had made through the COVID period providing security and stability for them and also for New Zealand more broadly. I would just note that I think that does make an important contribution both for those people but also for our economy and parts of the economy where we do have labour shortages because it provides security and stability; it ensures that those people can really put down roots and can continue to make a contribution in the areas in which they are. Mr Menéndez March asked a number of questions around the working holiday visa and we did announce some changes a couple of weeks ago in this area which are about providing a little bit more capacity particularly for the coming summer season. It's important just to put this into proportion. So in the pre-COVID period we were looking at overall working holiday visa numbers over the course of a year sort of in the 70000 75000 area. Our expectations over the coming year because international connectivity is still much reduced on what it was is that we will be looking at significantly less than that. So even with the increase to the capped schemes that we announced a couple of weeks ago—an additional 12000 across those capped schemes—the likelihood is that the total number of working holiday visas arriving onshore will probably still be a little less than we had in the pre-COVID period. So it was a pragmatic recognition from the Government that we do need to provide a little bit more support into that sector that the nature of people taking up those working holiday visa employment opportunities tends to be people who move into employment in those particularly seasonal and often tourist areas where it is actually quite difficult to attract year-round labour very often. So we think there is a niche that it fills. But as I say this is a little bit of a rebalance. We're still probably going to have fewer people overall than we had in the pre-COVID period. I don't think there's any particular conflict in that policy in respect of our other policies. I note some people who did miss out on for example RV21. Those people still do very often have pathways now that reconnection has commenced to be able to enter New Zealand. It might be different pathways to what they had before but effectively New Zealand is open and there will be further progress that we may make with other visa categories over the coming period as well. The other key issue that Mr Menéndez March raised was around partner work rights and he's raised the set of issues around family violence risk. I think it's really important in this area that we do just firstly be really clear that family violence towards anyone in this country whatever their status is entirely unacceptable and it's with the people who are committing those offences that the responsibility lies. I just think we need to be very very clear about that. It's not driven by any particular policy that the Government has in place. The responsibility lies with the perpetrators. Noting that I have asked officials for further advice about the application of the family violence visa. As the member is aware it applies to people who are a partner of someone who is resident in New Zealand but not to other more temporary visa categories. I have asked for further advice about that noting the very important issues which are at stake. I'll just leave my comments there and there are a few other things I might pick up in a further call but I welcome any further comments and questions from the committee.