SpeechHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): Can I acknowledge Ibrahim Omer who presented the Education and Workforce Committee's report; the member Erica Stanford who's just resumed her seat; and other members of the Education and Workforce Committee who have completed the report that we are considering and whom I've had a number of interactions with over the course of the year in question with that being the 2021-22 year. I'd just like to start with a few opening comments and then I'm happy to respond to a couple of the questions from the member. The 2021-22 year that is under consideration in this report was an utterly unprecedented year for the immigration system. This was of course the year in which we moved from having an immigration system in which our borders were primarily closed to a system in which our borders were progressively opened from about February-March of that year and were finally opening in July just at the very conclusion of the year in question. So it was a very challenging one for any immigration system to manage. Despite the fact that for nearly—or for all of that year in fact borders were either partially or completely closed Immigration New Zealand (INZ) continued to carry a very significant workload and processed close to 100000 border exemptions for critical roles that did need to come into New Zealand. So I want to acknowledge that for Immigration New Zealand even though borders were closed it wasn't as if the work stopped; in fact in many respects things became more complicated for the organisation. But it was also in the back end of that 2021-22 year that preparations were being made for the reconnection—that is the reopening of the border—there was the establishment of new processes and of course they were also getting ready for the Government's immigration rebalance and the implementation of those settings. I know that for many people who have been engaged in the system it has felt like there has been an awful lot of change over that period and they are right in that. I just wanted for the benefit of the committee to run through some of the key pieces of work that were worked through in this period under consideration of the 2021-22 year and then implemented more latterly. There was the establishment of the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) system which is an entirely new main gateway for migrant workers to access temporary work visas in New Zealand and the establishment of the Green List a new simple and streamlined residency pathway to attract those people who are most in demand for skilled professions in New Zealand. We got ready for and opened the skilled migrant category. It had been closed for the period of border closures. We established a number of sector agreements to enable particular sectors where there were skilled needs and particular needs in terms of requirements to get workers in here and sometimes there were challenges to get the median wage requirement set up and then to move into action. We reopened the parent category. It had been closed way back in 2016 and it had been one of the major requests of our migrant communities settled in New Zealand to enable there to be a process for families to reconnect. We made significant changes to a range of visa types including the working holiday visa where extensions were made during that period of border closures to enable people to stay on longer. Further extensions were made post - border opening and also the capped schemes for particular countries were doubled for this period. The Resident Visa 2021 (RV21) pathway was established in this year of 2021-22. It has been an extraordinarily successful and vast operation. As we stand here today approximately 180000 people have been approved for residency under RV21 in about 15 months. In our system normally it takes about five years for that number of residency applications to be approved so it has provided significant certainty and stability for those people their families and very often their employers as well. We reopened the Pacific and Samoan quotas and in fact increased them to make up for some of the time that was lost during the period of border closures. We agreed to and are now implementing for the first time an increase to our annual refugee quota to 1500 people which has been a really outstanding outcome. We are proud of the contribution that our immigration policy makes to our humanitarian contributions to the global community and that has been an important step forward. At the same time we've doubled the number of places from 300 to 600 available for family reunification; we've established the Ukraine temporary shelter policy which has provided a pathway for around about 1300 people to be approved to seek shelter in New Zealand; we've established the significant Afghan evacuees category—and I acknowledge the Hon Phil Twyford in the Chamber who played a very significant role in the establishment of that policy—we came to an arrangement with Australia to finally implement the Nauru arrangement which is now coming into effect with New Zealand being able to settle people from that very difficult set of circumstances; and it was in this 2021-22 year that the Government agreed to bring in new measures to support our ongoing efforts to stamp out migrant worker exploitation with a number of those measures coming into effect from 1 July 2022. So it has been a huge year for the system and really what I'm conveying to the committee is that even as the borders were closing there was a massive amount of work that was being done in the system to prepare for reconnection and to modernise our settings. There is much work ahead as well and I'm sure we'll cover some of that in the course of discussion. I thank and acknowledge the member Erica Stanford for her acknowledgment that we have got to a point now where the processing of visas has significantly improved. That was something that we had always anticipated. It required work and it required additional resourcing but we always anticipated that it would take a little bit of time for settings to bed in for both immigration officers and clients using the immigration system to get used to them and of course for migrant workers to sort of get into the swing of applying engaging and then being prepared to come to New Zealand. But we are seeing a significantly improved processing time now. I thank the staff at INZ for their work on that and I acknowledge the member for her acknowledgment of that. The member asked for an overview of what is expected at the job check stage of the Accredited Employer Work Visa. I'll take her through the four key steps here. Firstly Immigration New Zealand will check evidence of advertising and confirm that sector employment agreements are in place. Secondly employers are required to make declarations that the roles that are being recruited for were made available to New Zealanders. That is an important step and perhaps this goes to part of what the member was getting at. The AEWV is a system that does put a reasonable amount of trust on employers but it is on them and because it is a system that is based on accreditation—that is a step before job check—ultimately if employers do not fulfil the obligations that are within it they potentially lose the right and the ability to recruit migrant workers. Thirdly skill requirements for an AEWV which are generally led by the employer are assessed. Job checks ensure that a worker has a qualification and work experience skills and other specifications as listed by the employer as the minimum requirements for the job. Fourthly the main areas of immigration risk being looked at at this stage include migrant exploitation role and salary information as well as whether there have been non-genuine job offers or advertising. These are the steps that we expect to be worked through by the immigration officer. I can't speak to every individual case and we have instructed officers to take a positive and facilitative approach in working this through with employers but we expect at this stage good standards to be upheld.