Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. And just acknowledging what the Minister talked about regarding working with officials to look at the eligibility of the family violence visa so that it could potentially include partners of temporary work visa holders and that is a very overdue change. But I wanted to unpack whether the Minister thinks that he has a responsibility as part of the commitment to Te Aorerekura to ensure that policy settings being put in place do not increase the risk of family violence. Because while we can all agree that perpetrators are the ones responsible Government also has a role in not putting in place policies that put migrants into a position of financial dependency and these were concerns raised at Cabinet. So I wanted to understand whether the Minister thinks that his policy settings could play a role in an increased risk of family violence due to creating situations of financial dependency.Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): I just entirely reject and quite profoundly reject the possible assertion that could be inferred from Mr Menéndez March's questions which is that visa settings can cause family violence. As I said in my initial answers the responsibility for family violence rests entirely with the perpetrators. Having said that and I'll repeat again we remain open to ensuring that our visa settings provide as much opportunity as is possible for people to be able to leave those situations. But they in no way have any bearing on the incidence of family violence occurring in the first place.To answer a couple of the other questions that Mr Menéndez March asked earlier on: in respect of the parent category this is one that I have asked officials to prioritise work on. The parent category was initially closed in 2016 under the previous National Government—temporarily paused at least. It was our Government's intention to open that in early 2020 at almost exactly the same time that the borders were closed. So it's been approximately six years since that category has been fully open and I have asked officials to accelerate work on that and I am keen to see that we get appropriate sittings in place there. I'm very much aware of the importance that that pathway can provide for families to settle well and have a sense of comfort about the wellbeing of their elders. So there will be further work that's going on there relatively quickly. I do note that the parents and grandparents visa category is open; it doesn't provide a more permanent pathway for people's parents and grandparents to come into New Zealand but it does enable them to come here for periods of six months at a time and we have had very very strong interest in that since it reopened in July. In respect to the member's questions around the Productivity Commission report that was put out by Ganesh Nana and his team several months ago look that is something that again I have formal advice coming through from officials and I expect to get relatively soon. I have to say that I thought that there were some very very useful observations made in that report and that I'm favourably inclined to some of the general recommendations about ensuring that the system is as transparent as possible that there's as much certainty about settings as possible and that it's as driven as possible by data and evidence. This is a sector that can be very strongly driven by the politics of the day and by sector lobbying; we live in a political environment and some of that you know just goes with the territory. But I think we want to ensure that this is a system that's as much as possible driven by genuine economic need and a humanitarian focus. So I'm very keen to explore those areas without committing to any specific actions at this stage.