Roche Denise: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is subject to correctionRoche Denise: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3099. Text is subject to correction.]DENISE ROCHE (Green):I rise to take a call on the third reading of the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) which the Greens will not be supporting. Basically this bill takes one step forward and two steps back. We support several things in the bill. We support the intention and we support making the exploitation of migrants on temporary entry visas with regard to work conditions an offence. That is a common-sense measure that we should have had in place a long time ago but we applaud the Government for bringing it in. We support the provisions in the bill that will provide harsher punishments on employers underpaying and exploiting migrant workers. We approve that those unscrupulous employers who exploit migrant workers on temporary entry visas should face up to 7 years’ imprisonment or a fine of up to $100000.The fundamental reason that migrant workers do not report bad employers is that frankly they just do not want to be deported. This is something that the Filipino Dairy Workers of New Zealand has told the Embassy of the Philippines. It said there was little it could do because it was difficult for migrant workers to complain because they feared that they would lose their jobs and consequentially their visas. This is straight from the workers on the ground who have said what they need. What this bill does not address is the necessary protection to be whistleblowers.That is why we fundamentally cannot support this bill. It tends to take a top-down approach to fixing the issue rather than listening to the people on the ground who are suffering the problems and providing bottom-up support so that we can protect migrant workers properly and effectively. The Filipino Dairy Workers of New Zealand is at the coalface of what is happening. It has seen cases of workers working 15 hours a day day after day during the calving season. It has seen cases where migrant dairy workers have had to provide their own wet-weather gear and have had no assistance from their employers.That is consistent with the statistics we are seeing from the labour inspectorate which conducted 176 investigations in farm-related industries across New Zealand quite recently. It found 67 employment breaches. This means that a shocking one in three of those who were investigated was abusing minimum employment standards. There is an absolute epidemic of migrant worker abuse around the country. This bill that the Government is proposing is a band-aid; it is not a cure. It is not just the Filipino Dairy Workers of New Zealand that has identified the core problem of this bill. The Auckland Latin American community have identified the “lack of effective protection for victims of labour exploitation as a main concern” and have highlighted in point No. 1 in their submission that immigration status and employment rights are intertwined. This is also supported by evidence from the Union Network of Migrants which has highlighted that stronger protection and incentivisation for whistleblowers is what is needed. We commend the Government for its good intentions about this which makes the fact that it is not listening to the community not listening to the people on the ground not listening to the Filipino Dairy Workers of New Zealand or the Union Network of Migrants—not listening to them—all the more tragic.The bill has lots of other problematic areas in it. We are uncomfortable with the way the bill extends the search powers of immigration officers into private dwellings especially without the requirement for a warrant and I endorse what the previous speaker on this side Mr Cunliffe said about that. If the goal is to address labour abuses then why is the power being given to immigration officers rather than labour inspectors and why do we not beef up the number of labour inspectors that we need? Putting immigration officers in charge of enforcing the labour standards will lead to further confusion in the migrant sector and it will create more barriers to reporting breaches and exploitation. Warrantless searches also mean that we are treating migrant workers as less than other New Zealand citizens and other workers. The legacy of the dawn raids of the 1970s casts a long shadow on many Pasifika and migrant communities and it is not surprising that many people would feel uncomfortable with this.This bill will enable those with residency to be liable for deportation if any of the information in the original application proved to be false even if this information was irrelevant to the decision to grant them a visa. They do not even need to be aware that the information was false when they made the application. People make mistakes. This is problematic because even minor errors can lead to deportation and that creates another disincentive. In some cases workplaces assist migrant workers in preparing their visa applications. From the abuses that have already happened it would not be too outrageous to suggest that some of these employers might deliberately introduce errors into the process creating further disincentives for reporting exploitation.We know from the points that my colleague Jan Logie raised in the earlier reading that FIRST Union has mentioned employees signing agreements in the Philippines. Yet when they arrive in New Zealand that contract that agreement has been changed. It knows of workers whose local employer is threatening to send them home if they do not work during the weekend or make them work for no pay or they get put in different work from what they originally agreed to do. The task of protecting migrant workers is even more urgent in light of a finding from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment that it could not even determine whether Chinese engineers working at KiwiRail were being paid the minimum wage. The ministry could not even find that out. When the Minister’s own department cannot determine whether or not someone is getting paid the minimum wage we have a serious problem. When the Chinese engineers decline to tell the labour inspectors what they are getting perhaps for fear of getting their contracts cancelled then we have a very serious problem.It is a tragic state that our State-owned company cannot even guarantee that contracted migrant workers are getting paid the minimum wage. What sort of message does that send to other employers around the country? The Government should have been investing in places like the Hillside railway workshops in Dunedin so that the country has independent industrial capacity rather than resorting to importing workers it cannot even guarantee are getting paid a minimum wage. It undercuts every other worker in Aotearoa New Zealand.What would the Greens do? Well as I have said in an earlier reading the solution as we see it frankly is to improve worker representation. This means that we need to improve the rights of unions and promote their ability to bargain collectively. We need to improve the industrial relations climate as a whole so that workers’ rights are the norm instead of having the current Government’s moves to deregulate the workplace environment which actively encourages bad employers to rip off workers. The zero-hour contracts that are prevalent through the hospitality sector are one example of bad employer practice.In terms of this bill we need a guarantee that workers who blow the whistle on their employer have their visas protected. We need real protection for migrant workers and a supportive environment so that workers Kiwi and migrant can step forward without fear. As I have said although we thank the Government for making the right noises and taking a step—a tiny step—in the right direction this bill takes several steps back so we will not be supporting it.