Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well I'm not sure that the Associate Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety will be surprised in hearing tonight that the National Party will not be supporting this bill. The bill doesn't solve the problem that the Minister believes it's going to solve and it goes after the wrong people. It was interesting to hear her speech tonight about the coordinated end-to-end programme the suite of things that this Government are putting together to try to end migrant exploitation but the real difficult hard gnarly end of migrant exploitation has not even been touched by this Government. This bill is one of those things that sounds good and it sounds nice and the Minister made all the right noises but actually the real big gnarly things that are actually causing migrant exploitation are not being gone after.I can tell you that the single biggest thing around migrant exploitation that this Government should be doing is going after wage recycling because actually by forcing up the rate that migrants need to be paid to the median wage which is now $29.66 an hour all she's done all this Government have done is mean that migrants are now paying more in terms of wage recycling for the jobs that they were always paying for and they're doing this by paying back their employer overseas in bitcoin or in overseas bank accounts that are difficult to trace. This bill doesn't go anywhere near addressing that real problem.What this bill does and I warned them about this in my very first speech is it goes after super super low-level minor infringements that actually are good employers who are trying to do the right thing who might get caught out because actually when you've got a really tight labour market and a massive labour force shortage when companies are trying to do the right thing but are just trying to jimmy things around to make ends meet—Angela Roberts: Jimmy things around?ERICA STANFORD: Oh so Angela Roberts doesn't like the words jimmy things around". Let me give her an example of an aged-care facility who—we all know that they're short of aged-care workers and nurses—find that their nurse coming in is going to be late or that they can't bring in their next nurse because they're so short so they ask their migrant nurse or their migrant healthcare worker to work an extra hour. Guess what? Ping because that's against the conditions of their visa which would be pinged under this bill. So in a really tight labour market when people are just trying to make ends meet and actually make sure that they are caring for people in the case of an aged-care association they would be pinged under this bill.I made the point in my first reading speech that we need to be more flexible in these times rather than going after these people who are just trying to do the right thing. I was in a meeting in Wānaka just yesterday talking to the hospitality sector who said to me "We are so short-staffed here that we can't open up our hotel for 100 percent capacity; it's got to be 65 percent. We've got migrant workers working here that could be doing other jobs every now and then to try and make things work but we can't do it." Guess what? Under this bill they would be pinged for just trying to do the right thing in a tight labour market which these guys created because they couldn't get the borders open early enough. They're going after the very people who are just trying to do the right thing who have been pinged by this Government because they couldn't get their act together last year. That is not a good bill.Where they should have been going as I have mentioned already is after the wage recycling.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Can I just remind the member of Speaker's ruling 114/5: in a second reading of a bill the comments or the debate is to be confined to matters contained within the bill and not at length matters which are not provided for in the bill. So a comment yes but half a speech not so much.ERICA STANFORD: Thank you Madam Speaker. Well let's move on then to some of the comments by the submitters in this bill who were making the very points that I have been making firstly around flexibility. Business New Zealand have basically said in their submission to us that the broad definition of an offence is just unworkable and stomps over the nature of the employment agreement and mutual agreement between the employee and the employer. An employer commits an offence now by allowing an employee to work in a way not entitled to under the Act—in practice for example where the aged-care nurse may be required to cover that extra shift or that extra hour because a colleague is running late. This constitutes now a legal infringement reducing the flexibility of the workforce in an environment of extreme skill shortages. Removing the ability of workers and employers to meet mutual agreement to ensure critical services and firms can operate will create backlogs and fewer services.A second thing that was brought up in the select committee process was around the fact that many times migrant workers want to do more than their job that they're doing. And an example that I can give you which wasn't mentioned in select committee but perfectly explains this point was the cherry orchardist that I spoke to yesterday who said they've employed migrant workers to string out nets. Those migrant workers said "Hey we'd really like to do more and learn more about horticulture and work in different parts of the business and learn more and improve our skills." And that again under this bill as said by Business New Zealand will be penalised. So in an environment where we've got workers who are here who are wanting to do more who are wanting to learn more this bill penalises them. That was warned about at select committee by Business New Zealand.Again the real issue that was complained about in select committee was around the fact that migrant exploitation is rife and is not being investigated. This bill as I mentioned goes after people who are just trying to do the right thing. But in fact 10 percent of complaints about migrant exploitation at the serious end are actually never looked into. There was a report last year that said there are over a thousand reports about serious migrant exploitation—serious migrant exploitation. Only 10 percent of those were looked into. I want to read this House a text message that I got yesterday from an immigration agent: "Do you remember those exploited workers I told you about? Things with INZ are going super slow and the owner of the business is about to leave New Zealand." This is just another example of the serious nature we have in this country of serious migrant exploitation that is not investigated.The worry that was brought up at select committee around this bill was that the focus of the Government is on the wrong people. It's on low-level people who are just trying to be flexible in their businesses who actually have said in many surveys that they want to do the right thing but they just need more education because quite often the number of rules that Immigration New Zealand keep changing is overwhelming. They want to do the right thing yet the serious end of town are not being investigated and the worry always was—and it was at select committee with the submitters—that the focus will now be on the compliance officers who are desk-based making phone calls and asking for records when actually the serious end of town is not being investigated. There are not boots on the ground. There's no investigation going into the serious breaches and we can see that by all of the reports so that the comments at select committee were very much around: we are going after the wrong people.These are people who are just trying to be flexible who are trying to do the right thing who are sometimes confused by the rules who just need education. Whereas the people at the serious end despite what the Minister came out today and said—that there is a suite of policies—there has been nothing. There has been nothing that this Government has put out that shows that they're going to go after wage recycling—not a single piece of legislation around that nothing at all. There's nothing in this bill around wage recycling. And there's certainly nothing in terms of more boots on the ground and more emphasis on those people who are at the serious end of town.The other thing that I mentioned in our first reading speech was that we would not support this bill if it didn't make some changes around the reasonable grounds. There was nothing done at select committee to change that. There is no requirement for a desk-based officer when they're requiring documents from an employer to have any reasonable grounds to ask for those documents. So as we mentioned in our first reading speeches—that the officers will very likely go on fishing expeditions when many of these companies who've had to be accredited have already given all of this information and will have to give it again when they become re-accredited; are now going to be asked for it again placing massive burdens on them when there are no reasonable grounds for those officers to require those documents—I said that our support would hinge on that. It didn't change. And we will not be therefore voting for this bill."