Roberts Angela; Little Andrew; McDowall JamesANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you Mr Chair. I'd like to ask the Minister about the response that Immigration New Zealand has made in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle and Cyclone Hale. We know that those events across the North Island resulted in carnage the destruction of property and infrastructure and loss of life. We know that the scale is not something that we've had to deal with in rural communities very often—usually there's a flood and we you know get on our tractor and we go clean out our neighbour's fence lines—and we know that the significant labour needs required to respond has been high and complex.I'm just curious about what the plans are for the cyclone Recovery Visa that was set up. Is it working as intended and if you can explain some of the types of workers that are coming in to help with the recovery Minister?Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Immigration): I'm happy to answer Angela Roberts' questions in that respect. So I think the fact that we were able to get a Recovery Visa up in place as quickly as we did demonstrates how agile our system can now be in the same way that we did with the Ukraine visa last year and that we've done with other special category visas.So with the Recovery Visa I think there's roughly 2800 applications for those visas—about 1400 were granted. A significant number have been applied for in more recent months but they've actually been declined. That tells you that actually the oversight of these applications—and it's about ensuring that the applications have an authenticity and a genuineness about it—that we're not just taking anybody who comes. It's got to be related to particular work related to the recovery.The advice I've had from officials is that in more recent months—the last couple of months—some of the applications have had the appearance of using their words a try-on". And we don't like try-ons; we like authentic applications. But that has allowed roughly 1400 workers to come into the country to assist farmers horticulturalists and others for the work needed for recovery—for recovering their productive land.So that visa is still open and it is under review about how much longer we keep it open for. It is still open but we will keep a close eye on that. The sort of workers that have come through there have been a whole range actually from the semi-skilled labourers and what have you to the skilled—carpenters electricians and others—who have come here to assist in doing work that is needed to support the recovery from Cyclone Gabrielle.Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you Mr Chair. I just wanted to quickly clarify the previous issue that I was raising around the Active Investor Plus Visa and the investment amount. Because the oral question that I put—and the Associate Minister did it on behalf of the Minister—was on notice obviously and it was for "unweighted". In the response it was specifically the Minister on behalf said "unweighted".Now when you average it out it's $15 million an application. Now the reason that's an issue is because as the Minister knows ideally you'd be getting lots of $5 million investments that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise is happy with and the Government is happy with. But it seems like it just isn't happening. So with that in mind it would be good to—if we could go back and check that question at some point to make sure the information was indeed unweighted and correct and if it was what's happening?Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Immigration): I'm happy that the member has repeated that question. I have now since had confirmation that the member is correct: the average $15 million value is unweighted. So the thesis that I think the member is trying to establish looks like it is almost certainly correct which is that most of the applications relate to the higher cash amount which means that the level of involvement of the investor is not necessarily applying their management skills but it will be applying their entrepreneurial skills even if only as a joint investor or a partner in an investment or a "sleeping partner" as the commercial world refers to it.So it is attracting that investment. That is certainly a more active mode of investment than we were seeing for many years previously which was a lot of people were getting a visa bringing millions of dollars here and putting them in Government bonds putting them in term deposits and things like that which was not generating employment or generating wealth locally in the way that we want to with this investor class.The Active Investor Plus Visa gives rights and a pathway to residency so we want to make sure that New Zealand is getting out of that what we need to which is investment that generates wealth as opposed to just sitting in a bank account."