Simmonds PennyPENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Worker Protection (Migrant and Other Employees) Bill in this second reading. As we have noted already National tentatively supported this bill at its first reading thinking that in the select committee process some of the issues that we saw in this bill could be sorted out. Sadly the Education and Workforce Committee which I sit on did take this bill but we were not able to get the changes that we felt would have improved it enormously. So I now speak in opposition to this bill.The main provision as we've heard is that it empowers immigration desk officers to request employment documents. It feels much more like a cost-cutting exercise and an ability to go after low-hanging fruit rather than a serious attempt to prevent serious exploitation. It also establishes two other new infringement offences. Migrant exploitation has absolutely no place in New Zealand and I saw how devastating this could be with international students and graduates who had post-study work visas. But this bill will not have the intended impact.No migrants coming into New Zealand should ever be exploited and we absolutely agree that those migrants deserve the same rights and protections as anyone else working here. However this bill is only going after low-level breaches of law that for the most part are because of misunderstandings of what is very complicated law and very complicated regulations. It does not go after the bigger and more serious perpetrators of migrant exploitation and that is where our attention and our resources should be focused.I have a constant stream of constituents coming into my office both workers regarding their visas and employers trying to navigate the immigration regulations. They are complicated they are complex and they are difficult for both employers and workers to comply with. In most instances employers want to do the right thing but they simply struggle to understand the complexity of immigration law. And it changes so frequently that they struggle to keep up. Most small employers do not have a big HR department to keep up with changes and I saw—as an accredited employer with the Southern Institute of Technology and an HR department—how difficult it was even then to keep up with the changes.This needs to be addressed through education not through slamming employers that make mistakes. The real offending will continue to go ahead because of a lack of resources at Immigration New Zealand's compliance department and the labour inspectorate. We know that just 10 percent—10 percent—of complaints for migrant exploitation received by the labour inspectorate in the past year were investigated. So in 2021 and 2022 1018 complaints—allegations—of migrant exploitation were received and just 108 of those were investigated. And the inaction will embolden these serious offenders. They will know that they are not going to get investigated; they will know that they can continue on with these exploitative practices.Serious issues of migrant exploitation need to be dealt with through investigations. They can't simply be dealt with through immigration officers requesting documents; they need inspectors on the ground investigating.In the select committee process we had 44 written submissions and I want to refer to the submissions by two serious business growers Zespri in New Zealand—kiwifruit growers—who said We are concerned about section 275A and clause 17 of the bill" which give immigration officers and labour inspectors the ability to require the provisions of employee information from employers without reasonable cause; they can go on fishing exercises.So 10 percent of complaints get investigated but they will now be able to go instead on fishing exercises. This is absolutely contrary to the principles of natural justice. Reasonable cause could have and should have been included into this bill at the select committee process. It was not.BusinessNZ another submitter said "Most accredited employers are not intending to exploit their migrant employees. With a dearth of New Zealanders to fill vacant jobs these workers are just too valuable to them." Again the select committee could have taken notice of this and could have shifted the focus from desktop requirements of employers' documentation to investigation. The focus needed to change to investigations.So look the Minister needs to be more concerned about ensuring that there are resources to be able to investigate serious exploitation rather than trying to trip up and make it more difficult for businesses and employers that are trying to do the right thing. Immigration officers must have reasonable cause before they start requesting documents from businesses. They are just going to tie up businesses in trying to get documentation that may not have any bearing at all on an investigation should an investigation go ahead.There is no ability for the employer to appeal infringements. There is no ability for businesses to take appeals where they believe that the immigration officers have been wrong in what they have requested. This bill removes the defence for offences from businesses that took reasonable precautions and exercised due diligence to ascertain whether a person was entitled to do the work. Employers will simply get caught out sometimes—that they did not know someone was not entitled to do that work—and there is no ability for an employer to appeal when that has been the situation.Immigration New Zealand needs to be investigating cases of serious exploitation and 10 percent of complaints being investigated is not good enough. They also need to be doing things like speeding up variation of conditions to ensure that migrants can have changes made to their visas when it is a simple and sensible thing to be giving flexibility to both employers and employees where there have been changes that require those variations to the conditions of their visas. But instead they are done so slowly that it puts employers in a situation where they may be in breach and get pinged by this sort of desktop exercise.The Government undertook a review of migrant exploitation in 2020 and this bill is the result of that review. So the Government knows that there is exploitation occurring but they have simply gone after what is low-hanging fruit in a way that is going to be cost-saving and not going to address the issues. We oppose it."