Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I have to say I'm very disappointed that the Minister doesn't go back and look at my speeches on demand. I thought that's what he did in the evenings—clearly not. But as it turns out—Matt Doocey: He does.ERICA STANFORD: I bet he does.Hon Kris Faafoi: Not yet not yet.ERICA STANFORD: One day.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order!ERICA STANFORD: But as it turns out not only did he not listen—CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order!ERICA STANFORD: —to my speech—CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! You sit down when I stand up.ERICA STANFORD: Oh sorry. I apologise.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The Minister knows he should not be interjecting from the chair.Hon Kris Faafoi: I apologise.ERICA STANFORD: It's all right a bit of banter. As it turns out not only did the Minister not listen to my speech it turns out he also didn't read Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 31 in my name all the way through because if he had he would have seen at the bottom it says that special directions commence no earlier than 28 days after publication unless the Minister is satisfied that extraordinary circumstances exist to justify earlier commencement." Now that bit there allows the Minister when there are circumstances that require him to be nimble and flexible in the small amount of cases—in his own words—that exist from time to time to require less than 28 days. He would have the ability to do that.I'm going to come back to this later because I didn't want to start with that because it's probably not the most important thing. What our support hinges on in fact Minister is not both of the SOPs—although this is a very important one—but actually the two-year time frame that he's giving himself.I just want to remind the House of some of the important details around this two years. We have to remember from the Cabinet paper that we've seen that the Minister went to Cabinet actually wanting no expiry date no sunset clause. His backup was three years. He ended up getting two. It's important to note that he took this Cabinet paper asking for no sunset clause on 22 March this year. If he'd got his way and there was no sunset clause we would've had an extremely truncated process—like we ended up having—for no sunset clause at all which is a huge grab of power transfer from the officials to the Minister with effectively no sunset clause and no safeguard.CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! I'll just stop the member. We're debating in committee the bill as it was approved at second reading. It's not appropriate for the member to be debating something that's not in the bill.ERICA STANFORD: I'll get to my point. The point Mr Speaker—Hon Simon Bridges: He'll make a good Speaker that guy.ERICA STANFORD: Ha ha! The point Mr Speaker that I was getting to—took a wee while there—is that the Minister ended up with two years which is what we've got. The Regulations Review Committee wrote to us specifically asking us to make sure that we were happy that we had enough information as to why two years was required. That is a red flag from the Regulations Review Committee. Now we weren't satisfied in the select committee—the National Party weren't satisfied—that we had enough of that detail. So I want to get into that today.If you take a look at the first reading speech the second reading speech and both legislative statements from the Minister—in all of those speeches and statements that he gave—he only ever committed a very small part of those quite long speeches and statements to the reasons why two years was required. Now this is really important because this is what the whole crux of this comes down to. It's not the power but how long he's got it for.Now the New Zealand Law Society themselves said that they weren't satisfied that enough reasons were given. We weren't satisfied that enough reasons were given. The only reason the Minister has given us is that COVID still exists—that was the first thing. The second thing that he said was he didn't want to have to bring the bill back to the House later this year—having a bill two times in one year. Now that's not our fault; that's the Minister's fault for only bringing the Cabinet paper as I referred to earlier in March this year when he should have taken it last year.The fact of the matter is this is a huge transfer of power and we want to know why other than just COVID still exists—which by the way a year ago compared to now is extremely different and in a year's time it will be different again which is what all the submitters said. So my question—[Bell rung] Mr Chair I'll finish it up. My question to the Chair is—I want him to stand up and explain to us in detail why he needs two years other than just one. Because every single submitter to this bill who was an organisation every single one—there wasn't one that said anything different; they all wanted one year rather than two. There wasn't a single submitter—oh sorry one submitter wanted six months. But there wasn't a single organisation not one that backed the Minister up and he ignored all of that advice.I want to know from the Minister what overarching reason there is because the Regulations Review Committee have asked us specifically and we're not happy with what we've had so far. I'd like in detail why two years over one and I don't want to hear "We don't want to bring it back to the House." Because actually that's just inconvenient for you but actually this House deserves it. Other than "Well COVID's still around."—COVID's going to be around for a really long time but it doesn't mean that we transfer the Minister these powers for ever. There has to be a point where he gets his department to a point where they can process visas in the way that they normally would.The Minister never came to this House and gave us figures of how many people—this is prior to last night—were still onshore or the capacity of the workers at Immigration New Zealand to be able to do their jobs. His argument in the first passing of this bill last year was "There are 350000 people onshore and none of my officers can work from home." And we agreed with that and we voted unanimously to transfer these powers to the Minister. But none of those arguments not a single one was brought up this time and they were the main reasons for him to have this power in the first place.Why was it Minister that you never came to this House and said "Here are the number of people onshore now"—because we know a whole lot left—"and here's the capacity of my staff in the Department"? Not one single time have we heard from this Minister or his staff as to why—with all of those immigration officials back at work—they now can't process visas as they normally would. Let's remember that they're processing 450000 fewer applications than they were in 2019 across four categories and there's only what a couple of hundred thousand people onshore? Why is it Minister that your officials can't do the job as they normally would?This is a huge transfer of power. I think this House deserves an explanation given that those were the reasons you originally asked for the bill—an explanation as to why you never came to this House until we basically brought it up and said "Hey by the way you haven't given us any figures." He did at the last minute last night and has never talked about the capacity of his immigration officials to do their job. It's not OK to say "I don't want to bring the bill back because it's inconvenient for me." It is a huge transfer of power and we expect that this House has the safeguard of one year.The other point I'd like to make is that it was always trumpeted as a one-year safeguard because of the truncated nature of the first select committee. Well the second select committee was truncated as well; a lot of people didn't get to have their say. So again a one-year sunset clause would be a perfect safeguard for this bill and yet the Minister has come asking for two. No credible reasons have been given to satisfy this side of the House as to why this bill is needed and certainly hasn't given us any response that we could give back to the Regulations Review Committee to say "Actually yes we're satisfied." Because we're absolutely not.So I want to be very clear: I want the Minister to be able to tell us today why he needs these powers for two years rather than one given that all of the submitters wanted one year."