Moroney Sue: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2718. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): I rise to speak in the Committee on the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2). I just want to clarify that the characterisation by the Minister of Immigration of the reasons for the Labour Party’s opposition to this bill is not in fact correct. Of course it goes so much deeper than the issues that he was talking to. I think the Government’s response to this—and this is the part of this bill that really resonates with the Labour Party—is the attempt to resolve the exploitation of migrant workers in New Zealand workplaces. That is an incredibly important issue because it is part of the Labour Party’s determination to build decent work and decent jobs back in this country after it has been decimated by the Government members sitting opposite. Part of doing that is ensuring that migrant workers are not being used to undermine and undercut New Zealand workers and that they are in fact not being exploited themselves.If this bill satisfactorily came up with the right solution that addressed that issue then of course the Labour Party would be supporting it but in fact it is a bit of window dressing. It purports to fix the problem but just like it found up in Northland National has once again come up with the wrong answer. It has come up with the wrong answer to the problem. I just want to enlarge on this because the Minister’s explanation for why it was immigration officers who had extended powers when it came to the exploitation of migrant workers was that this is an Immigration Amendment Bill. I am sorry Minister but that is not a good enough reason for getting this so badly wrong. The fact is that if anyone understands the power relationships in any workplace—let alone the power relationships for migrant workers who also have the additional power relationship of dealing with immigration and being here at the behest of a decision made by the immigration department—then they would understand why workers who are being exploited are not going to feel comfortable reporting that exploitation to the immigration department. The rightful place for addressing the issue of the exploitation of workers in New Zealand is for that to be reported to the department of labour and the labour Minister.It is not an acceptable excuse to say that the reason why migrant workers if they believe that they have been exploited have to report this to the immigration department is simply that the Minister decided to bring this forward as an immigration bill. That Minister in fact happens to be the same person as the Minister of labour and he should have been bringing this forward as a bill under that category because it is the department of labour that has the speciality in dealing with the exploitation of workers in New Zealand workplaces. It is the department of labour that the Labour Party believes migrant workers would feel more comfortable in reporting exploitation to because they do not have a power relationship with the department of labour—or the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment “MoBIE” as the department is hidden in that monstrous ministry these days—as they do with the immigration department. The immigration department has the ability to deport and the ability to look into a range of issues about their status as migrant workers and therefore is not the appropriate body for worker exploitation to be reported to.Again I cannot help but think that this is the Government recognising its own failure to actually resource the department of labour and the labour inspectorate properly. It knows that it does not have anywhere near the number of labour inspectors it needs to deal with the issues of worker exploitation in the New Zealand workplace let alone deal with the issues and the complexity of issues that are brought about when migrant workers are exploited in the workplace.This would seem like an awful lot more genuine an attempt by the Government to deal with worker exploitation particularly of migrant workers if this was not the same Government that has currently suspended the work-testing rule in Queenstown. Why I raise that in this debate is that the Government suspended that work test where employers have to prove that they have in the first instance tried to recruit New Zealand workers first and foremost into these roles in the hospitality sector in Queenstown. So these are not very high-paying jobs; these are cleaning jobs these are hospitality jobs in the main and this Government has now—for the first time that I know of in New Zealand history—suspended that very important market-testing requirement where employers are required to make sure that New Zealand workers have been approached first.I raise it in the context of this debate because this is one of the main ways that we can ensure that migrant workers are not being used to undermine New Zealand workers by being exploited in their workplace. We know that in the case of Queenstown there are very high accommodation costs. Anyone who has been to Queenstown will know that it is not a cheap place to live at all. It is not a cheap place to buy your groceries in not a cheap place to rent in—the costs are probably amongst the highest in any location that you could go to in New Zealand. Yet it may be exactly there where because of the temporary suspension of that market test by the Government we may find that exploitation will be at its highest. I say that because if employers as those members often argue actually want market rules to apply in setting wages then in Queenstown they would be prepared to pay higher wages to get New Zealanders to actually be able to afford to live in Queenstown and be able to undertake those jobs. It is of concern that at the same time as putting this legislation through the Government is making it easier—well in fact it is saying to Queenstown employers: “You don’t actually need to even bother trying to recruit New Zealand workers into those jobs. It’s a free-for-all. Get the backpackers to come in and do that job.” and that is all fine as far as that Government is concerned.Therefore on this bill I believe that it is simply window dressing. The Government has no real intention to address issues of migrant exploitation. If it did it would have been bringing forward a bill that actually lifted the number of labour inspectors throughout the country. It would have been bringing forward a bill that made sure that it was the labour department that migrant workers were reporting exploitation to rather than the immigration department for the reasons that I have already outlined.Although I am taking a call on this bill I am not satisfied with the Minister’s answer to our questions—and I think they were very legitimate questions—about wanting to make sure that the levy being imposed in this bill on migrant workers when they make their applications is not simply a way of the Government properly funding the Immigration Advisers Licensing Authority. It has become clear to the Labour Party that the amount of Government funding put towards establishing the Immigration Advisers Licensing Authority—whose legislation was in fact initially set up under the previous Labour Government but it was implemented by the incoming National Government—has not been adequate to make it work properly. Therefore we are concerned that this migrant levy is being used to prop that authority up and I am not satisfied with the answer from the Minister in which he said that a levy is not a tax because it has to be used for a certain purpose. Well at the moment we have got this Government using ACC levies to prop up the Crown’s accounts in order to return them to surplus.Andrew Bayly: No.SUE MORONEY: Well we absolutely do Mr Bayly by the Government’s own admission. By the Government’s own admission ACC levies are being used to return the Crown’s accounts to surplus.