Stanford Erica; Dean JacquiERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): This Parliament's Speech from the Throne gave us a glimpse into the priorities of this Government: to keep New Zealand safe from COVID-19 to accelerate the COVID recovery and to lay the foundations for a better future. They are all very noble priorities wrapped in this cloak of kindness this kind of warm fuzzy blanket of care that is some kind of invisible force-field around us that makes us all feel very nice. Unfortunately the priorities and the kindness memo didn't filter down to all her Ministers including the Minister of Immigration who clearly has no strategy and no plan no transparent decision-making criteria as to who we let through our closed border who gets an exemption and with no guiding strategy and no ability to manage competing demands of our managed isolation and quarantine facilities (MIQ). The Minister bumbles from one haphazard decision to the next leaving in this wake a trail of heartbreaking decisions and head-scratching decisions frankly.One of the unfortunate outcomes of the visa exceptions that he is granting is the very sad case of Trevor Ponting who was denied an emergency place in MIQ because there wasn't any space apparently. We've all heard the story. He had terminal brain cancer and it wasn't deemed to be enough of an emergency situation to warrant a place in MIQ. Now while his story eventually led to a positive ending after significant pressure from the public and from the press the underlying problem still remains. The sad thing is that Trevor's case is not unique. It is an example of a much wider problem and it is a complete farce that we have a system that requires the media and the public to put pressure on Ministers to make the right decisions to get the spots in MIQ.The situation arose because of the chaotic and directionless system and a Minister that is asleep at the wheel. Our immigration system the whole point of it at the moment is so vital. Now more than ever it's to keep us safe to allow Kiwis to get home to reunite families to bring in critical workers and to help rebuild the economy and the careful management of these competing demands is the job of our immigration Minister. But he continues to drop the ball. Visas are being issued in a haphazard manner to film crews millionaire yachties nannies sports teams comedians bands kids' entertainers and TV contestants. Each of these applications if you look at them in isolation may well have a great case to present to New Zealand in terms of the economic benefit that they offer. But the problem is that you cannot look at these things in isolation. Bands and comedians here to entertain us over a horrible year film crews here to provide jobs a cruise ship to generate $6 million in the tourism industry and an international reality TV show to boost our profile overseas are all very worthy when looked at in isolation but these cannot be looked at in isolation. There has to be some kind of overarching strategy from the Minister but clearly there isn't one.MIQ spots are very very limited. This Government has made decisions that they're not going to expand the number of hotels or places for isolation and that is their decision. But that means we have to very very carefully manage the competing demands of the limited capacity in MIQ. For every band for every TV contestant for every film star's nanny and UK comedian granted an exception there are many others who miss out and questions will be rightly asked when the balance is perceived not to be right.The Wiggles or a Kiwi dying of cancer who wants to see his family before he passes? RuPauls's Drag Race or desperate Kiwis stuck overseas? Comedians and bands and their families or the families of our migrant doctors nurses teachers and engineers who have been separated from their partners and their children for a year with no hope on the horizon of being reunited? I will return to this issue later.These comparisons get made by the public and by us and questions arise because Minister Faafoi has no apparent strategy to deliver the common-sense outcomes that Kiwis expect. And not only that he presides over a COVID committee that's shrouded in some kind of thick fog of secrecy. We have no idea of how they're making their decisions who they are issuing exemptions to and how these cases even get to that COVID committee. Every time we have an Official Information Act request or a question that we put it is denied refused or redacted. This lack of transparency this opaque decision-making process sees Ministers and officials make calls with a lack of transparent criteria and the lack of the assessment of the opportunity cost because the opportunity cost in many cases is a terrible human cost.On the face of it a comedian may tick many boxes but without an overall strategy and clear set of criteria to balance competing needs the opportunity cost which in most cases is that human cost is never weighed up. A comedian brought here to entertain us may sound great but at the expense of a dying Kiwi it's abhorrent.Without an overall strategy backed up by a transparent set of criteria around the allocation of border and visa exceptions we will continue to muddle along as we have been making random decisions that deliver heartbreaking outcomes that will continue to go down like a cup of cold spaghetti to borrow a song lyric from The Wiggles.I want to return to split migrant families for a moment. These families are another casualty of the Minister's lack of strategy and inability to balance out competing demands on our MIQ system. We have unfolding a desperately awful situation in this country. Hundreds of migrants came to New Zealand at the end of 2019 or early 2020 before the border shut to secure employment or to start a new position with the intention of bringing their partners and their children once they settled in. And that's not an unusual situation. It happens a lot. Often you get them coming here while their families settle up sell houses let their children finish out the term at school and follow soon after. In this instance these family members are trapped overseas without visas and Immigration are refusing to grant them and the Minister has remained absolutely 100 percent silent on this issue and when he's pressed about it all he will say is Oh we continue to monitor the situation."The reality is that there are hundreds of migrants in New Zealand who have not seen their children or their partners for over a year and these migrants are our nurses they are our maths teachers they are our engineers they are our doctors they are our psychiatrists. A case in my electorate that I visited the other day is a nurse who comes from India. She has a 10- and a 12-year-old boy and a husband at home in India. She came here to do the Competency Assessment Programme a course which you need to do before you can start nursing here. She did that for six weeks and secured a job at a local rest home. That rest home had been trying to find a nurse to look after our elderly parents for eight months. They finally secured her. The thing now is that she is looking like she has to leave because there is absolutely nothing from this Minister to give her any hope that her family will be allowed to come and join her here in New Zealand. It would be right to think that the Minister would give them some form of indication about what's happening. Is his silence on this matter giving an indication to these migrants that they should just go home? Is that the case? Or is he thinking that at some point in the future over a reasonable period of time we will slowly allow these migrant families to reconnect? I can't emphasise enough the heartbreak that is going on out there in our communities. These migrants came here often because we requested them. We went out and we marketed for them because we need teachers and we need nurses. They gave up their lives to come here. And the Minister now through his absolute silence on the issue is giving them no hope and they're really at the end of their tether.I have had people calling me every single day as I know every other member in this Parliament has. They don't expect the floodgates to be opened. They don't expect their families to all arrive tomorrow. They don't even expect to pay for MIQ. All they're asking for is just some form of commitment from this Government that at some point in the future they will be allowed to see their families again. It is galling for them to see comedians and bands and The Wiggles and now refugees as well all in the queue ahead of them with absolute silence from this Minister. And the reason for that silence is he has an absolute inability to balance competing demands. There are always going to be demands on our system. Yes we have to bring in people for economic reasons—critical workers New Zealanders emergency cases. There has to be a balance of these competing demands but the Minister is absolutely incapable of doing that and we end up with these heartbreaking situations. The migrant nurse that looks after our parents the maths teacher who hasn't seen his own children in a year and is staring down the barrel of another year went to school this week to look after and teach our kids and the Minister is completely silent about the ability for him to have any light at the end of the tunnel. It is abhorrent that the Minister doesn't have a proper strategy to manage these competing demands and I will continue to bring up these issues as long as there is no hope on the horizon.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): This is a split call. Paul Eagle."