Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Speaker. I would like to begin by thanking the Minister for his briefing last night on this bill. It is helpful to have a heads-up on the bill and it is important that we get these things right. The Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill is one of those bills that is being rushed through. Of course there are good reasons for that but we can't lose sight of the fact that last week a bill went through the House and passed something that the people that debated it didn't know was in the bill. Even the Minister responsible didn't know it was in the bill. We don't know if there's anything like that in this bill—I don't see anything like that but that's possible. So it is important that these bills get good scrutiny.I think that this is hugely important this bill in that we had arrived at the situation prior to the COVID outbreak Immigration New Zealand (INZ) were well behind with 11500 residency applications waiting to be processed. So they were already under extreme pressure and were in trouble really trying to deal with what was ahead of them. Now this has been exacerbated of course by the current situation where we had a thousand people working for INZ that weren't at work. Under level 3 20 percent of those people are back at work and when it goes to level 2 there will only be 50 percent of those people back at work. So we don't have the resource on the ground to deal with these issues that are in front of us. Yes I think we need to deal with these variations of conditions quite quickly and deal with them appropriately. I know there are people in Queenstown—it is a really good example of a lot of people that will be out of work in the hospitality sector and the tourism sector in general. That will be the same in other places like Rotorua and my own electorate in Hanmer Springs with the announcement of the closure of the Heritage Hotel. Those things are going to be happening all over the country. At some point we will need to have a debate about what the future looks like for immigration in New Zealand because it's unlikely that we'll need a lot of people to come into the hospitality sector to work where a lot of immigrants have come in but that's a debate for another day. We need to deal with this issue here and now.That issue is often that people are stuck here through no choice of their own and they are unable to work. In my own electorate's case—and particularly where I live in Marlborough—people came into New Zealand to work in the wine industry as winemakers or cellar hands skilled migrants on temporary work visas came in. Now their job is finished they're in Marlborough they are actually willing to work and they want to go out and prune grapes. Unfortunately the way the system works at the moment if the winery employs them as a grape pruner that's fine or they can go and get another winemaking job with another employer. But they can't do both. Unfortunately a lot of the winemakers don't prune grapes but vineyards do. And as we don't have the people to do the job we have these people in Marlborough and in other places sitting there and in some cases being supported by civil defence because they can't go home; they don't have the economic capability to look after themselves now. So we have a mess and it's caused partly because of the way this has played out. It's not anyone's fault; it's just the way it is. The thing is: how do we fix it? Yes this bill—I hope that the Minister will be prepared and his officials to address that very issue. Hopefully this bill will allow that issue to be dealt with quickly and efficiently so that those people can go back to work in a different role. Yes it's Kiwis first and always will be and should be but we don't have the Kiwis for some of those jobs and we're supporting those people anyway.I think that there has been some criticism of this bill and particularly from Lane Neave a law firm in Canterbury who put an article out that was quite critical of the bill. As one immigration adviser described it to me this is a leap of faith this legislation; we don't have time to consider it. Yes I think that's a fair criticism and it's something that this House does reluctantly but it has to. But it is incumbent upon the Epidemic Response Committee and the Minister's officials to ensure that all of the questions are addressed that the questions are not only just addressed they are addressed in detail so that we ensure all the fish-hooks that will be in there are dealt with.I think one of the other key things with this bill is that there is little to prevent the Minister from using his powers outside of the direct health response. I'll give you an example: an international student visa holder the Minister could overnight strike out their right to work while they're here. Now how would they support themselves? There are some international students here in New Zealand and there's already talk from the universities that they want to restart that. Now the Minister may give assurances that that's not going to happen but nevertheless under the bill that could be possible. We know the kind of pressures that will come on when the vast numbers that will lose their jobs materialises. There will be real political pressure on us all to try and soothe those issues and deal with them. That might be one thing that comes out of that and I think that would be really a very bad move because this bill's premise is to actually look after the migrants that are in here. So that has to be the underlying response to this issue remembering also that there is an absence of appeal rights for the exercise of these powers.This is perhaps the one Government department where a Minister has the most controversial power: to have power over individual people's lives. When people appeal for a visa or their right to stay or whatever it happens to be and the Minister if they do exercise that right there is no appeal to that. So we have to be very careful that those legislative powers are tightly defined. That is something I'll be looking forward to exploring further in the select committee. So it's with that qualified support that I commend the bill to the House.