Faafoi KrisHon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): Can I thank the member for his questions but not necessarily all his comments. Can I correct him because I believe he may have said that no applications had been approved in terms of critical workers yet and I'll give him the numbers for that soon.In terms of decisions for essential workers which was pre - 18 June Immigration New Zealand received 248 expressions of interest before 18 June. I can tell the member that 90 of those were approved 123 were declined and 35 are still on hand pending to be closed out. Post 18 June when it became the critical workers regime I can inform the member that 488 expressions of interest have been received to date of which 64 have been approved 159 have been declined and a further 265 applications or expressions of interest are on hand.The member asked an oral question I think late last week in terms of what the Government is going to do to deal with these requests from businesses around critical workers. The first and fundamental thing that the Government will do is make sure that we continue to make the right calls at the right time to keep our country safe. That unfortunately has put our communities and businesses and sectors in difficult positions. But I believe that the team of 5 million are still willing to go through some of those difficult decisions and those difficult times to ensure that what we see happening around the world where COVID is growing and not slowing doesn't happen here in New Zealand. The criteria for critical workers is now set out and as I said to the member last week if he is aware of any sectors that do have real shortages then I would suggest instead of blowing wind in this House he instruct those sectors to do a couple of things: find out the information and the criteria in order to try and bring these people through but also work with them to change with the immediate times. That is to make sure that if they do find themselves in a position where they do have shortages of labour they do everything they possibly can to ensure that a New Zealander who can do that job fills that position. The other thing that they should do is work with the Government or with others in the sector to start innovating around how they find skilled work or how they start training New Zealanders to do that work. I know it is difficult for sectors who have traditionally relied on migrant workers to fill a number of positions in a time when the border is closed but the border is closed for a good reason and that is to keep our country at the position where it is now where our economy can function as close as possible to as normally as it can and our community can function as close to normal as it can. And I would stress to the members to my left that that is a very privileged position in the world that we hold and we have to start thinking outside the square to ensure that our economy can take benefit of the situation that we're in. Erica Stanford: Madam Chairperson?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Is this still on immigration?Brett Hudson: No we're going to move on.Erica Stanford: Sorry—sitting down.Hon Kris Faafoi: OK.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): OK. Thank you Minister. Thank you. We move now to workplace relations.Dan Bidois: Here we go—I'm ready.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Thank you.