Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Madam Chair. I want to ask the Minister why it feels like he's playing catch up. Suddenly we are hiring and training more staff when it was obvious to everyone that we were going to need to process visas this year to get our borders open. The fact that the Minister for COVID-19 Response and the Prime Minister have consistently said the only reason for our slow border reopening is the fact that we are unable to process visas. It is the Minister's job to make sure that we have staff to process visas. We are processing two-thirds fewer visas than we were pre-pandemic. How can it be that we are unable to process visitor visas to get those people who are in stage 5 processed earlier in the year?The biggest handbrake on our economy right now is his department's inability to process visas. We can't get the tourists in until the end of the year. We can't get split families together till the end of the year. I want the Minister to explain why it was that he hasn't increased the capacity of Immigration New Zealand to be able to do these simple things so that we can actually truly be open to the world like the Prime Minister says and not actually wait until October till they can apply. And goodness knows how long it will be till they actually get their visas—probably not until early next year. As I said this is the single biggest handbrake on our economy right now and I want to know why these steps weren't put in place earlier to make sure we had the resources we needed to open the borders fully. Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): Madam Chair I know there were some questions I didn't address in the first round and I just wanted to make sure I came back to members. In terms of refugee health they are screened for travel offshore before they get to New Zealand and once they arrive they are obviously put in touch with healthcare here in New Zealand. The discussions that we're having with health around the acceptable standard of health review does include disabilities and while we haven't come to final decisions on that yet I hope it's heartening for the member to know that that is certainly a consideration. Again just pushing back on some of the assertions made by the National Party member of Parliament. If we had a crystal ball then we would have been able to make sure we're preparing for time frames to make sure we have processing capacity. Again I push back on some of the assertions in terms of the time frames of visa processing but we have invested quite heavily in the Immigration Online system. When that comes to full fruition I think people will find the likes of applying for a visitor visa offshore will become a lot more efficient and they'll understand exactly where their visa application is—not just for visitor visas but all types of visas. I think one of the perceptions or customer frustrations we've certainly had in the past is that when an application goes in—because a lot of applications are very much paper based—it's difficult for applicants to know exactly where things are. The new Immigration Online system that we've invested in will help there.I'd just like to reiterate to the member that in early February the Government outlined its five-step plan to reconnecting and at that stage the Government said This is the worst-case scenario but we are committed to reopening the borders". To date every step has happened ahead of schedule because I think of the Government's focus on reopening the border in a managed and safe way. I think New Zealanders appreciate that. We saw scenes of joy at the airport yesterday morning as those from visa waiver countries and others could arrive in the country and we are looking forward to being fully open and if you look at the track record of all the five steps that we announced in February we're ahead of schedule. Hopefully we can commit to that for the final step and hopefully that isn't too far away."