Moroney Sue: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMoroney Sue: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1434. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SUE MORONEY (Labour): Can I start this first contribution that I am making in Parliament for the year 2015 by wishing everyone a happy New Year in whichever culture and ethnicity they choose to celebrate that New Year. For all of us this is a new beginning. Sadly for this Government with this Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) nothing has changed because despite some very good and well-considered submissions to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on this issue the Government again has failed to listen. The speech that I began in 2014 on this issue had been interrupted by a glorious summer but none the less the thing that remains is the Government’s failure to actually listen to people who do take the time to come and make very serious submissions on things that the Government gets wrong in its legislation and in this legislation it has far too many things wrong.This was a piece of legislation that the Labour Party supported at its first reading because it is fundamentally important to the New Zealand Labour Party that all workers are protected from exploitation. It is fundamental to the roots of the New Zealand Labour Party that we stand up for workers’ rights—workers of all persuasions. This bill purports to actually defend and strengthen the rights of migrant workers to stop them from being exploited in their workplace. That is a very serious issue because of all the workers in the New Zealand workplace migrant workers are some of the most vulnerable. They are some of the most vulnerable because they depend often on the sponsorship of their employer—the very person who may be exploiting them—for their right to be in New Zealand. So their vulnerability is significantly higher than many other workers in New Zealand workplaces. But the Government has again failed to recognise the power relationship when it has tried to address their exploitation through this bill.One of the main reasons that the Labour Party cannot support this bill even though some of the measures in it are very very good is that the Government simply refuses to understand that migrant workers need additional protection. They need additional protection in order to make sure that their rights at work are safeguarded. In particular the Government imagines in writing this bill that migrant workers will be able to go and report their exploitation at work to Immigration New Zealand.Thinking about migrant workers and their relationship with Immigration New Zealand and the failure of this bill to protect those workers from deportation I think most thinking New Zealanders will understand that this bill purports to do something but will achieve nothing because most of those workers will be too fearful in the first instance to be criticising their employer who has in many cases sponsored them to be in New Zealand. Secondly they will feel a little frightened to be reporting that to Immigration New Zealand—the very organisation that has the power to deport them. This bill has failed to protect workers in that instance.For those reasons and because the Government has failed to properly fund the people who should be monitoring this issue in workplaces—those are the labour inspectors from well we used to call it the Department of Labour; whatever the “Mobie” thing is called these days—for the Government’s failure in that direction and because it has failed to make sure that the most fundamental issues are protected for some of the most vulnerable workers in New Zealand workplaces Labour sadly cannot support and is opposing this bill.