Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Here we have another Minister double-counting the nurse numbers. Andrew Little is fudging the numbers because he knows that the numbers of nurses applying from offshore for a visa to come to New Zealand are so abysmally bad that they're worse than when the borders were closed. Only 75 nurses from offshore in 12 weeks have applied. He's double-counting the numbers like Michael Wood did yesterday claiming there were 300 nurses applying for an Accredited Employer Work Visa. Most of those workers are onshore and are already here and are applying for a different type of visa. The numbers don't lie Minister Little—75 nurses. That's 26 a month compared to 57 a month when the borders were closed. These guys can't organise themselves out of a paper bag. It's been a rough few weeks for the Minister of Immigration our latest immigration Minister. Things are so bad under his watch that an incident management team have been set up to go into Immigration New Zealand which is the first time that we can find out that this has ever happened. A team of 27 senior managers from across the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment were sent in to sort out the problems caused by a trio of hapless immigration Ministers. Things are so bad that Michael Wood had to scrape the bottom of the good-news barrel last week by arranging a patsy question to himself about the 2021 Resident Visa (RV21) processing. We're on track" he proudly proclaimed "to meet the deadline of 80 percent completed by June 2023." Only a Labour Minister in a Government that has got such a woeful track record of delivery could pat himself on the back for a delayed deadline that his Government had pushed out by six months. The truth is that we were never on track at any stage—not even for a single week—to meet the 12 months that they'd originally promised. They pushed it out to what they thought it would be which was mid - next year. The reality is that Immigration New Zealand are already making noises about the fact that that's going to have to be delayed again because they keep shifting people out of RV21 to fight other fires. So now Michael Wood is having to celebrate by patting himself on the back for a delayed deadline which is in fact an actual broken promise. Then poor Michael Wood had to watch his Minister of Finance Grant Robertson this week during the Mood of the Boardroom survey launch speeches under pressure from top CEOs from around the country who were lamenting the skills shortages in New Zealand. Grant Robertson said—and I quote—"It will take some time for New Zealand's immigration settings to kick in." and then he said "I do believe that in summer we will get workers here." Mate! Someone tell him he's dreaming. You can't trust a Government that promised us 20000 workers back in February when 1000 showed up. So while Grant Robertson makes these empty promises to the CEOs in the Mood of the Boardroom the skilled migrant pathway to residence—the skilled migrant category (SMC)—remains closed and it has been since March 2020. The message has been sent loud and clear to skilled migrants around the world that "You are not welcome." and skilled workers are choosing Australia and Canada. We are 12 months too late to open the SMC. We had two years with borders closed to sort this out but they never did it and the leaks coming out of Immigration New Zealand are that they're going to reopen the SMC next month. Well too little too late. The workers have already moved to Australia and if we want to wait for immigration settings to kick in as Grant Robertson says things are just going to get worse because the immigration settings that are yet to kick in are the fact that the right of partners of skilled workers to an open work visa is extinguished from December. It's hard enough to attract skilled workers in the current settings we've got now and this is just another roadblock that will make workers choose Australia over New Zealand. Top companies like Rocket Lab will tell the Minister this but the question is whether he will do something about it. Then yesterday poor Michael Wood had to double-count the nurses like Andrew Little did today and if things hadn't already gone from bad to worse for the poor immigration Minister in the Estimates debate a couple of weeks ago Michael Woodhouse asked him a very simple question: what is the current balance of the memorandum account? The memorandum account for those who are watching is the day-to-day operational account of Immigration New Zealand that usually tracks towards zero. The costs of Immigration New Zealand are offset by the visa fees and when he was asked what the current balance of this was the Minister answered 'Well it's about negative $14.7 million tracking down from $18.1 million." Well he was only about $130 million out and he still hasn't come down to the House to correct his answer. The fact is that the taxpayer has had to put in almost $300 million worth of funds to prop up a department that is failing New Zealanders. In fact next year the memorandum account is due to be negative $220 million so the poor hapless immigration Minister has had a rough few weeks and I can't see anything getting any better soon."