Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is rather disappointing that the Labour Party who apparently support the rights of the workers are taking only very short calls and I'd like to compliment my colleague Erica Stanford who has actually spelt out our concerns. I think it is very legitimate that when members of Parliament have concerns about a particular piece of legislation that we can debate it in the House and stating those very clearly I think helps the process in this House.One of the things that I'd like to say to that member who just sat down—Marja Lubeck—is that when she wants to attack the former National Government or the current members on this side of the House then perhaps she should actually get her facts right. I'd like to find out what her thoughts are in relation to how satisfied workers are under this current Government considering the fact that we have more strikes under this Government than we have ever had under the National Government. I think that actually goes to show how unhappy those workers are under this Government.One of the things that the Minister spoke about which got my ears pricked up was when she said that the reason why this bill was brought to this House was to deal with the smaller offending of employers who are actually employing migrant workers to make sure that they do not breach the conditions or they're not exploiting those employees. She said that is because the small offending graduates into a bigger more serious criminal activity by those offenders. I say this Labour Government and the Prime Minister should appoint Minister Radhakrishnan as the Minister of Police because perhaps then she could deal with the smaller offending that is being committed by younger people who will effectively graduate to serious crime like the ram-raiding that's being done by the younger people. It is a real concern. Nobody in this House wants exploitation of migrant workers or actually exploitation of any workers. Nobody wants that but this current bill that has been produced in this House basically shows how out of touch this Government is with employers and people who create jobs with the reason being that especially now under the circumstances where a lot of businesses are struggling to find staff members and sometimes people have to jump from one activity to the next because there aren't enough of them in the shop. Let me give you an example. My parents used to run restaurants and I remember as a younger person dreading the idea of having to go and work in Mum and Dad's shop. I would be in front of the counter as a cashier I would actually work and then I would be told that I had to go to the kitchen and bring out the food and serve customers. Then sometimes I'd have to work as a security guard to make sure that Mum was actually safe so that we could actually go home late at night. So if I was properly employed and if I happened to be a migrant worker at the time I've literally gone from one job to the next to the next in the same place and my mother would have breached the employment contract. She might have to pay fines. [Interruption] Yeah that's ridiculous. Sometimes when you're really busy—particularly in hospitality as Erica Stanford has basically explained—you have to jump from one job to the next and sometimes it is not always stipulated very clearly in an employment contract. If it was they would be breaching it and they would be pinged by this Government which makes it more difficult for employers who are already struggling to find staff members to run their businesses grow the economy and create more jobs. I think that is a real shame. Hopefully this is something that the select committee could explore and expand and actually fix because I think that is what the select committee should do. The other thing that made great sense to me and really impacted the way that I was thinking was when Erica Stanford mentioned the fact that only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints are ever investigated. How does this bill increase that number? So a desk officer who has no reasonable clause written into the bill to actually say that this particular shop is breaching the rules—how are they supposed to know? So if somebody says OK well I'm the desk officer. I'm going to pick A B C D." how are they going to choose those supposedly potential breaches in the employment contract and how are they going to figure it out? Apparently they're going to call in documentation like wage payment data holiday records—Joseph Mooney: A fishing expedition. MELISSA LEE: So it's a real fishing exercise and an expedition to ping those employers who are trying to do their very best. If they are owner-operators of a small business sometimes paperwork gets left until a little bit later. Sometimes they're doing the paperwork late at night especially if they're open from 6 o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock at night and all they are doing is having enough time for sleep. They have to catch up on paperwork and it could take weeks before they actually record those things. They might have recorded it wrong and if that's the case they could be pinged. They could be paying fines or whatever else that they're going to do to these employers and I think it is rather on the nose that when the inspectorates without any reasonable reasons why they might investigate it—it's almost like saying "OK so which particular groups in the business sector are they going to target?" Is it going to be the ethnic restaurants that they're going to target or is it the flash European restaurants that they're going to target? OK maybe it is going to be the ethnic community - run businesses—obviously. You know maybe they actually think that they abuse their own people—I mean there are some stats that say that. But I think every business in this country—employers as well as employees—actually works really really hard to grow their businesses so they can employ more people; work really really hard; and actually earn a living for their families; and I think this bill could potentially make it very very difficult for people especially after having had such a horrendous time during COVID-19 where businesses ended up folding. These are people who have poured their hearts and life savings into a business and they eventually had to close because of COVID-19 and because they could not find staff members. Even in the digital sector lots of people have closed their businesses because they cannot find staff. I'm not so sure if this bill will actually help our businesses to continue to grow and expand. I'm really really quite concerned that yeah as Erica clearly stated out only 10 percent of migrant exploitation complaints are ever investigated. That is a really tiny percentage and you wonder how many more people this Government will employ within immigration and grow the public sector—more bureaucrats to investigate this—so that we can increase the investigation rate from 10 percent to potentially 20 percent to 30 percent. How many more immigration officers are in fact needed to do this? I mean they couldn't even deliver cost of living payments to people after having how many people employed in IRD? My goodness I actually encourage all of my colleagues in the select committee—although I'm not actually part of that select committee best of luck in your deliberations because I think you have a big huge job in front of you. As Erica said on this side of the House we support it with a bit of caution and with a lot of concerns about this particular bill and I wish the select committee the best of luck."