Lees-Galloway IainIAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North): That was an interesting campaign speech from the National MP Parmjeet Parmar the presumptive National Party candidate for the Mt Roskill by-election. She has not been selected yet but we all know she has been campaigning for quite a while—we knew that from an email from Nick Smith's private secretary who said that Parmjeet Parmar was quite keen on using taxpayers' dollars to raise her profile in the Mt Roskill electorate where there is likely to be a by-election at the end of this year. So we can be in no doubt that that was the opening of Parmjeet Parmar's campaign in the Mt Roskill by-election. She must be shaking in her boots—she must be shaking in her boots after last weekend because let us face it National got smashed in Auckland—absolutely smashed in Auckland. We know that it gave up on winning the mayoralty months ago but—a bit like the Republican Party in the United States which has given up on the presidency—it thought it could save the council. I remember talking to a Cabinet Minister who was absolutely certain that the Auckland Council would have a majority of the National Party surrogate Auckland Future. Well where is Auckland Future today? It got hammered in the Auckland Council election so Parmjeet Parmar and everybody else in the National Party must be very very nervous about where National stands in Auckland. After Phil Goff won that mayoralty with such a resounding mandate what did John Key say? The arrogance of the man after that fantastic mandate that Phil Goff received from the people of Auckland going out and saying that he wanted to deal with the housing crisis that he wanted to fix Auckland's transport woes that the Government needed to address the challenges that the huge rate of immigration is putting on Auckland at the moment. When Phil Goff won a mandate on those issues the arrogant Prime Minister said that Phil Goff had to shift and cuddle up to the National Party. Well National think about it: you have just been hammered in Auckland on housing on transport on incomes on immigration. I think National needs to realise that it is completely out of touch not just with Auckland but with the rest of the country because let us face it Labour did pretty well all around the country in the local body elections. National is out of touch with the people and it is time it realised that it has to actually get perhaps a little bit closer to what Phil Goff was saying not make Phil Goff come closer to them. I know National likes a poll and it likes to make its policies based on polling. We have seen that in the last few days with immigration because after years of saying that anybody who even wanted to debate policy settings around immigration was racist and xenophobic the National Government came out yesterday and told the country that it was going to reduce the number of people coming in through our immigration system. The problem was of course that those members actually changed their policy in the one area that most New Zealanders are not that concerned about—the permanent residency numbers—and what have they changed it by? A paltry amount that will actually result in a minuscule if any drop in numbers at all. But actually that is not what we should be talking about. We should be talking about the bit that National avoided altogether and that is the abuse of the temporary work visa system to bring in people to do low-skill low-wage jobs because employers would rather bring people in from overseas than pay decent wages and provide decent conditions. Do you think I am wrong on that? Let us look at the industries that are most reliant on temporary work visas: forestry farming and fisheries—do we really not have people in New Zealand who can work in our forests who can work on our farms who can work on our fishing vessels? What are the other areas? Hospitality—have we really not got people in New Zealand who can be trained to cook a meal and to look after people when they come and visit New Zealand? What is one of the other ones? One of the other ones is administration. Administration is hugely reliant on migrant labour—people on temporary work visas. Can we not get people in New Zealand to work in administration? The reason New Zealanders are not participating in those sectors is that the pay is low and the conditions are bad. This Government should be encouraging employers to improve pay to pay people more to give people better working conditions and to make sure that they get basic things like having a written employment agreement—because those industries that are most reliant on temporary migration are also the worst for actually adhering to their basic employment requirements. This Government is out of touch. National got smashed on the weekend and they are going to get smashed next year too.