Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill at third reading.This bill is very important. This bill transfers a huge amount of power to a Minister to make decisions for whole classes of visa holders. At the stroke of a pen thousands and thousands of lives are affected and with this huge amount of extraordinary power comes huge responsibility to exercise these powers properly to exercise these powers in a timely way. The legislation in fact requires the Minister to use these powers to benefit migrants but this can easily be undermined if those powers are exercised in a way that in fact does not benefit those visa holders; for example ignoring whole classes of visa holders or giving very short time frames for the notice period for those decisions.Now with this legislation we had the opportunity and the ability to look at the ways in which these powers had been exercised—these extraordinary powers—and to make changes to this bill to ensure that we are actually benefiting migrants who let's face it are in a very vulnerable and anxious situation in this country who are moving from visa extension to visa extension. We had the ability to take a look at the current conditions as they are now compared to what they were a year ago and seek answers from the Minister as to whether or not there is a justification for these powers to continue not only for one year but actually for two years. The difference with this bill is that he is asking for these powers these extraordinary powers for up to another two years and it is up to us to make sure that he has the justification for that.And what was the Minster's justification for these extraordinary powers for another two years? Well what we heard from him all through this and mostly last night was in fact Well I did things OK and you can trust me because I'm a nice guy." That was basically his argument last night. So basically he was saying to us "What's your problem?" The problem that we have is that "I'm a nice guy trust me and I've done a good job so far." is not a reason to extend such extraordinary powers for such a long time. We don't hand over power carte blanche to a Minister without being satisfied that he is still answerable to this House. Thousands of lives at the stroke of a pen—thousands of people who are living visa extension to visa extension. He must be held accountable in this House. We must act as a check on those powers. We must be a safeguard. And he's asking for these extraordinary powers for another two years. We must be confident that he is doing a good job and that these powers are warranted.We made the argument that he should have to come back after a year and justify himself to this House to show that he has exercised the powers in the manner that we expect to ensure that migrants in fact have been benefited from the powers that he is exercising. We need to make sure that he's using the powers properly and that the circumstances still exist for those powers to be used. A year ago things were very different. We were in a situation where COVID had only just begun things were looking very dire and we didn't know what to expect in the coming months. This House as a whole agreed that the previous bill was necessary.But things now are very different. We have multiple bubbles that are opening vaccination programmes taking place around the world and apparently in this country by the end of the year and in a year's time who knows where we will be? Things will be very different. And this is not just my opinion. Every single submitter on this bill who is an organisation—the hort guys the ag guys the winegrowers—all of them said "Yes we understand that the Minister needs these powers." but none of them agreed for another two years.Chris Bishop: Not a single one?ERICA STANFORD: Not a single one.Now the Minister believes that because he's done a good job and he's a nice guy he can have two years because he doesn't want to have to come back in a year's time and do this all again because it's just a bit of a pesky annoyance. But every single submitter on this bill including the Law Society who made this argument a year ago could see that this wasn't right that this can't go on for ever and in fact that he must come to this House to justify the need for extension of these powers after one year.As it turns out the second main reason for wanting two years was as I mentioned just before inconvenience. He mentioned not wanting to take up the House's time and he also mentioned that he didn't want to tie up his officials by having to come back to this House. I would argue and we did argue in fact that this is exactly the perfect use of this House's time to scrutinise and to examine the extraordinary powers that we are giving to this Minister in a highly unusual way. That is what this Parliament is for. It's a check. It's a safeguard to ensure that the Minister is using his powers properly and that they are in fact still required. It's not just a pesky annoyance as I said that gets in the way of the Minister doing his job. There is nothing that he told this House that justified another two years of this power. There was nothing that he said that made any of the submitters or anyone on this side of the House believe that he needed an extension of two years.And it's worth noting as we did throughout this bill that he didn't actually want two years. The Minister in fact wanted no sunset clause on this bill. He wanted these powers for ever which makes us think "What is coming in the next few months with the immigration changes that are going to be coming out?" One of the things we argued strenuously for was a notice period for these decisions and the reason that we did so was because we are seeing the effects on migrants of the very short period of time that he's giving them when he makes these special directions. The situation in the last 12 months if we go back to July last year was that on 7 July he extended visas for people whose visas were expiring on 10 July. That is three days' notice. People had booked their flights. They were under extreme stress and anxiety thinking that they were going to uplift everything and leave. In February this year with visitor visas they all got a letter to say: you need to leave. Five days later the Minister decided that he would extend their visas for three months. Now the Minister has tried to argue and he did again today that this is about him being flexible and nimble and being able to respond really quickly. I say that this is a Minister being slow asleep at the wheel who is too busy in his other portfolios to pay attention to the thousands of lives that he has control over. He says "We're fixing this and we're learning." but this term in my electorate there are children who cannot go to school because their status is unlawful because Immigration New Zealand weren't given enough time to do the work in the background to change people's status because this Minister didn't give them enough time. The way in which he is exercising these powers over the last year—while we agree that he was justified in doing what he did the time frame that he gave these people was not adequate. We argued vigorously all the way along through this process that he should have to give a far greater notice period. And we backed up the views of the New Zealand Law Society who said he should have to give 28 days to give these people a period of notice so that they're not booking flights and having to uplift their lives. Remember that they are vulnerable and under extreme pressure and stress and anxiety. The Law Society also argued that it would give an additional safeguard on the bill in that these special directions could be scrutinised properly before they came into force. It's entirely though I have to say—all of these last-minute changes—in keeping with this Minister's modus operandi in immigration his general approach to do nothing. We've had secret residency queues for two years trying to hide a mile-long backlog. He's ignored split migrant families until he was dragged kicking and screaming by me into doing something about it. And even with this bill he didn't bring a Cabinet paper—SPEAKER: Order! I know it's very late in the member's speech but I am going to now bring her back to the bill. The third reading is really the most restricted reading of the bill and it's only to discuss the bill as it comes out of the committee not a general policy debate.ERICA STANFORD: Well Mr Speaker what we've ended up with—in the last 20 seconds I have—is a bill that was unchanged a bill that gives the Minister powers for two years for these extraordinary powers which he did not justify even though it was requested by the Regulations Review Committee to have proper justification for these powers—justification that never eventuated."