Roche DeniseDENISE ROCHE (Green): I am pleased to take a call on behalf of the Green Party in the Estimates debate. I will confine my comments to the whole issue around immigration. Immigration has been used by unscrupulous demagogues like Marine Le Pen in France or Donald Trump basically to beat a loud drum and scare citizens. But the Greens have a consistent stance on immigration. What we think is that when immigration is properly supported and managed sustainably it has clear benefits beyond and above the economics through enriching our culture providing new ideas and bringing needed skills to our country. Many of us here in this House whether we arrived by boat or by plane have an immigrant somewhere in our history. But the problem that has become clear to me after spending the last year meeting with various migrant groups with unions with multicultural associations and with other stakeholders right across the country is that National has let down migrants and National has let down New Zealand by prioritising the quantity of immigration over the quality of support. From international students to migrant workers to permanent residents this National Government is letting New Zealand down. I recently met with the Auckland University Students Association (AUSA) about international students and what they had to tell me was pretty bleak. It seems as if the push for the export education market has been at the cost of the quality of life of international students and also at the quality of education. Many of the international students who come here are paying four to five times what domestic students pay. Those fees are unregulated by universities' fee maxima policies. At the same time these international students are unable to access pastoral care including access to some of the health services. AUSA has said that international students are disproportionately more at risk of being exploited than anybody else. We just have to look at the whole scandal earlier this year about students offering sex for rent as an example of how that plays out. So when you look at the evidence AUSA is right: a 2013 report from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment estimated that one in 10 international students are being paid below the minimum wage. A 2010 Auckland University of Technology (AUT) report backed that up and found that 38 percent of those surveyed received below the minimum wage and a 2011 thesis found that 42 percent of Chinese international students were also being paid below the minimum wage as compared with about 7 percent of domestic students. None of these students should be paid below the minimum wage. Perhaps most shamefully a 2012 AUT report on the experiences of international students and recent graduates on job search visas working in the horticultural industry in the Hawke's Bay found that a shocking 93 percent of those students were being paid below the minimum wage and nearly half of them did not have formal agreements. We have got a lot of work to do to ensure that our minimum employment standards are met. Is this the sort of country we want? Is this the manaakitanga that we offer? Because it falls well short of what we should be doing. When we invite people here we really should be treating them with dignity with respect and with compassion but the Government's focus is on quantity of immigrants over the quality of support. What that means is that our public services are stretched our infrastructure is stressed and our migrant support centres are stretched. The labour inspectorate's annual report stated that nearly one in five investigations into suspected breaches of employment standards are not completed within 6 months of receipt of the complaint.