Stanford Erica; Faafoi KrisERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you. I didn't get the answer to my questions so I'm going to ask them again because the Minister has reiterated what he said the whole time which is just COVID". But actually the arguments in the first place the arguments he came up with in the first place were why it was that Immigration New Zealand couldn't process these visas themselves. He said last year it was because they were all at home and we were in lockdown and they couldn't process as they normally would. That is not the case now. This is not about keeping people safe in COVID. This is about the department being able to process visas.Why is it that they are unable to do that? They are now back at work. That was one of the single biggest arguments a year ago as to why this bill was required. And we agreed with the Minister because those officials were at home and they were unable to do their job and we got that. They are now back at work. Why is it that they are not able to process visas as they normally would given that their workload has significantly dropped off because there's 450000 less applications going through at the moment—why is it? And I'll keep talking to give the Minister time to chat with his officials. Why is it that they can't do their job as they normally would?And also why is it that it took until last night for the Minister to come forward with the information around the number of people who are on shore given that that was such an important reasoning in the first place? But the main question here is: why is it that these visas can't be processed in the normal way that they would be? Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I'm not sure how that—and maybe I might be wrong—pertains to any clauses in the bill but I'm happy to address some of that question.Stuart Smith: Oh how magnanimous of you!Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Are you done? So I think the question goes to a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on with the immigration system and the processing system at the moment. Yes we aren't able to process visas for people offshore because the border restrictions are in place. The member may have noticed though that there is a border exception regime in place. A lot of the resource that is taken up for some of the very complex processing of visas is actually being taken up by assessing the large volume of border exception applications that are coming into New Zealand. I think I'm right in saying that as of about two weeks ago 135000 people went through managed isolation. Roughly 10 percent of those came into the country on a border exception. So we don't just take an application and rubber stamp those and say you can come into the country. The process is that there are very strict criteria—given the border closures at the moment as to whether or not people who don't have the absolute right to come into New Zealand—they have to meet in order to get a border exception and to be able to come into the country. The criteria vary depending on whether you are wanting to come here for six months or over six months or some other humanitarian or cultural reason. All of those applications have to be processed and they are not simple processes. They are complex processes. And sometimes as with a lot of visa applications some of that information is incomplete. So it does take some time to get through that process. And the people who would otherwise be processing visas as per normal are doing a lot of that border exception work. Can I thank them for that. They are under extreme pressure. As you can imagine there are plenty of businesses communities who would like either workers or their loved ones to come to New Zealand for some reason and I'm sure that that issue will come up at some stage during the debate. But that work is being done by that processing staff and I want to take my hat off to them for doing that work which is new work for them obviously under extreme pressure because the volume of those applications is large."