Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): I thought the Minister did an admirable job of standing in the House this afternoon attempting to explain why this legislation has to go through with the very minimum of public scrutiny applied to any bill. What he should have said is that We just had our eye off the ball. We didn't recognise that we were getting close to the time when the legislation that was quite appropriately passed under similar conditions 12 months ago was going to expire."I think what also sits in behind this is his recognition that his own department is in very bad shape indeed. I don't think there's any way that you could say anything nice about the immigration department at the present time. Now while they're dealing with a lot of different circumstances that is their job. It's what they're meant to do. The question is: why are there well over 12000 current applications for residence sitting in a queue not being dealt with? What is annoying about this is that there are businesses up and down this country trying to get in skilled people who they cannot get locally. Despite their efforts to recruit they cannot get them locally but they also cannot bring people in because of that massive backlog that has been accumulating inside immigration for such a very long time. It is a privilege to come into New Zealand. It's a privilege to become a resident no question. But it is also a necessity for our economy to have the workforce that drives the economy that allows us to all afford the lifestyle that we have in this country. As the Minister said today with the stroke of a pen he's settling the next 12 months' worth of applications for over 300000 people. Now it sort of gets the mind boggling a little bit. If you think of how many towns in New Zealand you'd have to bundle together to get 300000 how many parts of Auckland you'd have to separate out to get 300000—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Can I ask the member to speak to the motion. It's not a—Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I'm responding to the comments made by the Minister. I've got them written down here in front of me. So if he was able to say them I should be able to respond to them. I'll do my best—DEPUTY SPEAKER: No I'm waiting to hear how that—because in what he said he did relate it to why at the end of that it needed a shorter report-back time frame. So I'm asking the member to do the same.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well what I'm making the point about is that he was very creative about offering a reason to the House for that shortened time frame. The simple case is that they had their eye off the ball; no question at all. So now we have a bill that we're supposed to in just 21 days—21 days available to the select committee to consider this list of eight extraordinary powers. I think when you have that volume of people—300000-plus who are here on temporary visas now more than 12000 waiting in the queue with their residence application and then thousands offshore who have left New Zealand for one reason or another who want to come back to various jobs here—all will want to have a say on this as will their employers. We know what the situation is in the agricultural industry and the horticultural industry at the moment. We know that there are other industries throughout the country who've got all sorts of issues they want to deal with. You know the thing that is extraordinary is that the Minister is giving his department these powers because in the end it's the department that makes the recommendations to the Minister about how to exercise those powers. Yet he sits there knowing that this is a department that is not operating at an optimum level at all. So yes there should be a longer scrutiny by a select committee so that you can have the general public gaining a greater degree of confidence about the exercise of these powers. I don't need to go through the whole eight of them but when you have the power to waive the requirement to obtain a transit visa in individual cases by special direction the public need to know what that is all about. The public need to know what that's all about because the way I read it it means that someone coming from a country that has a very very large amount or a considerable amount of COVID-19 infection—and we've seen the actions taken by the Government today to prevent people from one country coming in for a period of time because of that very sort of thing. But this would apparently give the department via the Minister or the Minister via the department the opportunity to in some cases say "No no don't worry about it. Come straight in." Now the public need to know that. The immigration service need to explain to all of those consultants out there the many lawyers who live off the end of this stuff exactly what that means but more importantly to all of the communities around the country that want workers to find out what that also means. There's also the power to waive any regulatory requirements for certain classes of application by special direction. In other words if someone has the favour of the Minister then they can get whoever they like in and that is a very very broad power. I remember this House once railing about some powers granted to a Minister in here referring to them as "Henry VIII" powers. That is totally "Henry VIII"—totally "Henry VIII". Hon Grant Robertson: The member has similarities.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: And I see his lookalike over there shaking his head and saying "No no that's not the case." but it is. It is simply a provision for the Minister to decide who comes and who doesn't. Nothing short of that. You could go on and say "Well there's the power to suspend the ability to make applications for visas or submit expression of interest in applying for visas by class of people by Order in Council." Well that would certainly mean that it would simply mean that we'd pick out particular countries and say "The doors are open—in you come."Hon Grant Robertson: Talk about the motion.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: The doors are open—in you come. Now that might be as Mr Robertson the finance Minister is pointing out a good thing. I don't know why he would think that was a good thing when there needs to be an understanding by the general public of what that means. He and I would take a different view on that. Those are the sort of things that get sorted out at a select committee by allowing people to come in over a period of time to make their submission. Now the other thing that goes back behind all this is that there is clearly a flagrant disregard for the lawmaking processes in this country being exercised by the Government at the present time. Hon Grant Robertson: Oh come on!Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Because while they'll sit there waving their heads from side to side the reality is it's happening all the time happening very very frequently. There would not be a week of Parliament this year when there hasn't been some kind of truncated process put in place some kind of urgency taken or some kind of extra power grabbed by the executive to run the country. Mr Robertson sits over there chuckling away. He knows it's the case—he knows it's the case. I see he's got his tie off so he's off down to the club shortly to talk to all the local punters and tell them what a great Government they are. The reality is they're losing their opportunity in this case to exercise some of the freedoms they should have to express their views. Greg O'Connor: We don't have to tell them; they tell us.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: And there's Mr O'Connor over there. He's another one who's always on about how great the Government is how wonderful it is how much it's in touch with the people.Greg O'Connor: No we get told—Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Now he's shaking his head saying "No we're not." Well at least he's got the moxie to admit that they don't really care about what people think. They just want to do whatever they can. It's this sort of action where a Government simply decides "We don't want to hear too much from the people. We're not really interested in what they might say." And while the Minister stood there making an interesting case he should have just said "Look we took our eye off the ball here. It's still necessary and so we want to keep going with it." That might have been a better position to take than giving the absolute flimflam that came out and will be part of the Hansard record today.The National Party having said all that recognises that we have to have some mechanism to try and sort out the abysmal state that the immigration department are in. We do have to have some mechanism to give security to those 300000 visitors or work visa people in New Zealand at the moment who are contributing to our economy. We also need to make it clear that when people are coming in there might be an opportunity for a Minister to consider some classes of worker that are absolutely essential in our economy. While we don't like this process we recognise that for a short time longer that may be necessary. But why two years? That seems to lack any ambition at all to try and sort out a Government department that has not stepped up and recognised the conditions that it should be delivering on for New Zealanders in getting through their big workload."