Watts SimonSIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Madam Chair thank you very much for the opportunity. Look I want to talk about Part 2 of the bill which obviously extends the deadlines for the council-controlled organisations and the local authorities by two months.Last evening I asked a number of what I thought were pretty reasonable questions around the degree of vacancies within Audit New Zealand. I haven't seen them tabled but I think the Minister's indicating that he's going to articulate to me by month what those vacancies were because the point I wanted to make is in relation to the departmental disclosure statement which states as I quote mitigate the impacts of a severe shortage of auditors". And the Minister has articulated a number of times in the House over the last day or so the number of 200. Well 200 is not the number of vacancies at Audit New Zealand. The number that has been articulated this morning is actually 27. Now 27 in the context of 235 is just over 10 percent. So when you look at the conversation around why we are here today in urgency why are we here going through a bill and looking at the departmental disclosure statement which states we are looking and trying to mitigate the impact of a severe—severe—shortage 10 percent is not a severe shortage. So 25 percent of nursing vacancies is severe hospitality vacancies well over the late teens is severe but 11 percent of vacancies of auditors here is not severe. So I would challenge the departmental disclosure statement in terms of the accuracy of that statement because in the context of what we're looking at the numbers we've been given don't add up.The other aspect is I referred last evening to the fact again related to the departmental disclosure statement around this severe shortage of vacancies. I have got the four—four—vacancies on the Audit New Zealand website as at this morning. I thought they maybe just hadn't updated it. For those at home looking: vacancies: senior advisor capability and culture communications adviser senior management accountant—and I thought OK maybe that might be an auditor; no it's actually to do budgets and forecasts for the chief financial officer—and a programme coordinator. So I am sorry but this statement in this departmental disclosure statement around mitigating the impacts of severe shortages cannot be substantiated by even Audit New Zealand's vacancy page that they've got online right now today so why are we here?Well I'll tell you why we're here. We are here because this Government has failed to plan. They came up and the Minister said to us on 16 June this was raised as a major issue again linking back to the departmental disclosure statement. Well I'm sorry these issues don't just appear like that and what we're articulating is the evidence that we can see out there doesn't correlate with the statements. And I am looking for a comprehensive explanation from this Minister around what is really going on here because we have articulated the challenges around workforce in this country: primary sector hospitality nursing medical aged care. They are in crisis but we are here because this Government can make the rules up. They can change the rules to suit themselves and that is exactly what we're going through this morning under the urgency of this Parliament which should only be used in exceptional circumstances.I also want to talk about two new areas that I haven't raised already and I think these are critically important as part of putting context around this two-month extension that is being asked for under Part 2 of this bill. The aspect is around immigration. So what I want to understand from the Minister—and I'm conscious I might need to go a little bit further on this because these are quite comprehensive in terms of the areas I want to get into. What I want to ask the Minister in terms of the fact around immigration is what steps or what consideration has been given to giving critical worker status to auditors? Because if we are dealing as the departmental disclosure statement states with an impact of a severe shortage then surely—surely—the conversations would have been had around looking at how do we mitigate this risk through other means before putting this House into urgency. Surely you'd do your homework before using the biggest house in this land to try and solve the problem. So what consideration has been given—[Time expired]"