Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on this bill although we don't support it as has been stated by the previous speaker Jamie Strange. I'd actually like to begin by acknowledging the Marlborough Boys' College students who are sitting up in the gallery—a fantastic school and a magnificent class of students who asked very good questions earlier in the Legislative Council Chamber.Now from what we've heard from the previous speakers on the other side one would think this bill should be renamed the Pfizer Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill". It is not a cure for COVID. Actually they're conflating this with some sort of border control which this bill does not actually address. This is about addressing people's visas within New Zealand and also giving the power to stop people from offshore applying for visas. That is what it will do and it will have a life—we believe one year is all that is needed for this bill. The Minister wanted no limit on this—just leave it in for perpetuity—and we don't think that's right. It's too much power for a Minister to have. Of course it's convenient for the Minister but that's not how we do things in New Zealand.I think it's an appalling piece of legislation and it's totally unjustified. Immigration New Zealand have a programme called ADEPT which they are actually testing now which will process visas electronically. It will enable visas to be processed in a much more efficient manner than they are now which is a very cumbersome and labour-intensive process. This bill is all about processing visas; it's not about COVID as such but that is the justification that we've heard from the other side. The Minister needs a year—that is all—and to take it out to two years is an overreach of biblical proportions almost and I think that we need to call it out for what it is.So we put up a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—or actually Erica Stanford did an excellent SOP—that would limit the bill to one year. She also put up another excellent SOP which would require the Minister unless there were extenuating circumstances to not bring in these conditions for 28 days. He'd notify what it was but 28 days later it would be enacted. The purpose of that was to force the Minister to act in a timely manner so we didn't have the situation we did in Auckland where school students were refused entry into school because they were effectively illegal in the country because their parents' visas had expired. That was about the Minister not acting soon enough to actually use the stroke of the pen and these extraordinary powers that he had to do it in an efficient way.We also as I raised in the other readings of this bill had the situation of vineyard workers Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers stuck in Queenstown who had run out of work down there and were unable to shift to Marlborough to work where there was work. They were reliant on charity and the community rallied around them to help them because they couldn't earn money they couldn't support themselves and they didn't have winter clothes in a Central Otago winter. They all had a puffer jacket by the time that was over. The community were fantastic. They stepped up and helped these people.The Minister had the power to do this but he simply didn't get round to it and I think when we see the shoddy way that this bill has been put together and the Minister's overreach there's a bit of a pattern here. There's a significant pattern here. I think everybody has recognised this. The reality is the Minister just has to do his job and do it in an efficient way. He's hanging people out to dry totally unnecessarily. He hasn't done his job properly. He's put a bill before the House that is totally in my view an overreach—and the National Party's view. We don't support it. It's a shocking piece of legislation. And so with that I will finish my contribution. Thank you."