Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I have a pretty strict rule of not speaking on matters related to immigration. I get the sense that I would sound like the drunk at the end of the bar talking about the good old days. But I've broken that rule twice in a week which is another measure of the extraordinary times we are in basically because members of the select committee that would normally talk about immigration issues aren't here and indeed this bill the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill is going to the epidemic response subcommittee of which I will be the chair for the next few days. That subcommittee is going to have the Herculean task of getting advice calling for and hearing submissions on this bill and the bill that has previously been debated the COVID-19 Response (Further Management Measures) Legislation Bill—considering it suggesting amendments and reporting back to the House by this time next week. That is no mean feat but I'm confident that we will be able to do that and I'm really pleased that we are doing that. I'm not going to relitigate previous comments about the risks of hastening a legislation. As my colleague Stuart Smith said we will support it but we do have some concerns and I want to just articulate some of them. The explanatory note is very interesting. It basically talks about wanting to assist the visa holders but actually the principal goal of this it seems to me is to assist Immigration New Zealand with the potentially overwhelming amount of work that it would be required to do to issue visas past the three-month deadline or at least it's the later of the three months after the epidemic notice is issued or the expiry of the visa. So while Minister Faafoi did talk about the 350000 visa holders that could be in New Zealand right now it's by no means the total population of what would be required to be done. That would be a much much smaller number. I was surprised at those numbers frankly. That seems to be nearly 100000 more than the number of temporary visa holders in New Zealand a couple of years ago.I have a tremendous amount of sympathy and compassion for them right now. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be in a foreign country—even one that you've chosen to go to as a working holidaymaker or an international student or an essential skills worker—and to find oneself in the middle of a global pandemic where everything shuts down and the income supply is in the short run immediately curtailed. I commend the Government for including overseas workers in the wage subsidy—I think that was a sensible thing to do—but that's going to end. There is fear—I know there is fear. My colleagues Mses Walker Dowie Dean and I were on a Zoom call with southern mayors a couple of weeks ago where Mayor Boult from Queenstown Lakes District articulated what was going on there. It is a tremendous potentially humanitarian problem. I don't think that is overstating the issue. I think it is going to be very difficult but very important for the Government to decide what is to be done about that. I see this as very much a temporary measure. I am open to the view that it's not necessary for 12 months and I trust the Minister of Immigration will be discerning in the application of the powers that we are granting him. Somewhat of a gentle rebuke I think knowing those terrific staff at Immigration New Zealand but nevertheless we don't have the same problem with the Ministry of Social Development. We don't have the Minister for Social Development issuing a blanket order to give jobseeker support to a population. It still needs to be considered on its merits on application and while the Ministry of Social Development is under tremendous strain at the moment it will resource up it will find ways to get through that problem. I think this is kind of kicking the can down the road a bit in a couple of ways because eventually Immigration New Zealand is going to be hit with a bow wave of applications from people who want to stay but for whom that will not be possible.While we talk about the humanitarian challenge and potential there—crisis in the minds at least of those people affected by it—one needs to be very clear that as my colleague Stuart Smith said Governments of both colours share the view of a Kiwis-first approach to immigration policy. Therein lies the conundrum because I understand why the Minister would want to do things like a blanket variation of conditions. Indeed when I was Minister I found that the variation of conditions process was probably on occasion a little too strictly monitored by immigration officials. But now we're going the other way and what we're saying is Kiwis are going to be losing their jobs in their tens if not hundreds or thousands and they are in a contest for what work is available when the hospitality tourism adventure-tourism construction and education sectors all come back online—how do we apply that Kiwis-first approach? It worries me. It worries me because overseas workers right now are not eligible for income supports other than the wage subsidy—and I don't know what thinking the Government's doing there. It's a difficult one because the taxpayer has been very clear in its support for the generosity that needs to be shown to those people and small businesses that are at risk right now. But we're about to go off a cliff and the jobseeker numbers are going to rise dramatically and it worries me that we are going to pit overseas workers and New Zealanders in a contest for the same roles. The Minister shakes his head and I'm not sure whether that's more in hope than confidence because the powers that he has here will enable potentially international students to work more than 20 hours a week. It will enable essential skills workers who have lost their jobs to go into other industries to go into other parts of the country. Now that in some industries may well be the right thing to do because as Mr Smith said we have a bit of a challenge getting people to work in certain industries. Now it's not impossible. I was the Minister after the Psa outbreak where a number of workers were lining up at Work and Income after jobs were lost but with employers and contractors still wanting to bring people in from overseas to do that work. It does take a firm hand to say actually that's not appropriate. So there are challenges. However that said I also support strongly things like the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme  and I think there is an opportunity here to be more finessed than this gives the Minister the power to do. That is to say where there remain genuine labour shortages—and I think the industries that benefit from the RSE scheme could well be amongst them—then that's fine. Let's see if we can get those workers in and indeed most of them come from the Pacific. I'm sure there is thinking going on about what to do about that. But the reality is that most of them aren't; most of them are actually in the very industries that have been decimated by COVID—hospitality and tourism. Why would we be giving extensions to I don't know a Chinese tour interpreter a visa and then allowing them to go and work in any other part of the industry when we don't have Chinese tourists? So we really do have a problem. The biggest problem I think that is going to come before the Government in the not too distant future is the question of the expectations from those people that won't be met. We've got a residency programme that's been slashed by a third under this Government nearly and yet a great number of the people who are here on essential skills and temporary visas want to stay permanently and they're not going to be able to and they weren't before COVID and it's going to get much harder after COVID. We need to start that conversation as a country. We'll hear a little bit of it I think over the next few days in the consideration of this bill when we hear from the Migrant Workers Association and the Association for Migration and Investment. But it is absolutely crucial that in our efforts to make things better in the short term that we don't make them worse in the long term either for the overseas people who are here and potentially stuck or for those New Zealanders who have lost their jobs and are desperate to find new work to provide for their families in industries that they might not be used to.So I look forward to that conversation. It's going to be a speedy one. We're going to be back here next Tuesday. But in the meantime I support the Minister and I commend the bill.