Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I want to make three very important points in my speech because this is a significant bill and sadly the issues being dealt with by the House are so significant and it's I think sad to see very limited engagement on the substance of the issues by members opposite. It's I think a tragedy that the process that this bill has gone through has been so curtailed. I think what all members can agree on is that over the last few weeks in particular there has been a real cognisance of the impacts of COVID-19 on families—and migrant families in particular. What you've seen is a couple of things. The first is that the trans-Tasman bubble's opened and that has allowed people who have been split apart for many months to be reunited. It has been a wonderful thing actually to stand there and watch the people on the news come through the gates at Wellington airport and hug their family that have been split apart because of COVID-19. That bubble's been fantastic. But there's a class of people out there called the split migrant families who are still separated from their loved ones who are in the invidious position of part of the family being in New Zealand and part not being in New Zealand because of COVID-19. These are people who were granted visas to come to New Zealand for work: in the case of Cameron Conradie from Hutt Valley High School in Lower Hutt a maths teacher—a male maths teacher; there's not many of them in New Zealand—he came to Lower Hutt and his family sold their house in South Africa. They packaged up their possessions and got themselves ready to move. And then COVID-19 hit. He is in New Zealand and his family are still in South Africa and as yet there is no light on the horizon for him and his family to be reunited. I think there's been a real recognition in the last few weeks that COVID-19 has had a demonstrable human impact on people like Mr Conradie and on people like the split migrants who turned up at Parliament in the last sitting period and protested—not in an exuberant violent way but in a passionate to be sure protest—outside on the forecourt. I believe the Labour Party will look back at that period and the fact that not a single Labour Party member of Parliament went down to that protest with disdain and shame in the years to come. Jamie Strange: We weren't invited Chris. There was no invitation given out.CHRIS BISHOP: Mate take a look outside or read Facebook. There's 65 of you guys; the fact that not a single one of you knew that the protest was on—that in itself is an extraordinary admission from Jamie Strange the member of Parliament for Hamilton East. The fact that they didn't know it was on—number one take a look outside; number two read Facebook check your email because—DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Wrong pronoun.CHRIS BISHOP: If that member was doing his job he would know that there are hundreds of people in New Zealand affected by this and they have been very public about it. My colleague Erica Stanford has been questioning the Minister of Immigration about these families for weeks now and we get told by the Prime Minister that Minister Faafoi is sorting it out. Well we've had some brief solution in relation to the migrant nurses but not for the wider issue. The things we are talking about here matter. The process that this bill has gone through is a disgrace. Firstly there was a shortened amount of time for the select committee. Now we can accept back in 2020 the first iteration of this Act being passed very quickly. It wasn't ideal but the legislature had to move quickly to respond to a pretty extraordinary set of events and we can accept that. We could accept a truncated process in the select committee. But it is not acceptable in 2021. Very few people were allowed to submit. The chair of the select committee Ms Lubeck just spoke and she said that there were lots of submissions and it was pretty thorough. Well I would reject that. I wasn't on the committee but I talked to colleagues who were and I would reject that. It simply—a few weeks. A few weeks was it Ms Stanford? A few weeks is not enough time—three weeks I'm told—not enough time to properly ventilate the issues. It's just simply not enough time. And of course there's no excuse.Marja Lubeck: It's OK to do 90-day trials overnight. It's OK to do contractor rights away overnight.CHRIS BISHOP: There seems to be muttering about something unrelated to the bill but she's not very happy about the fact that no Labour Party members went to the migrant protest. So I think that's the real unhappiness. So three weeks is not enough time to ventilate critical issues. Then the second point is this: it was passed extremely quickly. Again we look back and say 2020—OK sure you pass something through under urgency. We had to deal with a difficult situation." But here's the question for Parliament and that Labour members have to answer: what have they done over the last year? Why did this Act run up right to the end of its time—it's expiry date—and then all of a sudden the Government realises it's about to expire and we've got to extend it? Why did it take so long to realise that? Now I realise there was an election in the meantime—sure—and I realise that Parliament wasn't sitting but this Act was passed in May last year and here we are again in May 2021. There's plenty of time to pass this piece of legislation and that would have allowed a proper ventilation of the issues and it would have allowed a proper ventilation of the issues of split migrant families. Their submissions to the committee were ruled out of scope. The reason why they were there is because the Government keeps saying that they will do something about it but yet they are not. You know there are a thousand rooms in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) right now—over a thousand rooms vacant—because we've opened the bubble and Australians and New Zealanders coming from Australia to New Zealand don't have to go into quarantine anymore. Last week there were 1400 rooms available one night across the country. And for people like Cameron Conradie and his family and the nurses in Auckland and the teachers elsewhere and the engineers and the construction workers and the split migrant families who have one person here and their family offshore they look at this and they say "Well hang on a minute." We've got a Minister who claims to be solving our problems but isn't and we've got thousands of rooms or hundreds of rooms available every night in MIQ and they can't get in. Why won't the Government move? So that's why they turned up to the select committee. We reject this two-year extension of time. This is an untrammelled power grab by the Minister. Two years is not needed. It's not necessary. It should be one year no more. The Minister is giving himself absolutely extraordinary powers. And you could argue it was necessary after the events last year to have some discretion—some extraordinary discretion—to make changes to visas but to go for two years smells like a power grab for convenience not on principle. There is no justification in practice for a two-year extension of these powers. There just simply is not. Ministers can't muster one. Officials can't muster one. The only argument in favour of it is mere convenience. But I'm sorry that is not how we make law in this country. We do not grant Ministers extraordinary powers on the basis that it might be easier for them. Or if we do we should not do it in that way. Ministers do not need an extra two years—one year tops and then come back to the Parliament and if you need another year put another bill through the Parliament and argue on that basis and justify to the House why that's needed. But do not accept the two years. In relation to the 28-day rule that my colleague Ms Stanford has spoken about we believe that would be an improvement to the legislation. We advanced that as a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in Ms Stanford's name in good faith. We share the view of the Law Society that this would be appropriate for instruments created by special direction. What we had last year was Ministers issuing directions giving visa extensions only a few days before whole classes of visas were due to expire. And again I recognise the exigency of the circumstances but there should be no justification for that now and a 28-day notice rule for special directions would ensure that at least some modicum of notice is given. We need to remember that temporary visa holders as members opposite will know from their constituency work are in very vulnerable situations. This is an important bill. The Government is not allowing Parliament enough time to debate it properly and to debate the issues contained within it. Two years is a power grab that is not needed and therefore we oppose the legislation unless the SOPs we've asked for are granted."