Goff Phil: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading[Sitting date: 10 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1445. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): When the Minister of Immigration Mr Woodhouse started to speak about this bill I actually had high hopes for what the Government was going to do. I have been here long enough—I should not have been so naive.I have here the Minister’s first statement on the legislation made in June 2013. He said there would be new measures to combat migrant exploitation—he was going to make it unlawful. Exploitative behaviour would not be tolerated and the Government would crack down on unscrupulous employers. I thought this was really good. I thought: “At last the Government is going to do something about a problem that every member of this House knows has existed for some time.”I know a problem exists because in my electorate of Mt Roskill we have a high migrant population and when you read the media stories about exploitation sadly a lot of those people are living in my electorate. I thought that at last the Government was going to act and the Opposition when this bill was introduced reflected that optimism—we supported the bill. We went to the select committee with the intention of further strengthening it getting it right and making a difference in order to stop the appalling abuse of human beings that happens too often particularly when a migrant worker is here on a temporary visa. They need the job and they are reluctant to speak out because they know that if they speak out they will be sacked and if they lose their job they will lose their right to be here. Everything works against them. But at last the Government was going to act.Unfortunately when we went through the process of examining this bill we found that the reality was quite different from the perception that the Minister was trying to portray. For a start this bill is not predominantly about stopping the exploitation of migrant workers. This bill is predominantly about making it easier for the Government to deport the people it wants to deport. Secondly it is about raiding the migrant levy to pay for things in infrastructure that tax would normally be required to pay for.I want to talk on both aspects of what is wrong with this bill. For a start the bill will be more symbolic than real for a number of different reasons. Firstly there is a lack of resources to detect exploitation—and I am going to come back to that. Secondly there is a misplaced role on the part of Immigration New Zealand. They are the ones who are working on the exploited labour. But actually if you want migrant workers to come forward if you want them to speak out often they will not come to the agency whose role it is to strictly enforce the provisions of their visa. They are going to be frightened of Immigration New Zealand. If you had an enforcement role surely you would put that in the hands of the labour inspectorate whose role it is to stop exploitation. That would have been the logical thing to do. Thirdly there is too little protection for migrant workers when they do speak out. I want to address each of those areas but I want to come back to the question of the migrant levy.The migrant levy was imposed supposedly to help migrants settle in New Zealand more quickly and more easily. God knows there is a need for resources to be applied in this area for people to pick up fluency in the English language—it is absolutely critical. You have to have fluency in the English language to be part of your wider community. Secondly the migrant levy was imposed to help migrants get a job. The critical issue that members of my ethnic communities talk to me about when they first arrive in New Zealand is getting on the first rung of the ladder to finding a job. There is so much more that could be done with the migrant levy to help people do that. Thirdly creating a harmonious community is about helping new migrants to understand the culture and the customs that exist in New Zealand. So there is a huge demand on the migrant levy.This Government is going to double the migrant levy. But is it going to double the migrant levy in this legislation to help people settle more readily? No it got caught out in this bill. And who did it get caught out by? The Legislation Advisory Committee chaired by Sir Grant Hammond. He said that the current migrant levy is for the sole purpose of research into migration and to help with settlement and he said that it is not a tax. But he said that this new immigration levy is simply a tax. It is going to fund immigration infrastructure that is normally paid for out of general revenue. So here is this Government which talks so much about looking after ethnic communities doubling the amount of money that it is ripping off the migrants coming in not to spend on helping them to settle but to pay for the normal bureaucracy of the Immigration New Zealand division. That is dishonest and it got caught out by the Legislation Advisory Committee. These are not my words—that this is a tax—these are Sir Grant Hammond’s words. He does not have a political axe to grind but he knows a scam when he sees one and this has got scam written all over it.Now I want to come to the question of exploitation. You know it is hard to believe that the Government really is concerned about the appalling exploitation that is happening. Why? Well the first thing is that every piece of employment legislation that has come before this House has been designed to remove protections. It has taken away the statutory right to a lunch break and to smoko breaks. It has made it harder for the unions to gain access to the workplace. How can the unions find out about exploitation when those employers who are unscrupulous are not going to allow them into the workplace? And it has absolutely undermined collective bargaining and collective bargaining is the way in which people who are working honestly in the workforce can protect their rights. So not only has the Government taken away these protections from migrants but it has also taken them away from all New Zealanders. That is the first thing.The second thing is that if you want to stop exploitation you need to detect it. How do you detect it? Well the International Labour Organization says that having a labour inspectorate is the way to do it and that in an advanced country like New Zealand there should be one labour inspector per 10000 workers—one per 10000 workers. Do you know what the actual ratio of the labour inspectorate to workers is in New Zealand Mr Hudson? Do you know? It is not 1:10000; it is 1:56000. We do not come anywhere near the international standards for protecting our workforce against exploitation. Even with the Aussies it is 1:19000. The Aussies are three times better off than we are. So if the Government really wants to stop exploitation by the unscrupulous employer—not the majority of employers but the unscrupulous employer—then surely it would strengthen the labour inspectorate. There is nothing in this bill—nothing in the declared intentions of the Government—to address that problem.The third area is the one that I talked about before. If you genuinely want to give migrant workers the chance to come forward make it easy for them. Do not make them go to the agency that is there to enforce visa conditions; let them go to the labour inspectorate.There is something else that could be done. Some years ago I was involved with a piece of legislation called the Protected Disclosures Act. It was quite good for its time. Now it needs modernising updating and strengthening. It needs to apply as strongly in the private sector as it does in the public sector. There is nothing here for that. When I go through the litany of cases about people being exploited I see what we fought against or our forebears fought against in the late 19th century and early 20th century. I see people who pay their employers for the privilege of working because having a job is a condition of their visa to be in New Zealand. I see cases of people being paid $2 an hour or $5 an hour. I am not making this up. These are case studies that have been published. That exploitation is getting worse as our migrant population increases and as our student population with work visas increases. It is a disgrace in New Zealand to see that sort of exploitation. What we need is a real effort not the window dressing that this bill represents.