SpeechHon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Immigration): Working through a number of the questions that have been asked by members more recently. Mr Woodhouse asked about an incident management team being set up within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE). Yes that is right that over the past week that has been set up. Effectively what it enables is for a range of resources from within MBIE to be able to supplement Immigration New Zealand to ensure that that system is working as smoothly and as efficiently as possible. As I've said earlier on in this debate if we actually look at the core metrics in terms of processing where the advance digital employer-led processing and targeting programme (ADEPT) is being fully applied—for example at both front end and back end for the accredited employer work stage of the process—we're actually processing very very quickly and below anticipated time frames. But our Government has effectively said that this is a real priority—our reconnection with the rest of the world. Ensuring that the new visa system rolls out smoothly is one of our top priorities. So working with MBIE we're making sure that all of the resources of the system are there to ensure that at each of those stages we're getting the processing that we want.Again I'll come back to what I perceive to at least be a pretty fundamental contradiction between comments and questions that have been raised from the opposite side of the Chamber. We heard from Mr Woodhouse before: No no no—of course it's appropriate that we check that there is a New Zealand worker available." But every other comment from members of his own party and Mr McDowall is to sort of guffaw and write off the utility of working through that process and we're just hearing very blunt statements that there are no workers available. We know it's a tight labour market. We know there's low unemployment. We know that at times employers are going to need to access migrant labour. But again we say that that is a basic and reasonable thing for a period of two weeks to just firstly check if there's a New Zealand worker available to do the job. Mr Woodhouse sort of tries to make political hay out of the fact that we're doing that but then he stood up five minutes ago and said that we should still do that.But here's a point of a clarification that might also help members on that side of the Chamber. For green-listed roles—which is where there's been a specific assessment about the shortage of those roles about the highly qualified nature of them—that step does not apply. There is a not a labour market test that applies. Hon Michael Woodhouse: And nurses aren't on it.Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Mr McDowall didn't seem to be aware of it. No the member is wrong and this is a consistent either conceit or misunderstanding of the Opposition. Nurses are in the green list—there are two parts to the green list. That labour market test does not apply to roles under the green list so that has been recognised within the system.Other questions which came up from Camilla Belich who asked about the working holiday visa scheme—she's right that it obviously ebbed to relatively low levels while our borders were primarily closed. We are now beginning to see that build up again. So at last reading yesterday I think we were up to about 4700 working holiday visa holders who are onshore. That is something that is quite highly seasonal so we do expect to see that continuing to build as we begin to come out of winter and into the warmer months where more New Zealanders do travel to New Zealand. The changes that we have made both extend visas for people who are onshore but also allow for the capped schemes for there to be a doubling in the numbers.A number of the countries that we interact with—the UK and the US for example—have an uncapped scheme but for many other countries it's a cap of 100 200 400 or whatever. For this season coming those caps will be able to be doubled which enables access to a pool of up to an additional 12000 which I think will assist significantly in those areas.Mr McDowall asked the question about whether the system simply reflects the Government's ideology. Well it does reflect our values and our beliefs about the role of an immigration system within a country's economy and society. We are moving forward with the immigration rebalance because we want the system to focus more on the genuine skills that we need across the New Zealand workforce and to be less of a funnel for what was quite often low-skill and low-wage labour that was operating under the old system which made it rife for migrant exploitation in many cases. The whole point of the accredited employer work visa system is that right at that beginning that accredited employer check is about making sure that at the front end we are ensuring that employers who are entering into the system to recruit migrant labour are upstanding and don't have a rap sheet for those sorts of abuses that we would not want to see taking place."