Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well three speakers now in a row were forced to attack us and defend their own failing policies in the social welfare space because I can tell you what having 34000 additional young people on a benefit since 2017 is a failed policy. Twice as many of them being on a benefit for longer than a year is a failed policy so speaker after speaker they're putting up today to defend their failed policies. When we've got employers out there who are crying out for workers they're forced to defend their failed policies. Talking about employment troubles and employers not being able to find staff let's take a look at the ANZ quarterly economic outlook because it is grim reading. What they've said in that is that basically they thought that we'd returned to net positive migration this year but they've had to downgrade that to mid-2023. That means there are going to be persistent skills shortages in our economy right through next year. We're in trouble right through 2023. It's going to drive up inflation. It's going to reduce productivity. But why are we having this? We just need to look at recent history and we need to think about what drives migrants to come here. After the border reopening announcement back in late February on 3 March the previous Minister of Immigration Minister Faafoi stood up at Business New Zealand and he said I'm going to have a new policy. We're going to take the critical worker visa; we're going to relax the conditions on that. All you have to do is earn 1.5 times the median wage and his words were: "This will bring in 20000 workers." That's what this Government promised back in March until when the policy closed which was on 31 July: 20000 workers. How many workers does this House think that policy attracted in the six months that it was open? Out of 20000 the number of people who arrived didn't even meet 5 percent: 975 people. But let's be generous: how many were approved? Well that was only 1400. But let's be even more generous: how many even applied for a visa? Eighteen hundred out of a promised 20000. How did this Government get this so wrong? It is because they don't understand what drives migrants. There was no pathway to residence for those people. They restricted them from getting the 2021 Resident Visa and this Government kept the skilled migrant category—the old points system—closed. They closed it in March; it's still closed today it's been closed all year. That's why those 20000 people didn't arrive. They didn't want to sell their house move across the world and take their kids out of school to come to a foreign country when they didn't know what their future was. They didn't have certainty and this Government and these immigration Ministers don't understand that. They want to know about their future here and why this is so really really important is because history is repeating itself. This epic failure—this 20000-worker failure—matters because we're seeing it happen again. The first month of the accredited employer work visa their new flagship work visa 152 people applied in the first month even were approved. Immigration New Zealand expected 3500 every month—we got 152. So much like the 50000 that they promised the 42000 are not going to eventuate either because there's no pathway to residence. Unless you're one of the 45 jobs on the green list or unless you earn $115000 there is no pathway to residence for you. So if you are a physiotherapist if you are an engineering manager if you are an IT worker if you're a healthcare assistant or if you're a truck driver there's no pathway to residence and you're very unlikely to come here. The kicker is not only did those 152 people only apply for that visa—here's the kicker—66 of them almost half were already here. So we're not attracting new migrants to New Zealand and this is how they're going to jimmy the figures. They're going to go "Look how many people apply." Now that is not practical. The key is how many people offshore applied. They can tell you all day long that there were nine nurses that applied. How many of them were offshore? We haven't got the question back yet but I can guarantee you that most of those nurses would have already been here in New Zealand just switching jobs and having to apply for this new visa. This is another failed policy because they don't understand what drives migrants. They should have continued to open up the skilled migrant category in August like they said they would. But buried in a press release a couple of weeks ago from Minister Wood he's quietly benched the skilled migrant category which means there will be no pathway to residence for all these people for the foreseeable future which means we will not see the level of migrants that we need to drive our economy to increase productivity and to reduce the cost of living. What we saw with the 20000 failed policy will happen again with the accredited employer work visa—mark my words."