Thank you for your warm welcome and thank you all for the opportunity to speak to you today and to meet members of NZAMI.

As New Zealand’s largest immigration adviser association you play a very important part in advising, supporting, advocating and helping migrants with settlement, and I thank you for the good work you do.

You will be aware that consultation is underway on the review of the Immigration Advisers Code of Conduct and licensed advisers have been invited to submit their views.

I feel very privileged to be made the Minister of Immigration and I am excited about the challenges and opportunities ahead. This is my first speech and it’s fitting that I am talking here in Christchurch, as the Canterbury rebuild will be a major focus for me.

Today I want to give you an update on the rebuild and what we as a Government are doing. I would also like to mention some of my other priorities as Minister.

As you know the Government has set itself an ambitious programme of work that will support businesses to grow, in order to create jobs and improve New Zealanders’ standard of living.

This programme, known as the Business Growth Agenda, focusses on six key ‘ingredients’ that businesses need to grow: export markets, innovation, infrastructure, skilled and safe workplaces, natural resources, and capital markets. Each of these areas has its own programme of work and immigration policy informs and supports this agenda.

Like many MPs, immigration enquiries form a significant element of the work done in my out-of-parliament office in Dunedin, and in the past four years, I have observed a material improvement in the service provided by Immigration New Zealand.

I want to acknowledge the work Immigration New Zealand has done and it’s well worth mentioning some of the highlights.

The latest customer satisfaction survey found that 87 per cent of applicants were very satisfied or satisfied with the overall quality of service they received from Immigration New Zealand. This result was significantly higher than the 75 per cent figure in 2011, 73 per cent in 2010 and 70 per cent in 2009.

The survey also found significant improvements in processing times for temporary applications. The average processing time for a visitor or work visa at the 29 branches included in the survey halved between June 2011 and June 2012, and for student visas, it now takes only a third of the time it took a year ago.

The quality of decision-making has gone up from 71 per cent in 2009 to over 90 per cent now and more than 90 per cent of temporary visa applications were decided within 30 days. So all in all I’m taking over the Immigration portfolio with an organisation in good shape.

But there is no room for complacency and I expect Immigration New Zealand’s performance to improve even more as their state of the art Immigration Global Management System (IGMS) and the Global Service Delivery Model are rolled out.

IGMS will provide new online channels for customers to access information and submit applications, and will consolidate back office processing functions. This year customers will start to notice the difference with students and temporary workers able to apply for visas online and a new identity management capability being established.

IGMS is a good example of what the Prime Minister meant when he said that the public sector needs to make greater use of technology to deliver better services. Now, as the new Minister of a portfolio overseeing a major IT implementation, and against the backdrop of another high profile government IT project, you will appreciate that I am focused on ensuring IGMS is delivered as smoothly as possible.

The new Global Service Delivery Model being implemented at the moment will allow INZ to fully realise and maximise the benefits of the Government’s investment in IGMS. The new service delivery model centralises visa processing, rationalises the branch network, simplifies processes, increases online access and includes greater partnership with third parties.

You will be aware that there have already been changes with the establishment of Visa Application Centres, or VACs as they’re known colloquially all over the world.

VACs act as collection agents for visa applications, leaving more time for immigration officers to focus on decision-making. VACs have already been implemented successfully throughout Asia, in the Pacific, the Americas, the United Kingdom and Europe, and are a great example of successful collaboration with specialist third party providers.

Under the new service delivery model, Immigration New Zealand will establish nine hubs for larger scale visa processing as well as a number of small-to-medium size satellite offices. The changes will result in a smarter, leaner and more efficient service.

But it’s all very well having the right systems in place – we also have to have the right policies. As I see it New Zealand is in a global contest: for skills, for tourists, for overseas students looking for high quality education, and for the foreign investment New Zealand sorely needs to invest and grow.

The policies we set and the processes we follow will materially determine how successful our country is in that global contest. My job will be to ensure that we are among the winners in that contest, not also-rans. It’s too early for me to make an assessment of whether the policy settings are as good as they can be, and I’m sure that experts like you in the industry will have a view about that and I will listen carefully.

I also want to reiterate the policy of successive Governments of the ‘New Zealanders first’ policy that my Government strongly supports. The strategies around the Canterbury rebuild are a good example of this.

You will know that a new visa rule has just come into effect which will help ensure New Zealanders are first in line for job vacancies created during the Canterbury rebuild.

There’s no doubt that we will need workers from overseas because of the extent and scale of the rebuild but, as with every other immigration policy, the number one priority is jobs for New Zealanders.

Employers must now register vacancies for trades, clerical and manual occupations in Canterbury with the Canterbury Skills and Employment Hub before they support a visa application for a migrant.

The new rule means visa applications to fill most jobs in Canterbury won’t be processed until a check has been done to ensure there are no suitable New Zealanders to fill the vacancy. The new rule also provides more certainty for employers and migrants as they will know sooner if a work visa application is likely to succeed.

I see the rebuild of Canterbury as an ideal opportunity to provide employment and up skilling for New Zealanders, including beneficiaries and young people, so it’s heartening to see how effective the Skills Hub is already proving to be.

Of course, the situation is constantly changing, but at the end of the first week of February, the Skills Hub already had more than 320 registered employers, over 1000 registered job seekers and 295 active vacancies.

The Skills Hub is not going to be the answer for every employer, especially those in areas requiring specialist skills and expertise. This is where the Canterbury Skill Shortage List comes in.

The list highlights occupations in shortage that are needed during the rebuild in Canterbury, and facilitates the grant of work visas for those jobs. This approach fits in with the focus this Government has on ensuring that employers are able to have the labour they need as quickly as possible.

An up-to-date and accurate Canterbury list means employers do not face unnecessary hurdles in filling critical skill shortages and the Skills Hub can focus on working with employers to fill jobs where suitable New Zealanders may be available.

It is essential that Immigration New Zealand is fully prepared to cope with the demand for visa services that will arise as the rebuild gains momentum over the coming months.

After all, the rebuild is the biggest economic undertaking in New Zealand’s history and processing visas as efficiently as possible is essential to giving prospective workers the sort of introduction to New Zealand we want them to have, and to meet the needs of employers.

I’m confident that Immigration New Zealand has the capacity and expertise to deal with the situation, but I will act quickly if there are any issues that arise as demand ramps up.

Christchurch has a great future and this government is doing what it can to ensure people are attracted here. In addition to the measures I have already outlined we have already moved to increase the number of international students wanting to come to the city by extending work rights to English language students who attend quality education providers in Canterbury.

You don’t need telling that the export education sector in Christchurch has taken a significant hit because of the effects of the earthquakes. This pragmatic move gives prospective international students yet another reason for choosing Christchurch, and has the added potential to stimulate other sectors of the economy.

But while we have all these initiatives in place to boost Christchurch we also have to be on our guard against unscrupulous activities. You will all be aware of the recent media coverage around illegal migrant workers.

I want to make it absolutely clear that it is unacceptable to me for foreign nationals to be working here without work visas.

Employers need to be vigilant when considering employing workers from overseas to ensure that they are legally entitled to work in New Zealand. I encourage them to use Immigration New Zealand’s online tool VisaView to check whether a person who is not a New Zealand citizen is able to work for them.

I would also urge anyone with any information about overseas workers working illegally to get in touch with Immigration New Zealand so that they can investigate and take appropriate action.

The intense work under way in Canterbury is all part of strengthening New Zealand’s contribution to economic growth. Immigration New Zealand is charged with ensuring that we attract the skills and investment we need by working with employers in key sectors to identify, attract and retain highly skilled migrants.

The skills area is one I will be asking plenty of questions about, such as:

• Are the occupations on the essential skills lists truly skilled, and really essential?
• When industries are successful in having occupations added to those lists, is sufficient coordinated effort embarked on by industry, educators and Work and Income to improve domestic supply of workers? and
• Are we setting sufficient expectations on holders of temporary work Visas that those Visas do not automatically lead to residence, avoiding some of the pain and anxiety of the non-renewal of those visas?

The success of the Government’s business migration scheme is illustrated by the attraction of more than $1.3 billion of potential investment capital since it was launched in July 2009.

In my view, there is no better demonstration of the effectiveness of the Government’s policies in attracting people with commercial nous, experience and global networks to boost the economy.

A flow on effect from attracting the right business migrants has been the creation of more jobs for New Zealanders and therefore playing a significant and crucial part in the Government’s Growth Agenda.

It’s these types of innovative policies we need if we’re to attract the sort of people we want to grow the economy and to stay ahead of our competitors in attracting the right people.

We all know that net migration has been negative for a while because of the global economic situation, but we’re hopeful that the situation will change by the middle of next year thanks to the range of policies we have in place.

And we’re not resting on our laurels – many of you will be aware of the current review of business and investor policies to ensure that they’re pitched at the right level to attract the people we want in New Zealand.

We have set two main objectives for this policy review: ensuring that policy requirements maximise the contribution investment funds make to our economy, and incentivising the creation of high value and high growth businesses. These objectives reflect economic development objectives, and ensure that Investor/Business migration policies are primarily about supporting New Zealand’s economic goals.

Thank you again for inviting me and I look forward to liaison with NZAMI in the period ahead.

(Source Beehive, Michael Woodhouse)