Erica Stanford: Immigration and Education Minister on the residency pathway for skilled migrants, missing the PPTA conference

There's a belief there's more that needs to be done to smooth immigration processes in New Zealand. 

The Government's revealed two new pathways for skilled migrants to secure Kiwi residency.  

One is for skilled work experience and another for trades and technicians. 

Immigration Minister Erica Stanford told Mike Hosking there's a lot more announcements to come, but they're often held up by IT changes. 

She says they're working on a start-up visa while more needs to be done in the RSE space, and there's a whole list of other things. 

Stanford’s also standing by her decision to miss the PPTA's annual conference in Christchurch. 

The Education Minister had been scheduled to speak to the secondary teachers union yesterday for months but abruptly cancelled due to an 'unavoidable clash.' 

She told Hosking it was because the Prime Minister's office gave her a date for yesterday's skilled workers' announcement in Auckland. 

She says authorities also advised her it wasn't the best time to give a speech due to the ongoing pay bargaining. 

Stanford adds she is frequently meeting with the PPTA, and this is the first conference she's had to miss. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And so let's have a look at the new pathways

(00:01):
to residency. It's for skilled migrants, as we told you yesterday,
Kicks and Midgem. Basically, it's for people who are here
and have work experience or trades and tech background. New
Zealand first play that agree to disagree cart of course.
Erica Stanford is the Immigration minister. Anders back with this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
The announcements you made yesterday, so there's not a bunch
of stuff to cover, but the anouncement you made specifically
on immigration yesterday. Is this driven by fear that people
will leave the.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Country partly, but we've always had a really good, strong
residency program where people who are skilled and have the
knowledge and talent we need, we always have a residence
pathway for them, and we don't in this case because
of the settings of the previous government. And we've just
fixed that.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, how many are we actually talking about it? We're
talking about thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Oh, we're talking about relatively small amount. In the first year.
We will have it, probably a spike because we've had
our settings not right for the last few years. So
we think between about three and a half and seven
and half thousand, and then that will settle down after
a couple of years to about an average of about
four or five thousand. So we're not talking about a
huge amount of people, but extraordinarily valuable people to our economy.

(01:10):
You're talking about boat builders and refrigeration technicians and your
tradees and technicians, those sorts of people highly skilled.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah. Well, when you say that, I don't want to
sound like a snob, but the medium wage at one
point one's I mean, these are not rocket scientists, are they. Yes,
they're useful, Yes we want them. I get that, But
you're not dealing at the top end. You're dealing with
people who do the fundamentals that you could argue in
another time in another place, we might find O wh
I don't know in New Zealand to do that well.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
And that is exactly what we want, which is why
I'm transforming and reforming the education system with vocational pathways
so that young people can work their way towards these
positions as well. But at the moment, we don't have them,
and we don't have anyone to train up our young people.
So it is a short term intervention to make sure
we've got the people on the ground running our businesses.
We can get export orders out the door, but also

(01:58):
train up New Zealand and children. And also, by the way, Mike,
when you you know you need a refrigeration expert to
come and fix something at your house, they're available.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
One hundred percent. I fully get it. But Peter says
when the thirty percent, I thought you answered him very
well yesterday, and I think he's playing to his base.
But be that as it may, he talks about the
thirty percent. I mean, we have seen a remarkable transformation
in the ethnic makeup of this country in the last
echod or so haven't.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
We, Or you could argue that we have for a
very long time.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Is that good or not?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, I'm interested in people who can help drive our economy,
who are amazing entrepreneurs and philanthropists, or tradees and technicians
who we desperately need to help grow our economy. We
could say no to all of that and continue down
a different path, but I don't think that's the path
that anyone wants. If we want a good, strong, productive
economy and high wages.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
As regards your change as and immigration, is this it?
Have we done all we can do.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
I know there's a number of things still to come,
you know, may I like to get things done. A
lot of things is done, but I get held up
a bit in immigration because of the it changes that
are required for every change we make, which is very
frustrating and slow. So there are some more things to come.
We're working on a startup visa. We've got a lot
more work to do in the r C space for

(03:16):
those workers. So and then there's a whole bunch of
other stuff wich I haven't even got on to yet.
I mean, we've got domestic violence issues with people on
those visas, culturally arranged marriages that that visa isn't a mess.
There's there's a range of things I've yet to do,
but we're just working through the list.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Okay, when you talk startups, that's people coming to the country.
Is that not tied of the Golden visa sort of.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
No, it's very it's very different. This is this is
think think amazing people, not just startups, but think you know,
amazing Olympic swimmers or Nobel Prize winners. You know, so
amazing people with incredible talents, people who want to come
here and make films or people who want to come
here and start a new venture, and we're just working

(04:00):
through the detail on how you work out who those
people are. It's just not an easy thing to.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Do, okay, and the RC you are going to be
more lenient with them and allow them to stay longer,
earn more, send back all of those sort of things
that we need.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
There's a whole range of settings that the last government
had started doing a review on around whether or not
we have multiple entry visas for them rather than having
to come every single fill in a form every single year.
The way that they pay for their accommodation and how
much they pay and when they pay it that there's

(04:34):
a range of different things and can you share staff
between different companies and how easy that is. There's a
huge amount of things we have to get onto that.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Okay, put your education head on just quickly. There is
a claim from Abercrombie the bloke that they're having their
annual meeting and you were going to give a keynote
and now you're not and they're blaming you. So where
do we stand on that? What happened?

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Oh, I ended up something came up and that the
Prime Minister's Office gave me a date for the the
announcement that I had to make, and that meant I
had to be an aucklime, So that was the first thing.
But also I did get a letter from the Education
Department that said, Minister, we advise that now is not
the best time to do this because of the bargaining.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Well, you go down there and give it to them,
just both barrels, do it Trump Trump, Then we'll just
get stuck into them and tell them to stop striking,
get on with work and get on with life and
this country needs help stick it right up. Then will
I do that?

Speaker 2 (05:25):
And I do that with Chris Abercrombie and he was
in my office just a couple of weeks ago. So
it's not that I don't talk to them or see
them and tell them exactly what I think. I do
that all of the time. But turning up to their
conference in the middle of bargaining, the ministry said it
wasn't a good idea, and I just took their advice.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
We can't carry on.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Oh, I mean I go to everything, every single invite
I've ever had I turn up to. This is literally
the first time and it was on the advice of them.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Okay, so four point three eight out of five. In
the mood of the boardroom, You're the number one. You're
the star of the show. You Prime Minister.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Next, Mike, I want to be the Education Minister for
the next ten years. I have got a lot of
unfinished business. We're in the middle of a reform. I
love this job. It's an absolute honor to be able
to do what I'm doing and support teachers in the
classroom and raise achievement. And I want to keep doing that.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
The overall message in the report says you guys, not
necessarily you, but you guys are struggling and the patients
is wearing thin fair report or not.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Look, there's always room to improve, and I think one
of the takeouts from the small bit that I've read
this morning is we need to be better at listening.
And there are a lot of people out there, including
the top end of town, who want to help us.
They've got ideas, they've got suggestions, they want to be
in the tent and they're finding that hard. And look,
we need to take that on board, listen to it
and bring them in.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
All right, appreciate your time. Ed to Education Immigration Minister
Erica Stanford at a score of four point three eight
out of five this morning number one ranking I've still
haven't worked out is I mean, technically a two point
five is a pass. Two point five out of five
is a pass. I say three because you want to
be seeing if you're running a three out of five
is a pass than fourteen of the twenty eight pass.

(07:03):
If you're running a two point five literally fifty percent,
then virtually everyone passes down to Casey Costello at twenty six.
So overall, the summation is that despite the fact that
we're at a quote inflection point and there's a lot
to worry about, this lot of doing reasonably well. For
more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to news
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(07:24):
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