Lucy Mouland: Senior Performance Auditor on the report that found only 1.38% of visas are granted to skilled residents

A new report has found only 1.38% of visas are for skilled residents. 

The Office of the Auditor-General has been looking into Immigration New Zealand, and says a greater focus needs to be put on attracting skilled residents. 

Senior Performance Auditor Lucy Mouland told Mike Hosking that if the agency improved its systems, it could give New Zealand a competitive edge internationally. 

She says skilled residents are the people our country needs to meet future challenges, so more must be done to draw them in. 

Immigration New Zealand has released a statement welcoming the report, saying they accept the findings in principle and are looking into how they can implement them in line with INZ’s current work programme, priorities and resources.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So here's your fun step for this Friday. Last year,
there were eight hundred and ninety two thousand visa applications? Right?
How many of those were skilled work? Its turns out
and this is the thing I didn't know and blew
me away in the early hours of this morning. It
was one point three eight percent. One point three eight
percent twelve thousand. Order to General highlights this in a
report suggesting we need to be better at skilled visas.

(00:20):
No kidding from the Order to General's off as senior
performance auditor, Lucy Moorland is with us, Lucy, morning to
you morning.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Did you know the stuff going in?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
When we go intowardits we always do a lot of research,
so we found it out on the way.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Does it strike you as a person who does research
at one point three eight percent is not a very
high number. It might want to be slightly higher.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
I wouldn't comment on that. I would say that the
one point see eight percent that we found are the
people that have the skills that New Zealand needs in
the medium to longer term. So it's very important that
the systems set up well to attract them.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
So what are you telling us as a result of
your research. Are you telling us that if the system
was better set up that number would go up because
more people would apply, or are you telling us even
if we did have a good system, no one wants
to come to the country with any skills.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
I think what we're saying is that the ONECD and
other research organizations have said that immigration systems play a
really important part, not only in processing visas, but attracting
the people that a country needs. And we know that
New Zealand's in a very competitive global market for skills.
So the more that the system is set up well

(01:36):
to work smoothly for those applicants, then the more it
can help them make a decision on whether or not
to come here.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Certainly, and how do you know whether we're set up well?
Do you make a comparison with other countries and how
do you do that?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, we looked at the New Zealand system and we
come up with criteria when we do our audits, and
we say what would it look like if it was good,
and we'd say it would be smooth and clear and consistent, fair,
and we use those factors and we look at MBI's
own promise to its customers, which also talks about certainty
and simplicity, and then we use that as our guide

(02:09):
to see whether we think we can see that in
the system, can you And we found that we could,
in some circumstances, in some parts of the system see
that working very well. We could see good information flowing
around the system for the quality of the audit and
decision making, for example. But in other places, like where
the technology comes in to help people track whether visa

(02:31):
is at any point in the process, we thought that
that could be very much improved. We know that people
are used to tracking a delivery or a food delivery
on their firing from minute to minute, and yet when
you come to try and see where your visa's at,
you might need to call the call center instead because
you can't see online and the systems aren't available to
help you see that.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
And as calling the call center a nightmare, I wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
Call it a nightmare. But we know that when people
call the call center, they the question they ask most
often is where's my visa? And so clearly they want
to know, they want to know where their visa is,
and they want to see progress. Because of.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Charge a bit of money for this, is it?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Well, everybody pays fees to apply for a visa, certainly,
and the thing is, you know, for a residence visa decision,
it's can I live permanently in New Zealand or not,
So you know that is a really big decision.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
How much of this I don't know how much of
this work in other departments you've done, but how much
of this is just all that's the government And technologically
speaking they're not up to much and never had been.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
I haven't worked across other audits. This is the first
audit I've worked on for the office. But I know
that Immigration New Zealand are very mindful of the fact
that they need to get their technology improved in order
to help people do this good.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
So what you've discovered they are cognizant of, and I'm
assuming at the highest level I Minister Stanford would be
a wear of all of this and somebody is working
on it.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
I couldn't speak for the Minister, but certainly yesterday when
we published our report, Immigration New Zealand said to us
that they accepted our recommendations and that they were hoping
to do work towards some of them, and that they
were also working on some of them already, so that's
a very positive thing and good outcome for the office.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
All Right, Lucy, nice to talk to you. Go well,
Lucy Moulin, who is with the Auditor General's Office. For
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