Launch of Immigration New Zealand's 'Vision for 2015'

Good morning. It’s great to be here today as the new Minister of Immigration for the launch of your Vision for 2015.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to meet senior managers at Immigration New Zealand and share with you some of my thoughts about the Government’s priorities for immigration over the next three years.

Turnaround of INZ over last three years

Firstly, I want to recognise that Immigration New Zealand has made huge progress in turning around its performance over the past three years – and that’s down to Nigel Bickle and his leadership team, and Ministerial action by my predecessor Jonathan Coleman.

I’m sure you remember that back in 2008 the Auditor General’s review found some real problems within Immigration New Zealand around leadership, timeliness, quality of decision-making and customer satisfaction.

The improvement in performance since then has been impressive. It’s clearly shown by: 

• the increase in client and employer satisfaction with your services
• much better processing times;
• and a marked increase in the quality of decision-making.

For example, around half of all student visas can now be done within 48 hours online, and the average length of a call to the call centre is now around two minutes, down from a high of 14 minutes.

A lot of hard work has gone into winning back the confidence and trust of the public and the Government. These are achievements you should be very proud of.

Next phase – Govt priorities

Looking forward now, during my term as Minister I want to maintain and enhance the major improvements we’ve made.

My priorities, and those of the Government, are to see the immigration system delivering maximum value to New Zealand.

We want to be ready for the future, and deliver better services for less cost.

I’m sure you all know this is a big priority for every Government Minister, department and agency.

Vision 2015, which we are launching today, is also a big step towards these goals.

This new vision for Immigration New Zealand is about having a more flexible, responsive and efficient approach to attracting the best people to New Zealand.

A practical example of this is the new Immigration Global Management System (IGMS), as mentioned by Nigel. We are making this major investment because we see it as a way to deliver timely, responsive and secure immigration services.

The Prime Minister has clearly signalled that the public sector needs to make greater use of technology to deliver better services. This is a good example of that.

The old computer system is around 20 years old, and with Ultrafast Broadband on the way, the time is right to move to a more responsive and flexible way of doing business.

As Nigel has said, this will mean looking at the physical footprint Immigration New Zealand has. We need to focus on our key markets that can make major contributions.

Economic contribution of immigration

I keep being reminded of the fact that migrants made up 60% of New Zealand’s workforce growth in the last 5 years, and that new migrants contribute an estimated $1.9 billion a year to New Zealand’s economy. So the importance of migrants to our economy cannot be overstated.

The Government strongly believes that immigration helps to build a stronger economy and creates jobs by encouraging innovation, deepening our links with international markets and providing the skills and capital New Zealand needs for growth.

I want Immigration New Zealand to ensure the right mix of new skills and investment, as well as proactive support of key growth industries.

We’re very focused on attracting migrants who will bring the most economic benefits to New Zealand – skilled workers, business people and investors, academics, entertainers and students.

One good example of this is the business migration scheme, which was revamped in 2009 and has to date attracted over $700 million in potential investment capital.

Attracting more business migrants who have the commercial nous and global networks to help New Zealand businesses helps grow the economy and create jobs.

We’re proud of what we have done so far in the immigration area.  Some highlights include: 

• The new Silver Fern Visa with 600 highly skilled young people given the opportunity to find jobs in New Zealand
• The Retirement visa gives us a foundation for attracting wealthy retirees to New Zealand
• Improvements to the RSE scheme
• Changes to the Entertainer’s Visa to provide more certainty for New Zealand’s growing film industry; and
• Boosting export education through allowing short courses to be studied while on a work or visitor visa.

Economic outcomes are always going to be a major priority. In short, we want immigration to work for New Zealand’s benefit.

A good example of this is the Canterbury rebuild. This will obviously create a huge amount of work for locals, particularly trades people, and our first priority is always jobs for New Zealanders. But we have to accept that in some industries we just won’t have enough people with the right skills.

Between June and December last year a total of 108 people were granted visas for work associated with the Christchurch rebuild, and a lot more skilled, specialist overseas workers will be needed in the future.

Another of our priorities is to get better outcomes for refugees coming to New Zealand. At the moment no single Government department has overall responsibility for meeting the needs of refugees. A centralised strategy is needed to bring together all the support that refugees can rely on, and I know you’re doing important work in this area.

Ministers have also announced a joint programme of work to improve our border management work. Immigration New Zealand, along with Customs and MAF, will be looking at ways the three agencies can work together more effectively.

Protecting our borders is a top priority, with $80 billion of exports and imports and 10 million travellers across our border each year. Recommendations for the next steps will be provided to the Government by mid-year.

Can I finish by thanking you all again for the hard work you’ve been doing.

We’ve made big strides over the last few years, but there is more work and challenges ahead.

I’m very confident though that Immigration New Zealand has dedicated and skilful staff ready to meet those challenges ahead of us.

Thank you.