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Katherine Rich: BusinessNZ CEO on the changes to the Accredited Employer Work Visa · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from Newstalks'd be follow this
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Immigration ministers making it easier for businesses to hire migrants.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: She's changing work visa requirements again. Many businesses can pay
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: them less, hire more, and have them stay longer. Business
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: ends CEO Catherin Riches with us Morning, Catherine.
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: Good morning.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: You like the look of this.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Oh look, this is great to step in the right direction.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: There are lots of various where businesses can't get the
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: skills and the experience they need, and the changes of
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Erica Stanford have made will be really welcomed.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Was that threshold that they were been forced to pay,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: which is at least the media in wage too high.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Yes it was. It ended up being an artificial proxy
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: for skill and experience. But what happened in effect was
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: that in some cases when businesses were hiring and people
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: from offshore, they ended up having to pay more than
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: their key we counterparts, and you can imagine that caused
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: a bit of friction.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Is it weird timing to be doing this at a
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  Speaker 2: time when we're probably in recession again and we're laying
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: people off, or is that too simplistic. You don't just
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: lay people off and they find a job in a
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: sector that needs them.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: No, I think that is a bit simplistic. There are
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: just some areas in the economy where we either don't
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: train enough people or we don't train at all. And
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: there are some examples, for example in manufacturing where if
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: you've got to have someone who runs a particular piece
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: of pharmaceutical manufacturing kit or makes aluminium cans, you just
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: simply can't get enough people locally. There are lots of
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: areas where in New Zealand, because it's small, we simply
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: don't train.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Catherine's really good to talk to you. I really appreciated this.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Katherine Rich Business New Zealand CEO.
• 1:52
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