Labor Minister Megan Woods, who took over from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, said the government was working hard to address labor shortages.
“We really have an international deficit,” Woods said. “I just went overseas and New Zealand isn’t the only country that has it.”
“We have to do two things. We need to make sure that we do everything we can to train our workers for these jobs, but we also do what we need to do, which is to get holiday visas open for these workers again. “
“And what’s more, we have our Prime Minister on the way to expanding these schemes. We see it with Spain, we see it with the United Kingdom in its last trip. And that’s certainly a focus for us as a government… we know how important that is.
Wood said holiday work visas are available to most people abroad. She acknowledged that some countries are not yet able to progress, but most can.
It comes after McLaughlin said restrictions on holiday work visas meant some people abroad could not even apply until next month.
“We are losing a lot of people. We need to open the borders. People can’t even apply for a working holiday visa until the border opens next month. Then, you know, the backlog of visas only worries us a lot about how long it will take.” So,” he said.
But Woods said as far as she knew, there were no barriers to applying for work visas while on leave.
“The door is open and [we’re] Actively encouraging people to come to New Zealand for working holidays.
When Bridges asked if the minister was aware that people living in certain countries could not apply for a visa, Woods said it was a small number.
“There are some countries,” she admitted. “But the traditional source of holiday work visas – the door is open for them, I understand.”
in accordance with immigration new zealand Working holiday visa applications are available for people in the following countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Great Britain, USA, Japan, Malaysia, Portugal, Mexico, Estonia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Slovenia, Hungary, Spain, Slovakia, Austria, Singapore, Korea, Poland, Luxembourg, China, Latvia, Taiwan, Argentina, Chile, Czech Republic and Israel.
Malta, Lithuania, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, Croatia, Peru, Brazil and Uruguay are still waiting for applications to open.
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