New Zealand's Immigration Minister, Erica Stanford, announced on 28 July 2026 that the Government will overhaul the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme — the visa arrangement that lets New Zealand's horticulture and viticulture industries hire seasonal foreign labour. Around 17,000 workers come to New Zealand each year under the scheme, employed by roughly 207 recognised employers, mostly for grape, fruit, and vegetable harvests that run six to seven months. Stanford said the scheme had become "too complicated" and "unnecessarily burdensome" over nearly 20 years, and the changes are meant to simplify it while adding new protections for workers.
- Announced
- 28 July 2026
- Scheme size
- ~17,000 workers/year across 207 recognised employers
- New protection
- RSE workers can apply for a migrant exploitation protection visa — break contract, stay up to 6 months
- Rollout
- Phased in from early 2027 through 2029; accommodation decisions due by end of September 2026
Why this matters for South and Southeast Asian workers
The RSE scheme is, and will remain, primarily a Pacific-nations arrangement — the vast majority of workers come from countries like Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji. But it is not exclusively Pacific: a smaller, longstanding cohort of Southeast Asian workers, chiefly from Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, also work under RSE employer accreditations, a legacy of recruitment arrangements that predate the scheme's 2007 launch. For Indonesian and Filipino workers already in this pathway, or considering it, the protections below apply equally regardless of home country.
- Graduated accreditation: employers with a strong compliance record get up to 6 years' accreditation before renewal; those with compliance issues get 3 years; every first-time employer starts at 1 year.
- New migrant exploitation protection visa access for RSE workers — lets a worker leave an employer over serious mistreatment and remain in New Zealand for up to 6 months rather than losing status immediately.
- More flexibility to move between RSE employers in appropriate circumstances, with added safeguards.
- Clearer, simplified rules on what employers can actually deduct from wages for transport, insurance, and accommodation.
- Internet access to be added to the prescribed minimum accommodation standards.
The reform follows years of scrutiny over RSE accommodation costs, including a 2025 Employment Court ruling (Soapi v Pick Hawkes Bay) that found an employer had made unlawful wage deductions from Solomon Islands workers, including inflating accommodation costs. That case, still under appeal, appears to have shaped this package: Stanford said final decisions on accommodation cost standards will come by the end of September 2026, with the wider set of changes phased in from early 2027 through 2029.
None of these changes are live yet. Accreditation, mobility, and deduction rules begin phasing in from early 2027, and accommodation standards won't be finalised until after a September 2026 government decision. Workers currently on an RSE contract should not expect any immediate change to their conditions.
This is primarily a Pacific-worker scheme, so it will affect only the small number of Indonesian and Filipino candidates pursuing New Zealand horticulture or viticulture work through an RSE-accredited employer. For that group, the coming reform is a genuine improvement — clearer deduction rules and a real exit route from an exploitative employer — but it is not yet in force, and it does not change eligibility or open the scheme to new source countries.
