Christmas being the season of goodwill, it was fitting that Santa Claus made an appearance of sorts on the last day of Parliament.
Towards the close of question time, a member rose to ask Minister of Immigration Michael Wood if he could confirm to Kiwi kids that Santa had all the necessary documentation to enter New Zealand?
The minister confirmed he had received an application for a short-term work visa from the North Pole and that, as minister, he had issued a special direction for that applicant and also recommended his case to fellow ministers to ensure smooth passage for his large cargo and accompanying elves.
As an opposition member picked up the contagion of good cheer and raised a supplementary Christmas question, the Speaker intervened and called a halt to the festive merriment in the august debating chamber.
In the lead-up to this festive departure from House protocols, Minister Wood had been in full stride cataloguing the achievements of the Labour government.
Fresh from his recent announcement of a raft of measures aimed at meeting skills shortages across a range of industries, Wood shared the feedback from skilled tradespeople, such as motor mechanics and civil contractors, who had been added to the Green List.
The Green List opens up a straight-to-residency pathway for select professions.
However, the addition of nurses and midwives to the Green List has been met with scepticism from those who argue that these health workers, who had previously waited for two years before being granted residency under the Work-to-Residency scheme, would likely have left the country or the profession.
If that scenario bears out, then this measure is late in coming.
But the government is looking to align its measures to the international environment and aims to draw high-skilled workers to New Zealand as opposed to low-wage, low-skilled migrants.
The latest bouquet of measures is avowedly aimed at making NZ employers competitive when recruiting internationally.
This outreach to the global jobs market moves in tandem with efforts to improve wages across the New Zealand economy.
However, the spanner in the works is the cost-of-living crisis, which has prompted the government to apply the brakes on spending.
New Zealanders are caught in a vice of high wages, low unemployment, soaring prices and a tight monetary policy by the central bank.
The government is purveying a kind of feel-good economics centred on GDP growth, low national debt, booming exports, budgetary surplus, boost in tourist arrivals, and net migration closing the gap, if not overtaking, net emigration.
Since borders have opened, the government has initiated steps to fill labour shortages from overseas. These include approving 94,000 job positions for international recruitment through government oversight, as well as opening up different visa categories, including the Skilled Migrant Category Resident Visa and Parent Resident Visa schemes.
But immigration is not insulated from the impact of inflation, with the Reserve Bank striking a discordant note and forecasting higher interest rates.
But with more New Zealanders at work and the country reconnected to the rest of the world as the festive season approaches, inflation is the Christmas present nobody wants.