International students could be the target of a potential Labour policy to cut inward immigration rates.

Labour is holding its party congress in Wellington today, marking out some of its policy planning to contest this year's general election in September. Leader Andrew Little is expected to take the lectern this afternoon.

LISTEN ABOVE: Andrew Little speaks to Andrew Dickens

Little has pledged to cut immigration, but has so far refused to release numbers or costings. He has however signalled that student visas will be a focus.

"We have to ask ourselves, is the quality of the course they're doing something that we as a country ought to be associated with given that the conditions of those visas enable those students to work as well," Little said.

Finance spokesperson Grant Robertson was forced to clarify yesterday that he wasn't talking about New Zealand First leader Winston Peters when he insisted that any debate about immigration should always be a debate about policy, and anyone who makes immigration about race must be called out.

"Genuinely, it's not about any individual person," Robertson claimed to reporters. "I wanted to make a statement today about Labour's values on immigration, about the process we're going through to get policy that is better responsive to the population growth that we've had."

"That was all I was trying to do."

Yesterday, deputy leader Jacinda Ardern made her speech, announcing a policy that would see every state secondary school get a nurse with call-in support from a GP at an estimated cost of $40 million a year, funded from the health budget.

READ MORE: Labour pitch policy on healthcare, unemployment at party congress

The school-based health services were introduced under the Labour government in 2008 and currently fund nurses in decile 1-3 schools.

Ardern drew attention to young peoples' mental health in her speech.

"Behind every single entry in the suicide statistics lies not only a life lost but a community shattered," she said.

"We can repeat the statistics over and over, but it is the names and stories that almost all of us will know that bring home the effect of this disease in our country."

"Everyone student who needs it will have the option of having someone they can go to, someone they can trust," she told the party faithful. "A young person's wellbeing, no matter where they live, what community they are in, will be our priority."

Ardern also highlighted the problem of youth disengagement from electoral politics, and admitted worrying that young peoples' apathy was becoming more widespread.

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