Estimates Debate — Vote Immigration

In Vote Immigration this year taxpayers’ money is set aside for an inquiry into activities going on in the Pacific division of Immigration New Zealand. This is an extraordinary situation. Under this Labour Government the very credibility and integrity of the New Zealand Immigration Service have been hugely damaged.

First, we had the Ingram inquiry in 2005, when the Hon David Cunliffe, the predecessor of the current Minister of Immigration, was Minister. We had the Hon David Cunliffe claiming that the Ingram report into the activities of Taito Phillip Field was an authoritative report because it had been written by a Queen’s Counsel. He refused to ask the hard questions. He refused to ask the question why, for example, the group manager of service international, who had recently been appointed to his department—a fellow called Kerupi Tavita—had failed to blow the whistle on the activities of Taito Phillip Field, when Kerupi Tavita had been advised on several occasions by the branch manager in Samoa of what was going on. David Cunliffe refused to ask the hard questions.

And what do we have now? Because the Opposition asked the hard questions, we now have Taito Phillip Field facing 12 charges of bribery and corruption and 25 charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The Minister in the chair, Clayton Cosgrove, claimed that the Ingram report, which supposedly investigated all of this and found that nothing actually wrong—nothing criminal—was going on, was an authoritative report because it had been written by a Queen’s Counsel.

He was just an Associate Minister at the time; the Minister was the Hon David Cunliffe. I come to the next scandal under David Cunliffe’s watch. Colleagues should not forget that it was David Cunliffe who told this Parliament that he was running the show now. Do members remember that when he took over the health portfolio, he stood in this Chamber and said: “I am running this show,”? Was he running the show when he was Minister of Immigration just before that? Just after the Ingram report came out in July 2005, the Chemis inquiry report was completed. The Chemis inquiry was also about this fellow called Kerupi Tavita, who heads the international service division. That is the part of the Immigration Service that, as the Minister will confirm, covers refugee decisions and the Pacific division. He was taken over to Immigration New Zealand by Mary Anne Thompson, whom we have all heard about, because she used to work with him in the Prime Minister’s department. Helen Clark seems to have had some very interesting people working in her department.

When Kerupi Tavita went over there, he established the Pacific division, and he contracted a person called Mai Malaulau to head it up. When Kerupi Tavita got there, he approved the payment of $400 for a gift to himself, which was against Immigration New Zealand policy. He also approved the payment of thousands of dollars to Mai Malaulau, whom he had contracted to run the Pacific division for 1,000 bucks a day. Her contract specifically excluded the payment of expenses, yet Kerupi Tavita authorised the payment of expenses to her on top of the $1,000 a day.

What did David Cunliffe do about that? He was the Minister of Immigration. He took over in September 2005, just after the Chemis report was made available. What did David Cunliffe do about it—the guy who was running the show? What did he do about the fact that the group manager of service international was approving payments that were totally unlawful in his department?

That was not the end of it. Just after the Chemis report came out, and Kerupi Tavita said: “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have approved those payments. They weren’t correct. They were actually not legal. I shouldn’t have done it.”—at the very time that he acknowledged that he had approved payments that should not have been made—he was flat out approving payments to his new executive assistant, Ms Visesio-Skelton.

I would like to speak to Vote Immigration, because the immigration bill to be debated in the House soon, when it comes back from the select committee, is often promoted as streamlining processes and saving the public money. To some extent that is true, but there are other procedures that will cost the taxpayer a lot of money, and I just want to spend time on a couple. One relates particularly to the situations of Iranian Christian converts from Islam, where the taxpayer has had to bear the cost of their spending long periods in jail—nearly 4 years for Amir Mohebbi, and around 2 years for Thomas Yadegary and Ali Panah.

These people are now either accepted in society, or are out on bail with their cases being further considered. At least it is good they have bail, because it then does not cost $65,000—or whatever—a year to keep those people in a penal institution, and it is quite unjust when those people, the Christian converts from Islam, generally have not actually committed any crimes. But if the changes to the bill go through in this Parliament, when someone like Thomas Yadegary comes before the judge for a bail application, the lawyer for him will not be able to claim exceptional circumstances such as that the person has been in jail for, say, 2 years. Essentially the bill tries to construct a code to restrain judges from giving bail. It is not only costly to the State but very unjust, and to me it seems to offend against at least the principle of habeas corpus. One could say the detention is legal, but when it is indefinite it will be essentially indefinite detention for people who have committed no crime other than, in the case of the converts from Islam, of not signing a passport application to be sent back to Iran where, in the present circumstances, they are likely to be persecuted in one way or another. The Iranian Parliament is discussing a law for the death penalty for apostasy—for those not being loyal to Islam, the religion of their birth—and recently there were people sentenced on other charges to be stoned to death. Of course the situation varies from one part of Iran to another, but it is a dangerous place for a Christian convert from Islam to go back to. So the Greens are quite concerned about that.

In spite of the streamlining of appeal procedures in this bill, it sets up a greater structure for the use of secret and classified information. It allows 14 different Government agencies to claim that their particular information is classified; the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the Ministry of Corrections, the Police, or whatever, can all claim information is classified when, under the old legislation, it was essentially intelligence from intelligence agencies and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security that was involved in the process.

I think this can lead to greater injustice, because what worse injustice is there than having one’s whole future affected in an immigration sense without knowing the details of the charges against one? Sure, there is a requirement, for the most part, for people so affected to be given a summary of the accusations against them, but, for fairness, they need to have a whole lot more information than that, not just a summary of the allegations. Even though there is provision in the bill for a special advocate to be appointed to advocate on behalf of the person, that special advocate cannot talk to the person he or she is defending after the special advocate is in receipt of classified information; communication can be in writing via the judge. If that situation were translated to a normal criminal trial it would be like the defence lawyer being able to communicate with the defendant only through the judge—a very unsatisfactory procedure. Information critical of the procedure was given to the select committee by Stuart Grieve, who was the special advocate in the only case where there has been a special advocate so far—the Ahmed Zaoui case.

I want the Minister of Immigration to tell us what he is going to do about the shambolic state within Immigration New Zealand, where his group manager of service international was investigated for appointing a business associate to head up the Pacific division, and where he approved payments for that person that appear to have been not totally lawful. At the time it was found that he was approving those payments, he carried on approving payments to his executive assistant for things like luxury hotels, rental cars, and even a flat-screen TV and a DVD player. The group manager approved those payments after he had been caught out approving payments to Mai Malaulau that she should not have received.

Then we have the daddy of them all. Not long after all of that was going on, we had the Oughton inquiry into the scandal surrounding the granting of residence to family members of Mary Anne Thompson. Again, the reports on those matters came out in April and August, under the watch of the Minister who says he runs the show, David Cunliffe.

I want that Minister one day to tell us what, in the Oughton report, was just an employment matter. David Oughton made three recommendations. The first of those recommendations was that those people who had missed out on residence because of unlawful decision-making needed to have their cases considered. Only the Minister could do that, so what has that to do with an employment matter? The second recommendation was that a protocol was needed to deal with the issue of family members of staff in Immigration New Zealand making applications that had to be considered. What has that to do with an employment matter? That is a matter that requires the consideration of the development of a protocol for an important function. Thirdly, the Oughton report said there was a wider problem of managers directing staff members to make decisions that were outside of policy—in other words, to make unlawful decisions. What does that have to do with a specific employment matter? So there we have the three recommendations of the Oughton inquiry. There was nothing to do with an employment matter, and David Cunliffe, the Minister who was briefed on that inquiry, claimed it was just an employment matter.

I want the current Minister, who has had to cover up for his predecessor, David Cunliffe, to tell us why the department fought to keep the Oughton report secret. The department fought for months to stop that report becoming public, and if it had not become public no one would have known about the unlawful decision-making and about the involvement of all those people who are still in Immigration New Zealand: the group manager of service international, who approved all those illegal payments and who was involved in the whole scandal around Mary Anne Thompson, and Mai Malaulau. Those people are still operating in Immigration New Zealand, and their actions would have all been covered up if Immigration New Zealand had not been forced, under the Official Information Act, to release the Oughton report.

The saga I have just outlined, that series of absolutely scandalous goings-on in Immigration New Zealand, deserves some answers. I know that the Minister will say there is an inquiry being made into the Pacific division, but one of the key people at the centre of all those scandals, Mr Kerupi Tavita, is not just the manager of the Pacific division but also group manager of service international, which includes the whole refugee section of Immigration New Zealand. How do we know that he has not applied his same scandalous management to the whole refugee sector? How do we know there have not been the same outrageous decisions—in fact, what have now turned out to be unlawful decisions—going on within the refugee section of Immigration New Zealand? Kerupi Tavita does not just head up the Pacific division; he covers the entire refugee decision-making process as well as the Pacific division.

I think the Minister should tell us today whether the inquiry will cover all of the activities of Mr Kerupi Tavita, because clearly he has been involved in decision making under his responsibility that is quite unlawful. He approved unlawful payments, and what is so bad is that when it was pointed out to him that he was approving unlawful payments he went on doing that. He went on approving them to his executive assistant after the Chemis report pointed out that he should not have been approving the payments to his head of the Pacific division, Mai Malaulau.

There is a series of scandals there, and I want the Minister to tell this Committee whether the inquiry will go wider than just the Pacific division of Immigration New Zealand.

I will deal with a couple of things. Mr Locke’s contribution may have been less animated than others but it asked some valid questions. Mr Locke raised some issues in respect of the new immigration bill and expressed some scepticism, perhaps, at its aims and objectives. I say to him that he is right. Many of the aims and objectives of that bill deal with the efficiency and the streamlining of the whole immigration process, but they are not brought about at the expense of the abrogation of people’s human rights or the contraction of those rights. For instance, we have a unified tribunal but that does not mean that the claims of rights that people—refugees or whatever—can engage in are somehow disposed of. No, they can go through the same claim for various types of status, but it is dealt with, if you like—and I paraphrase in an efficient way—by one authority. That, I think, is logical.

I note that Mr Locke has made some claims about dawn raids and immigration staff being given the power to enter premises. I say to Mr Locke, without being provocative, that that is inflammatory language. I know from when I was the Associate Minister that there were rules, and raids or interventions outside of a particular set of hours had to be approved by the Minister. I say to Mr Locke that raids have occurred as long as I have been an Associate Minister and Minister—and, prior to that, Ministers ad infinitum—and, in my view, there have not been the sort of instances that Mr Locke is fearful of. He is right to raise them, but people act appropriately.

I have to say to Mr Locke, in summary, that we need to give communities the confidence that we are bringing in the right people—and we will come to Mr Smith’s comments in a moment—and that confidence can be engendered only if the communities know that we are preventing the bad guys from getting in, and also removing those folk who should not be here. But removals and raids have been going on under this Government appropriately, with appropriate interventions. We have not seen the language—which is bluntly scaremongering—of dawn raids and people’s rights being thrown out the window, which Mr Locke rightly raised and which he is fearful of, but which I think is hyped up under this Government and under this administration. I can give the member assurance that the ability to approach the Ombudsmen and Privacy Commissioner, and to appeal to courts—all those legal privileges and rights—is still preserved. But, as we have, to put it bluntly, seen certain individuals pull the wool over our eyes in terms of their status, it is appropriate that they are dealt with efficiently.

I reiterate to Mr Locke, in respect of his comments in relation to those who may be fearful of returning to places and who believe they may be subject to death or to torture or whatever, this point. There is some scepticism over those people—I think this issue was raised by a member of this House—who somehow convert to Christianity when they are on board the aircraft or going via the departure or exit lounge, or whatever, and so are en route to New Zealand. I must confess to being an old Irish Catholic myself. It took my parents and me a wee bit to get the baptismal font organised and ensure that I was an appropriate person in front of the deity to be considered to be a Catholic—that took a few years.

I think it is right for the Immigration Service to be a little sceptical of those who rush across our border, claim some particular status—some divine intervention from above—and then say: “Please don’t return me.” The question is how we test that. I think that is an issue that Mr Locke has raised. We are guided ultimately by the advice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. If the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says, to put it crudely, “Do not return”, the Immigration Service makes a judgment on that—even in relation to Iran, and even though Iran has a repugnant piece of legislation before its Parliament. We are reliant on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which tells us that there are certain countries that we should not remove folk to. But we cannot stick a finger in the air and say that because the person is a nice person, because we have heard good things about him or her, and because certain folk have different views on his or her status, we should abrogate all the appeal processes and review processes and let that person out, let that person come to New Zealand, and then let that person stay. If that is the case, there is no point in having legislation. So we do have regard for some of our world-class processes in making those assessments. People may not agree with those assessments, but we are reliant on external agencies like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the like.

I come to Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith’s dissertation in relation to matters pertaining to the goings-on in the Immigration Service. The member has asked what the Minister in the chair—that is me—will do about these things. The member keeps prattling on about the Oughton report. I will reiterate, in small sentences, for him what I was told in respect of the Oughton report on 14 December 2007, when I was first briefed. I was briefed that there was an independent investigation into historic employment matters. I was briefed that the report concluded that Mary Anne Thompson—[Interruption] I am telling the member. He asked me what I was briefed on; I am telling him. The report concluded that Mary Anne Thompson had not sought to influence decisions about her family members’ residence applications, and that disciplinary action had been taken against another Department of Labour employee. The member has constantly—for weeks on end—said: “What about the Oughton report? Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that?” Well, as I have said to the member, my first sighting of the Oughton report was when it was publicly released on 24 April.

There are a number of things that I will concede to the member have been legitimately raised. There have been some very concerning things about the individual that he has spoken about—things that happened historically. I would note that in the example he raises of Mr Tavita—the member will also concede this, I am sure—the individual personal assistant was prosecuted and dealt with in the courts. I say this to the member about what is being done. With Chris Blake, as the new chief executive, and myself as the new Minister at the time, there are now four robust inquiries taking place. The member raised a good point. He asked whether the activities of service international—the other activities centred around the example he used—will be encompassed and be examined by the Pacific review, and by the chief executive’s inquires. I say to the member that I am advised they will. I say it is a fair question that the member raises. Those activities will be examined. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I have confidence that the new chief executive will examine all or any processes that are called into question. That is the appropriate action of a chief executive. I believe that Chris Blake acted absolutely appropriately, and, as I have said time and time again, on 14 December when he advised me, he had already engaged the State Services Commission, as I have advised the member. Post that, he got legal advice in respect of whether he could reopen matters about Mary Anne Thompson, if he had a mind to—I think, a very appropriate action to take.

I have asked for an Auditor-General’s inquiry. I said to him, when I had an informal meeting with him, that his inquiry should go far, wide, deep, and high. He is unfettered in his inquiries, and in his terms of reference, and that is why I recommended to the Prime Minister that we engage his services.

Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith: Is David Cunliffe as cooperative?

I say to Dr Smith that I think it is on the public record that the Auditor-General will be interviewing Ministers, including myself. I welcome it, I look forward to it. I am happy to put my hand on the Bible as part of it. I am advised that other Ministers in our Government whom the Auditor-General wishes to speak to will be available and will cooperate. That is what the public would expect.

There is also, of course, the State Services Commission inquiry, and that will look at a series of other matters. There is also a police inquiry that the member is aware of. In terms of what is going to happen, and what is being done about it, I tell the member that we have a litany of inquiries that will look at this organisation. But I would say, as Dr Smith—to use a military term—sprays and prays with the sort of political bullets he is firing at the department, that this is a department that has 1,200 staff. I will put my hand on my heart and say I believe that the overwhelming majority of those folk are damn good, honest, honourable public servants. I will not engage in political spray and pray. Those people deal with over half a million decisions annually and with over 350 million border crossings, and the very nature of immigration is that even if we had an ideal world, there would still be allegations flying around. That is the nature of those who try to penetrate our borders. That is the nature of some of the stakeholders, nefarious as some are, who deal with immigration. That is the nature of the portfolio. But I just offer the comment that the overwhelming majority of those 1,200 staff are good, honest, honourable people. It is a bit like politics, is it not? If there is one bad politician, we are all a pack of mongrels in the eyes of the public. That is the way it goes. It happens in all occupations.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: You can’t talk about Rodney like that.

I would not deal with the camp entertainment officer from Hi-de-Hi!. I say that we should respect the institution that is the Immigration Service. But I also agree with the member that all inquiries should examine all facets, identify wrongdoing, and cut it out.

Vote agreed to.

The question now is that Vote Sport and Recreation stand part. I call the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I have had to rejig a whole lot of meetings late this afternoon because I understand I am to be involved as a Minister in respect of the estimates shortly. Is there any chance of my being heard pretty soon so I can get back to meetings; if so, does anybody have any objections to that?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): What vote did the member wish to speak to?

Well, I do not—I am told that other members of the Committee have intimated they want to have a discussion on Vote Racing.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Obviously, the Committee is the master of its own destiny.

The National member who wished to take a call on Vote Racing is no longer here this afternoon, so unfortunately we will not be taking a call on Vote Racing this evening.

💬 Hon Members: Oh!

I have alerted the whips about this.

Well, thank you for the courtesy of telling me! I have been down here three times this afternoon.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I have been notified that the Greens may take a call on Vote Racing. If they do so, then the Minister will need to be here.

They are not taking a call on Vote Racing.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): In that case, Minister, you are free.

I do not want to have any special privileges, Mr Chairperson—

💬 Keith Locke: Yes, we are taking a call on Vote Racing.

If that is the case, can the debate on Vote Racing be held soon, please.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The Minister is quite entitled to seek leave to—

I seek leave to have the debate held when the Green member gets down here.

Mr Chairperson, I have to check on the speaker’s availability. I cannot just say offhand.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can I suggest that the two members get together and organise that in the next 5 or 10 minutes.

Mr Chairperson, I said “subject to the Green member being able to be down here”, which means that if she can get down here and it is OK with Mr Locke, who is looking after the affairs in the Committee now, then we can expedite this issue.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): That is fine. Is there any objection to that course of action being taken if it is agreed to? [Interruption] He is going to come back first? We need to wait until it is organised; it should not take too long.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The point that we made when we were speaking to the point of order—[Interruption] Sit down, junior.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The member will be seated. There is no need for that, Mr Heatley. That leads to disorder in the House, on both sides, and I have to deal with it. The member will be seated. The point of order will be short and to the point.

The point we are making is that clearly the Greens and New Zealand First have to talk about whether the Green speaker is available when the Minister wants to be in the Chamber. So our suggestion is that the Minister seek leave when he knows that that is the case and the Greens are happy with it. So rather than seek leave now and have us make a decision now, could the member seek leave when he knows that the Greens are available? That is our point. Otherwise, we do not object.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I understand that that is what will happen.

It is a sad thing in this House when people cannot understand English and they therefore deny themselves the chance, albeit for a brief time in their political lives, to cooperate. It was a very reasonable request. I used the words “subject to the availability of the Green member”.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I thank the member. I understand that that discussion is taking place now.

Vote Sport and Recreation agreed to.

Vote Courts