Immigration Bill

Well, there are no speakers from the Government, so I am happy to stand and speak in favour of this legislation, and to remind the Committee that Part 10 deals with offences, penalties, and proceedings. Clause 305, which is at the very beginning of Part 10, deals with the provision of false or misleading information. I have a couple of stories to tell.

One of the features of clause 305 is that it is carried forward from the current legislation. In other words, the existing law states that one may not provide false or misleading information. That is why, presumably, when New Zealand Immigration Service officials were investigating the case of Mr Bakshi and they sought from him financial information concerning his businesses in order to ascertain whether they were small, medium, large, or, indeed, very small or miniscule, he gave them the wrong business information, not in a misleading way but simply by way of signalling that he would not give them the correct information. In other words, being aware of the danger of providing false information, he decided to provide none at all.

Regrettably, not all of Mr Bakshi’s friends were as savvy as he was. One of them, Bhavdeep Dhillon, has claimed, not to the police or to immigration officials but to the media, so legally it does not count, that he never took part in any heavying of folk in India, of the original complainant against Mr Bakshi, or, for that matter, of the Indian police officials who became involved in the case at higher and higher levels. Regrettably, one such person in India has his phone number recorded, and that can only be because he received a telephone call. That person has said in an affidavit, which the police do have, that the purpose of that call was to raise merry hell and cause the original complainant to fall silent. That is why, in December of last year, when the original complainant was contacted by immigration officials who asked whether they could have a chat with him, he said he had nothing to say and was completely happy. He said there was nothing to answer, there were no problems, and his complaint of only 2 months previously was not one that he wished to pursue. The complainant had been leaned on hard, and he had been leaned on by the Indian police as well as by phone calls from New Zealand. That is an interesting example of what may be false or misleading information, but, for it to be so, Bhavdeep Dhillon would need to repeat the remarks that he made to the press to immigration officials and, presumably, also to the police.

Then there is the situation where information does not come forward at all. Of course, the original complainant is the classic case of that, but so too is the Indian gentleman from Tauranga who put the original complaint in front of Television New Zealand just before the election. He did not have anything to say to immigration officials either. He was terrified, and the only reason those people are saying anything now is that they have come to believe that things cannot go bad for them because New Zealand’s processes are somewhat more trustworthy than the processes they are used to back home. They have developed the confidence to make their various remarks and to give their various interviews—video interviews included—to New Zealand Immigration Service officials, and those have been passed on to the police.

With those remarks about offences, penalties, proceedings, and the importance of not providing false or misleading information, I say that I think Part 10 should proceed, but I am aware that my colleague Darien Fenton will, when the time arises, wish to make her remarks.

In a departure from the previous member’s offering, I will talk about Part 10. Although it may have been ruled to be within the Standing Orders, I personally do not feel that his contribution had any relevance to Part 10, and neither was his offering prior to the last speech relevant to Part 9. I am sure that is a debating point that members may wish to take up with me.

I want to talk about the three areas of Part 10 that deal with compliance with the obligations and the offences for not doing so.

💬 Grant Robertson: Stand up.

That is a cheap shot. In particular, I wish to talk about that provision where it relates to employers. As we know, the 1987 legislation placed similar obligations on the employer to not knowingly employ a non-citizen who was not entitled to work in New Zealand. The nuances of the obligation have been changed. The things that are deemed to be reasonable excuses, and therefore defences to an offence under Part 10, have changed, taking out the issue of whether the IR330 tax code declaration form constitutes a reasonable excuse for employers to be able to say the employee gave them an IR330 and therefore as employers they did all they needed to do to establish whether the person was legitimately entitled to work in this country, and therefore they are OK.

When submitting on the bill at the select committee, employers expressed some disquiet about whether that would impose some extra burden on them. I think the committee has very reasonably reassured employers that that will not be the case, and that the requirements that employers need to meet in order to establish a defence are not necessarily onerous. As a former employer, one who from time to time employed people who were not New Zealand passport holders but who were otherwise entitled to both live and work in New Zealand, I can add that there really is no reason for employers to be worried about this part. There are some quite simple things that can be done in order to establish whether a person can be entitled to work here.

I am also interested in the Department of Labour and in the enabling provisions that I think in the future will enable the department to develop an online system so that employers can go online and find out whether a foreign national is legitimately entitled to work in New Zealand. That is a really good example of the technologies that can be used to streamline the process around immigration. We have heard of a few examples in earlier debates on other parts; this is another one, and I support it.

We also talked in earlier debates in the Committee stage about the obligation on airlines to establish whether a person is legitimately entitled to travel to New Zealand. Of course, this part imposes some fines on the carrier for a failure to do that. I think there are some very good provisions in here that employers do not need to be worried about, and I certainly support this part.

I will address Part 10, and particularly the provisions on offences by employers. I acknowledge what my colleague across the Chamber has said, because he is right about the fact that we spent a lot of time on this proposal in the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We looked at whether there were alternative means by which employers could get the information through the Inland Revenue Department. As Michael Woodhouse has pointed out, we went to some lengths in our report to reassure employers about this provision. The whole integrity of our immigration system is affected by how we treat workers whom we bring to New Zealand to work for us and whom we need to fill the skills gaps during the good times. It is also affected by how we treat them when we do not need them.

I talked about this issue in my second reading speech on this bill. I mentioned a particular circumstance that is occurring at the moment and said I hoped that the Minister was keeping a watching brief on the workers who were brought here to work in the telecommunications industry. They were brought here under work permits, promised jobs, and told that this was a great place to come. They gave up good employment in the Philippines, where they had rights that they do not have here. I will get to that issue in a minute. They have been caught up in an industrial dispute whereby Telecom, through its contractor Visionstream, has decided that those workers should no longer be employed as employees and should become owner-operators. Migrant workers who are on work permits are unable to take that offer up, because they would have to go on to business migrant permits, and they are not able to do that. People cannot transfer from one type of permit to another. What is going on with regard to those people at the moment is an absolute tragedy.

Three Filipino telecommunications workers in Nelson were in that situation this week. It is just a tragic story. Again, I say those people were encouraged to come and work in New Zealand by Transfield Services, which is an Australian operator, and to migrate to Nelson to fill a skills shortage that we had here. Of course, they have been made redundant by Transfield Services, which, as I have said, is an Australian company. They have been made redundant with just 4 weeks’ pay, even though it is an Australian company and if they were in Australia they would have had minimum redundancy protection—they would have received minimum redundancy pay. From the 4 weeks’ pay, those workers have had to buy their tickets home. Because they have been laid off, they are not entitled to anything, so they are sitting in a house in Blenheim, unsure about how they will feed themselves for the next 4 weeks while they wait to go back to the Philippines.

One of those workers, a guy called Librado Andales, said he had left a good job in the Philippines that he had held for 14 years in order to come to New Zealand 2 years ago. It was his first time abroad, and he was encouraged to believe that this was a good place to bring his children and raise them. He said it was far from his imagination that New Zealand would bring someone to do a skilled migrant’s job and then have that person face this awful situation.

Transfield Services brought in 300 to 400 skilled migrants.

💬 Simon Bridges: Give us some hand movements!

It is not funny, actually. It is a real tragedy for those people.

💬 Simon Bridges: Oh, come on!

I will report the member’s sympathy back to them. It is a really, really awful situation. I have been spending some time with the migrant action group in Auckland, as has Jackie Blue. She assured them at the last meeting that I was at that she would be asking the Minister to be more flexible when it comes to workers on work permits who are being laid off, but I have not seen any evidence of that. I think members will find that the migrant action group has quite a lot to say in coming months about what we need to do regarding this issue. It is fine to bring migrant workers here when we need them: when we have a lack of skilled workers. It is fine to have, in Part 10 of the bill, provisions around exploitation. But it is not fine to send those workers back with nothing, and to leave them sitting in a house for 4 weeks while they cannot feed themselves and cannot feed their families, because we have nothing that looks after those workers.

Obviously, we support Part 10 of the bill. The exploitation provisions are very, very important, and immigrants deserve to have the minimum requirements that we have in New Zealand under the Holidays Act, the minimum wage, and the other things that we believe are absolutely fundamental. But, as I said, I think we really need to think seriously in this House, and the Minister in the chair, the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman, needs to think—I would welcome his contribution on this—about the people that we have invited here to do jobs that we cannot find New Zealanders to do. We put those workers on the scrap heap and send them home with nothing. I think that is very bad not only for the workers and their families, including their children who have been going to school here, but also for New Zealand’s reputation. I would encourage the Minister to respond to that. Thank you.

It really behoves me to comment on the offering of the previous member who spoke, Darien Fenton. In fact, it was a case of very nearly taking a point of order on whether that was relevant.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: You’re so good at those!

Well, members know I am a bit new and fresh, a bit wet behind the ears, a shrinking violet, and not very confident when it comes to these things. Despite that, and I am sure the senior whip for the Opposition would be able to endorse this, that speech was so far outside Standing Order 107, which is about relevancy, that I was waiting for him to stand up and take a point of order on it. Every single one of the examples that the member talked about was of people who are legitimately entitled to be here under their work permits. How on earth people who were legitimately entitled to be here are somehow subject to the provisions of Part 10 absolutely defies logic. But Darien Fenton has defied logic before, and I am sure she will do it again. We are getting pretty used to it. We get a tired mantra around workers’ rights, and somehow the member continues to be able to spin absolutely anything that she has to say around that subject.

Part 10, in particular clauses 314 and 315, talks specifically about the rights of workers even though they might not be legitimately entitled to work in New Zealand. I thought that if that member wanted to say anything about this issue, it would have been around the fact that if workers are not legitimately entitled to work—even if employers have taken reasonable steps to ascertain whether the workers are entitled or if they have committed an offence under Part 10 of this bill—employers are still required to, and responsible for, treating their employees fairly, and required to apply the provisions of the Holidays Act and the Minimum Wage Act. Really, that speech was something of an irrelevant diatribe, and I think we should stick to our knitting when it comes to Part 10.

It is a great privilege to take a call in this debate on the Immigration Bill.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: For us!

For all of the Committee. I say to Darien Fenton that I thought she made a worthy—not exactly statesmanlike, but worthy—contribution to the debate. It did not have the touches of brilliance that Cam Calder’s earlier speech had, I have to say. For that she would have needed to use a little more hand movement, some alliteration, and some onomatopoeia. But it was pretty good.

I will come at the bill from first principles and say this. I enjoyed greatly taking immigration law at the Auckland University law school—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: You went to polytech!

We did not have a polytech where one could study law back then. If we had, I probably would have done that. It was a great experience. I learnt that immigration law is a complex area of law. I want to say this bill does a very good job of simplifying the law, making it stronger, more flexible, and giving us an enduring framework going forward. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 32 in the name of the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman to Part 10 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.