Immigration Act 2009 Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Immigration: I move, That the Immigration Act 2009 Amendment Bill be now read a third time. Once again, I thank honourable members for their generosity of spirit in facilitating the expeditious passage of this bill.

Can I simply say that during the Committee stage an issue arose about the appointment of the tribunal. My understanding is that those particular matters have barely advanced, so we will get on with that now. This bill is looking as though it will pass. This bill is an important bill, though a very specific one, and it will help the implementation process by ensuring that certain implementation tasks can be done in advance of what could be called the “go live” date of the commencement of the bill.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Such modern language.

My response to the chief Opposition whip is to tell him to get with it. It is time to move on. One cannot live in the past all the time.

I will not go through section 474 in any great detail, because there are certain things the Governor-General has to do—for example, appoint members, including the chair, to the tribunal. The Prime Minister has to do certain things, the Minister has to do certain things, and the Attorney-General has to do certain things with the chair of the tribunal, like agree on any general practices and procedures that may be necessary in relation to proceedings involving classified information heard by the tribunal, which could be a very important matter once the tribunal gets under way. Then I have to agree with the Chief Justice on any general practices and procedures that may be necessary for other proceedings involving classified information provisions.

There is a lot of practical work that needs to done, and that is why we need to get on with it as quickly as we can, why the Immigration Act 2009 Amendment Bill has been needed, and why I have come down to the House in sackcloth and ashes to accept blame on behalf of the Government. I will flagellate myself later on, and then I will go to confession. There we have it; a mistake was made, and I have manfully and with some courage accepted it. Now, having accepted it, we move on, as I am exhorted to by the chief Government whip. I commend the bill to the House.

If only there were more moments like this in the House. I want to extend—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Nick Smith could learn a thing or two.

Yes, Nick Smith could learn a thing or two, absolutely. I want to extend the parliamentary olive branch to the Minister, the Hon Christopher Finlayson, who has been even more gracious than I think all of us expected him to be. Like myself, he went to a Catholic school—a second-rate one in Silverstream, as opposed to St Bede’s—but I have to say that he has acted—

💬 Hon Christopher Finlayson: St Pat’s Town.

Sorry, it was St Patrick’s College, Wellington. I apologise. The late Gerry Mills would be looking down in shame. I say that the Minister has acted gracefully and with a high degree of honour. We hope that he will not return to his office in the dead of night and flagellate himself, as he said he would.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: He promised.

He promised he would. Indeed, it may be appropriate that instead of the Minister flagellating himself, perhaps the Leader of the House, who has made many, many more mistakes than this Minister, may take up that sort of biblical challenge as another Marist old boy of St Bede’s. Perhaps Mr Finlayson, in giving Mr Brownlee some lessons in House management and legislative management, may also give him some lessons in self-flagellation.

This is relatively benign legislation. I note that the debate has been conducted with a degree of good humour, apart from—and I have to say this, as I will not let it pass—some very derogatory comments made by a member of this Chamber, that bastion of principle, Mr Garrett, about members’ partners, relationships, and families. He would be the only person in a debate like this, where there is a little jocularity and good humour but a degree of scrutiny, who would lower himself to that level and bring the debate down into the gutter, from where he seems to slither from time to time.

In respect of the Green member, I know his points are heartfelt in respect of the human rights aspects of the Immigration Act itself and this amendment to it. I simply reiterate the points I made to him before. I agree with him that when people cross our border in a genuine fashion, perhaps as genuine converts to religion, and enter New Zealand in fear of their lives if they return to their country of origin, I believe that our past immigration processes, inefficient as some of them were, and the new Act would allow the Minister and the department, on evidence, to act in a humanitarian fashion. The member who laughs has little experience in immigration matters. It is appropriate that the relevant Government agencies scrutinise the veracity, or lack of it, of an applicant.

Mr Locke asked how we will know that the UN will always get it right, and that is a good point. He then went on to quote Amnesty International, which I have great respect for as a non-governmental organisation but which I would put in a second order of priority after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. I put it back on Mr Locke and ask him how we know that Amnesty International and other non-governmental organisations that do not have the ability, the intelligence capability, and the intelligence agencies that the UN, Governments, and other Crown agencies have are able to make those judgments. I put that back to him, because maybe he has a crystal ball that many of us in this Chamber do not have. Maybe he can judge the righteousness, or lack of it, of those who choose to take advantage of our humanitarian Kiwi spirit. Maybe he can judge that through some sort of crystal ball that we do not have.

💬 Shane Ardern: Divine intervention.

Maybe that is the case. Mr Finlayson, being a pillar of the Catholic Church, may rise to his feet and elucidate on that purpose. But in all seriousness, this comes down to Ministers, whether they be Labour or National or any other flavour in this House, who sit in the chair of the Minister of Immigration, being forced to make judgments on the veracity, or lack of veracity, of cases. Mr Locke seems to have taken my comments to heart, as if I am saying that we should be sceptical of anybody who crosses our borders and makes a claim. No, we should question, we should seek evidence, and then we should make judgments. But as Minister of Immigration I never accepted pressure from groups based on a lack of knowledge and a lack of evidence. It is not enough to say that somebody is a pillar of a church. I am a Catholic and I do not think I am a pillar of my church, but I think I have to be judged, perhaps, on evidence. It is not enough to say that somebody is a good bloke. It is not enough to say that that person has been incarcerated for a number of years by their own choice, I say to Mr Locke.

In one of the cases that he talked about, the incarceration of that person was that person’s choice. That person could have ended his or her incarceration. I recall those cases. Ministers of Immigration must be guided by international agencies. Maybe the UN has changed its mind, but when I was in the chair, and perhaps until recently, the UN took a far different view on Iran than Keith Locke did at the time. I think we may have discussed this at the time, over a number of cases.

Our job as a Parliament, as a Minister of Immigration, as an Opposition spokesperson, as a constituent, or as a list member of Parliament representing those nationals who wish to take advantage of our Kiwi humanity is to make judgments on evidence, and to represent them on evidence. But at the end of the day—and Mr Finlayson has to bite the bullet on this one tonight—Ministers and Government agencies have to bite the bullet and sometimes make unpalatable decisions. Maybe Mr Locke has the view that we should open our borders and, without evidence, accept all those people who come across them. Well, I have to say to Mr Locke that there are some bad people in the world, some people are a threat to our borders and the borders of other countries, and it is our duty as a Parliament and as a Government to ensure that our citizenry first, and our border first, is secured.

With those comments, the Labour Opposition, as we have said throughout the debate, will support this legislation. We wrote most of the Immigration Bill; National passed it. We supported it. We believe in the bill and the consequential amendments, and in Mr Finlayson’s cast-iron, rock-solid, pot-riveted guarantee that we will not be back here on the Tuesday after Easter Monday, or after the adjournment, in urgency correcting another mistake made by Mr Coleman, “The Maestro” of the Parliament. I am sad that Kate Wilkinson, the Associate Minister of Immigration, who has some oversight for this area, has not taken a call, but it may well happen. She may do something that is completely out of character for her—front up, grit her teeth, and take some responsibility.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: Not a chance.

I will not be taking up Mr Hughes’ wager on that.

I conclude by congratulating the Minister. He has treated this issue with a high degree of seriousness, as we all have. He has been magnanimous and said that he will look at the Parliamentary Counsel Office, talk with its drafters, and make recommendations to perhaps stop the error from happening again. As I say, after 22 or 23 versions of the Supplementary Order Paper going through, still we had errors.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: A Nick Smith special.

The member says it is a Nick Smith special. I am not quite sure what he means by that, and I will leave that to Mr Hughes. But Mr Hughes did make a very pertinent comment in respect of the conduct of the Minister, Mr Finlayson, being gracious and honourable, and his preparing to take responsibility. There are one or two members—one, Dr Nick Smith, sits opposite me—who could indeed, as Mr Hughes said, learn from Mr Finlayson’s example. There is no politics in this; it is one of those rare moments in this House when, in that old-fashioned Westminster tradition, a Minister will come down to the Chamber and not blame his officials, not blame anybody else, but actually grit his teeth and say he is responsible. The ground-breaking thing that has happened tonight is that Mr Finlayson is not actually the responsible Minister. He has ridden the horse very well tonight as Attorney-General, but he is not the responsible Minister.

I pay tribute to and congratulate Dr Coleman, who could not be here. I am not breaching the Standing Orders by saying that. He has a very good reason for not being here, with his wife having had a child this evening, and we congratulate him on that. That, obviously, was not a mistake. We look forward to further debates with Dr Coleman, and I look forward to Mr Finlayson in the future, as Attorney-General, implementing those strategies, plans, and procedures to streamline the legislative process. Along with Mr Finlayson, I commend the bill to the House.

I think the Immigration Act 2009 Amendment Bill has generated better debate than I had expected, and I welcome the contributions from various members—Clayton Cosgrove, Darien Fenton, and Chris Finlayson—in that respect. I do not disagree too much with the framework that Clayton Cosgrove outlined in the last speech, because I too believe that immigration decisions should be based very much on the evidence at hand. But it is important to pull in all of the evidence possible and not rely on one bit of evidence.

Clayton Cosgrove said the United Nations’ evidence might be the highest form of evidence. I do not think that is always the case, particularly because, as anyone who studies the United Nations knows, it is balancing competing interests and operating in a certain geopolitical reality. One of the key features of the Iranian situation is the tens of thousands of refugees it receives, particularly from Afghanistan; the UN is very grateful that the Iranian Government allows those refugees to be hosted on its soil. That could colour the UN’s decisions on the danger to Christian converts from Islam. I think the other evidence that we consider in making these decisions—and I am using this one as an illustration in the context of this bill—is what happens in Iran. The Lower House of the Iranian Parliament is actually debating and passing a law that says that Christian converts from Islam can be executed—not just imprisoned but executed. “Apostates” is the term that they use. Our embassy in Tehran could gather evidence. Under the 1951 refugee convention, we are supposed to collect evidence and make our independent judgment on whether people returned to a country will actually be persecuted—not just do what the UN, or whatever organisation it is, says. We have to look at all the evidence. Our embassy in Tehran could gather evidence. Also, it is important to look at the evidence provided by the Catholic Church, because it has people in Iran. It has a big international network to gather evidence. It has been involved in campaigning to stop people like the people we have talked about tonight being returned to possible persecution in Iran.

I realised as the discussion went on that there is a common bond between me, Chris Finlayson, and Clayton Cosgrove. Mr Cosgrove referred to St Bede’s College, and I taught two terms at St Bede’s College many years ago. I think it was before Clayton Cosgrove arrived. I do not think I could have controlled a young, fourth-form Clayton Cosgrove. He is bad enough when he is this age.

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I feel that it is appropriate to confirm for the House that Keith Locke never taught me at St Bede’s.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy): That is not a point of order.

Thank you, and I thank Clayton Cosgrove for that point of order.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: No, thank God!

Thank God! That was my only problem at St Bede’s—I did not have God on my side in the way that the priests did in disciplining rather rough fourth-formers and third-formers, but there we are.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating in a lot of refugee cases. Clayton Cosgrove and I may ultimately agree on this: the reason why I think people were right not to sign papers to be deported to Iran—and I am talking about Amir Mohebbi, who was in jail for 4 years, Ali Panah, who was in jail for 2 years, and Thomas Yadegary, who was in jail for 2 years—is that if they had signed that bit of paper, they might be back in Iran being persecuted today. Instead, they are sitting in New Zealand as good New Zealanders. That is the result, in the end, of a thorough immigration process. I think that people like me, who defended those people, have been proved right in all of the cases that were prominent in the media.

It is important for us to pay attention to immigration issues, because every MP knows that we get a lot of them, and that people get very distressed if they are not being treated fairly by the immigration system. We are often defending immigrants and making sure that they are treated fairly. So we all have a vested interest in getting it right.

Towards the end of the Attorney-General’s contribution he raised a point that, in my opinion, indicates that this bill gives the Attorney-General too much power. That may be OK at the moment when we have a very good Attorney-General, but he himself indicated that the bill provides that when the Immigration and Protection Tribunal is dealing with classified information it has to work with, and get the consent of, the Attorney-General; in effect, the Attorney-General can veto the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, which is not a very good procedure to have, because that tribunal should be truly independent and determine those matters for itself. Sure, there should be a provision for consultation, but not a provision allowing the Attorney-General to veto tribunal decisions. The other thing the Attorney General mentioned, I think, was that in terms of process and classified information there has to be agreement not only between the Attorney-General and the Immigration and Protection Tribunal but between the Attorney-General and the Chief Justice. So the Attorney-General can veto the Chief Justice, which is not necessarily the best situation. Again, that could have been written as a consultation procedure, not, effectively, a right of veto.

So there are a whole lot of things that are important to address under this bill. It is good that the UN Human Rights Committee has discussed our Immigration Act and our immigration procedures. It has come down with some criticisms and some praise—a combination of the two. Hopefully, that will continue.

I think the Minister of Justice, Simon Power, when he went to New York to participate in that assessment of New Zealand’s human rights, including immigration rights, by the UN Human Rights Committee, enjoyed the experience, as he enjoyed a previous experience in Geneva a couple of years ago. It is good when we are engaging with the world community to try to meet the standards of the world community. There are so many countries that do not. In general, we are better than other countries but that does not mean to say—particularly on this often fractious issue of immigration and the rights of people who are trying to come here, to settle here, and to visit here—that we should not have the fairest processes possible. Unfortunately, the Greens will have to continue to cast a vote against this bill, because it still offends too much against our civil liberties, particularly in undermining fair, open, and due process for visitors and migrants to our country. Thank you.

It is a pleasure to take a call in the third reading of the very non-controversial Immigration Act 2009 Amendment Bill, which was drafted to fix up an accidental omission in the Immigration Act. As we have said, Labour is supporting it.

I pay my respects to my colleague from the Green Party, because he is very well versed in the very controversial issues around immigration. We heard about a lot of them when Keith Locke was sitting alongside me on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee as the original Immigration Bill went through the select committee process. As I said earlier, it was a very long process and quite a difficult one too, because immigration by its very nature is discriminatory, and our country has to make decisions about who we will let cross our borders and who we will not, and that is very, very difficult.

I pay tribute once again to the various Ministers of Immigration who helped put the original bill together, including David Cunliffe, Clayton Cosgrove, and Lianne Dalziel, and—forgive me if I miss anyone—also Mark Gosche, who was the chair of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. We went through a very long process on that Immigration Bill, and we heard from many very, very powerful submitters. They were powerful in the sense that the stories they told us were incredible, and we could only wonder at the lives that some people are forced to lead.

I am no expert in the international scene, but, along with most other MPs, I get people coming to talk to me about their situation and about what they are trying to do. They are trying to enter the country, to get a work permit, to get permanent residence, or to stop themselves from being thrown out of the country because their work permit has expired and so on.

In this third reading speech I particularly want to mention, as I have in previous speeches about immigration, the Chorus workers who were employed by Telecom. They were mainly Filipino and they were brought here on work permits to do jobs we could not get anyone else to do. They were highly skilled workers. Their work permits were revoked and they were eventually sent home because Telecom decided to end its contract with Chorus, the new contractor decided to make all those workers owner-operators, and under New Zealand immigration rules people on work permits cannot change from being employees to small-business owners. I think New Zealand got the worst end of the deal. Certainly, the workers were treated appallingly. I appealed to the Minister of Immigration on many occasions to intervene, and I personally met a lot of those workers. Many of them came from the North Shore, and, in fact, from Northcote, where the Minister is the electorate MP. Unfortunately, many of them have had to go home, and I do not think that has done our reputation any good at all.

We acknowledge that it is important that the commencement date for section 474 of the Immigration Act is brought into effect so that the Immigration and Protection Tribunal is appointed and ready when the rest of the Act comes into effect. We will be interested in who the members of that tribunal are. We look forward to hearing the announcement from the Minister.

As I have said, this bill is a very minor and non-controversial amendment and that is why we are supporting it. I congratulate the Minister Jonathan Coleman and his wife on the birth of their child. It is probably a good thing that it happened tonight, because we had quite a long list of things we were going to talk about regarding Jonathan Coleman’s errors and embarrassments. In the spirit of a new life coming into the world we will not go there, but I do want to talk about decisions made since the Act came into force—decisions that I have already referred to.

In particular, I want to talk about retirement visas for cash—if I may return to that theme—which roll out the welcome mat for the world’s rich retirees. It is discrimination on the basis of wealth. The Minister has made a mistake, because that policy was looked at 10 years ago and was dismissed as an expensive mistake by the then Associate Minister Lockwood Smith—in 1999. It was pointed out to him that the benefits of bringing in people of retirement age who contribute cash and sign up to health insurance were marginal, while the risks were significant. Those visa holders would receive at least some of their health care from the public system, New Zealand taxpayers’ resources pay for that, so the retirees would not be paying for themselves. There would be the possibility of lobby groups forming in response, as well as the possibility of no health insurance being available. Officials certainly bagged this policy 10 years ago, but Minister Coleman has resurrected it. I am not sure why he did not look back at the advice from 10 years ago, because nothing has changed. Those risks still exist today, and even Jonathan Coleman admits that the benefits of this scheme are marginal at best. He said that the policy is not a huge deal and is unlikely to be a cash cow, so we will not be overrun with people. Well, he hopes we will not. But as with some of the other decisions the Minister has made since the passage of the Immigration Act 2009, I have to ask what is in it for New Zealand. Will it have any noticeable effect on our economy? I think that is unlikely. I think the potential costs for New Zealand associated with allowing retirement-age migrants to settle here will be greater than the potential investment earnings.

The number of people granted residency under the family (parent) category has not been increased, but those with enough money who fit under the new parent retirement category will have priority. I think that is incredibly unfair. It means that people with most of their family living in New Zealand already, but who do not have a lot of money, will miss out. As MPs we hear from people who have settled here and want to bring their parents to live with them. But if they have not got the money, they will be at the bottom of the list—that is the truth. I think it is very inappropriate to prioritise an investor migrant under the family migrant category, which is what that policy does. It is cheque-book immigration. The prize of New Zealand citizenship is being sold to the highest bidder, whatever that person’s skills and values. I suppose it could be a make-work programme, because we will need lots and lots of caregivers to look after these rich retirees. We already have reports stating that there are not enough caregivers to look after the people who are already in New Zealand. There already is a shortage of caregivers—low-paid caregivers earning the minimum wage. The report I saw said we will have to import more of them. So I suppose that that immigration policy could be a make-work scheme.

The other decision made under the Immigration Act 2009 that I mentioned earlier relates to the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme. The Minister decided to undermine the requirement that those workers must be paid a minimum wage that includes the cost of their accommodation. I think that is shocking. In the last few weeks there have been a couple of high-profile cases where workers have been paid well below the minimum wage. There are some real questions to be asked. Meantime the Minister has been trumpeting the policy, which Labour introduced, but Labour put in a lot of safeguards round it, which have been removed. Now we are starting to see exploitation of those workers, which I think is shameful.

To return to the bill, it is non-controversial, and Labour supports it. It has to happen. A lot of work was done on the Immigration Act 2009, and most of it was Labour’s work. Immigration is a very, very difficult area. We are not happy with the decisions that the Minster has made since the Act came into force but we will support this amendment. Thank you.