Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill

Members, when the committee suspended last night, we were debating Part 1 of the Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill. Part 1 is the debate on clauses 4 to 6, “Applications for visas and entry permission”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

It’s a pleasure to resume the debate on this rights-diminishing bill. I just wanted to pick up on where we left last night. I want to pick up on the fact that the only thing offensive here is the fact that multiple—and including every human rights organisation and organisation that works with migrants and refugees doesn’t support this bill. They may have constructive amendments to propose, but, at the end of the day, this is around harm minimisation. By no means should one actually pretend that this is about those organisations suggesting that mass arrivals are needed.

One of the things that we were asking last night around this two-tiered way of treating people arriving by sea versus air was the creation of discrimination. One of the things around that discrimination that I wanted to pick up—and I use the word “discrimination” because it was—

Hon Shane Jones: Say something original.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: —raised by the person in the chair. I look forward to Shane Jones taking a call on this debate and saying anything, actually, of use.

Hon Member: Impossible.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Impossible indeed. But I did want to ask whether the Minister had, for example, done any consultation around the health needs of people arriving by sea that actually could be quite different from perhaps those arriving via the airport—people with disabilities or people who may have health conditions—and whether he actually sought any advice around the potential impacts of how that could be addressed.

Hon Shane Jones: Relevance—relevance.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Clearly Shane Jones, who’s heckling, seems to not have read the bill, because if he had any knowledge around how the immigration system works, he would understand that, actually, under the current regime, asylum seekers and any migrant, but including, I assume, asylum seekers, has to meet the acceptable standards of health conditions. We actually do, effectively, test the health of those applying for asylum, at least for residency. But, at the same time, there are public health considerations. So I wonder whether the Minister in this creation of this categorisation had done any work around any public health issues or anything relating to the wellbeing or disabilities of those arriving by sea.

Thank you, and thank you to those who have contributed to the debate—the first part thereof, the first part of the first part, so to speak. Yesterday, we traversed much of the ground that the member has mentioned—happy to address the specific question at the tail end of that contribution, and look forward, of course, in Part 2, where there are more substantive operative provisions, whereas Part 1 is very much more in the nature of providing definitions of “passengers”, “arrivals”, and “mass arrivals” indeed.

So, in response to the particular question regarding the health needs of those who’ve spent a long period of time at sea, the first point is that a mass arrival, by definition, involves a large number of human beings. There’s a complexity in that fact, and the resource constraints that would be placed all at once on an immigration- or refugee-processing system—that is otherwise not geared up for that degree of complexity and volume of cases needing to be processed at once—in itself suggests that a regime like this is required, in the perhaps unlikely, but not impossible, scenario that that there should be a mass arrival on our shores.

As for the particular health needs of people who’ve spent a long period of time at sea, the advice has been helpful in noting the complexity that’s likely to arise in such situations. Of course, we can’t anticipate the nature of exactly what that would be in any individual case. I’m not a medical expert by any degree myself—there are some actually in the Chamber who are—but I have spent a bit of time at sea, and I know that it’s possible for particular ailments to be compounded by reason of the fact of a person being away from shore for a long period of time. One doesn’t need too much imagination to conclude that, in the case of a mass arrival by sea on these shores, there would be complex health needs such that, while they must, of course, be treated as a medical matter on an individual basis, from an immigration- and/or refugee-processing perspective, it’s appropriate to consider those as one, or at least potentially together—not least of all because the confined conditions which one invariably spends at sea with many others, would increase the likelihood of communication of an ailment of a contagious nature.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So if I heard correctly, the Minister in the chair, the Hon Chris Penk, talked about the advice that he had received being complex. But, I guess, I want to elicit exactly what level of advice he received, particularly around resourcing, right? Because in the event of a mass arrival, paired with the definitions that are created here, there does need to be a level of deployment of public services to respond to such a thing. So I was wondering about the confidence that he has in the capacity of the health system, and the public health system, actually, were there to be a mass arrivals of asylum seekers who presented with health conditions, perhaps transmittable diseases—around making sure that they’re looked after, not just from a public health angle but, actually, just around the welfare of those people.

Why this is extremely relevant is because part of what was identified in Part 1 was around making that distinction, and the example around cruise ships has been used several times. If you get a bunch of people exiting a cruise ship, they actually don’t have to face any medical tests, any form of—we just kind of assume for the most part that they’re not here to transmit any new diseases overall. So there’s a distinction that’s being created here—it’s often been argued that the kind of weird loophole and gap that we have with cruise ships is one of the reasons for the rationale around Part 1. That is why it is important to have confidence that, actually, the system as it is has the capacity to meet those health requirements, to respond to those—but then also whether the Minister received any advice since taking on the role, because of that gap between the previous Government handling the bill and this new Government taking it on board, around whether additional resources would be required in any parts of the system to then comply with the additional checks that creating a definition of “mass arrivals” would entail, as opposed to, for example, how they would have been treated, say, if you could claim that they were a cruise ship.

So I guess it’s about that confidence around the system being responsive to the needs of people who would now be categorised under Part 1. So the new angle of the question that I’m asking is around the level of resourcing capacity by the system, not just so much around the public health advice that he may have received.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I invite any other member of this committee to participate in this debate. I think, as a House of Representatives, it’s a bit of a disservice to have literally one member, other than Phil Twyford, to my right, making a contribution.

Hon Shane Jones: It’s boring!

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: It may be boring, but do you know what? Detaining asylum seekers may be boring to Shane Jones, but this is quite significant. Asylum seekers are some of the most marginalised people, and, actually, we’re going to be introducing a piece of legislation that, as many human rights organisations spoke about, is diminishing their rights. We should have a proper debate on this and actually seek answers.

Carl Bates: What sort of logic is that? Democracy?

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Democracy indeed. You’re getting paid to actually legislate—

CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): Order! [Interruption] Carl Bates, please do not debate across the Chamber with each other. We’ll come back to the bill.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Thank you, Madam Chair. To go back to the actual bill, the other part of the system, around public health concerns, would be around, for example, the public health issue, I wonder, with this new categorisation.

I’ll go back to the issues around detention, which I know are in Part 2, but there will be people who will present with, for example, quite severe mental health distress. That’s actually a completely separate health issue to, for example, a transmissible disease. But what I wanted to check, around the mental health needs of these people, are initial arrivals. This is before the detention part of the bill, in Part 2. This is around the categorisation around arrivals—whether he’s got confidence around the system being able to absorb and to identify those mental health needs before detention, because ultimately, in order for Part 2 to work effectively, you’ll need to make decisions that actually are responsive to the needs of those people.

So, with creating a categorisation of mass arrivals, which in and of itself allows for the detention from Part 2, I do want to have confidence that the Minister is on top of any resourcing, additionally or otherwise, that would be needed in order to ensure that the detention components of Part 2 won’t cause further harm.

Madam Chair, thank you very much. I think I can answer reasonably briefly the concerns raised by the member. The advice that’s been provided by officials is not complex advice. I think it’s, if I may say, pitched at the right level for a layperson like myself but acknowledges the complexities of the health needs that may arise in a mass arrival group. The member’s right to raise the fact that these could be quite challenging, but, of course, that only indicates the fact that it may be that more time is needed to process those who are in this situation—I was going to say, “who find themselves in this situation and/or those who place themselves in this situation”.

As to whether the capacity of the New Zealand public health system and, indeed, the immigration service is sufficient to process them in a timely manner—well, I can’t vouch for that. With all due respect, that’s not within the scope of the bill, except to say that to the extent that resources are finite—and it might be that if a mass arrival were to take place, for example, over the Christmas and new year period, where it might reasonably be expected that there were fewer resources available—that, again, is an argument in favour of having more flexibility in a system such that it might be that more time is needed than four days or even seven days, out to 28 days.

Of course, we’re straying now into the detail of Part 2. I look forward to those discussions, but I think, if I may say, that provides a bit of a response in terms of the nature of the distinction between a mass arrival group versus those who might be considered more traditionally as a passenger coming on to these shores.

I move, That debate on this question now close.