Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon ERICA STANFORD: I move, That the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill is a sensible bill that addresses some gaps in the Immigration Act and will improve both the integrity and the fiscal sustainability of the immigration system. The bill allows the immigration system to ensure that compliance and detention settings are more balanced and more transparent and better aligned with the recommendations of the Casey KC and Heron KC reviews, strengthen both immigration risk settings and the protection of migrants from exploitation, enable the immigration system to respond to more challenges with greater flexibility, and allow the costs to the immigration system to be recovered more fairly. I want to highlight some of the more significant proposals.

Discharge without conviction will no longer mean that residence class visa holders who have committed crimes can escape consideration of their liability for deportation. Decisions around whether they should be deported or not will be made within the immigration system, where they should be. The select committee has recommended a number of consequential changes to other provisions throughout the Act that deal with criminal offending. The Immigration Act establishes powers to restrict a migrant screening of movement in some circumstances—often because Immigration New Zealand is arranging their travel home and there is a concern that the person will abscond before they can get on a plane.

Currently, the only available form of restriction of movement is detention. The extremes of putting someone in a prison cell or, at the other end of the spectrum, an agreement between the individual and the immigration officer about where they’ll reside, which is an RRRA, or a residence and reporting requirement agreement—Ms Casey KC found that to be unacceptable. We have therefore introduced electronic monitoring so that individuals who are judged to be an absconding risk can be appropriately accommodated and overseen without having to be detained in a prison cell.

There was some confusion during the select committee process around the purpose of introducing electronic monitoring as a lesser form of restriction for individuals subject to restriction of movement. Some submitters voiced concern that electronic monitoring would become the default mechanism for monitoring those migrants and would replace the RRRA requirements. This is not the case. As recommended by Victoria Casey KC, it has been introduced to ensure that individuals are not unnecessarily placed in physical detention due to lack of appropriate alternatives. I would also emphasise that the decision to impose a condition of electronic monitoring will sit with a judge and will only be used when it is deemed to be both reasonable and the least restrictive measurement necessary to manage the risk of that person.

The select committee has added a number of useful amendments to the provisions as drafted, which will improve their responsiveness to individual circumstances. I’m also intending to introduce an Amendment Paper—or I have introduced it—to address some minor issues that have been identified with the electronic monitoring provisions in the bill. The changes proposed are technical and will ensure that the bill is workable in practice and consistent with other electronic monitoring legislation across the statute book. The changes relate to the conditions that can be monitored by electronic monitoring and the information the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) will need to provide to the court about whether electronic monitoring would be practical and would be feasible.

The Amendment Paper also makes some very minor consequential changes to provisions that cross-reference the warrant of commitment provisions. The warrant of commitment changes come into effect three months after Royal assent, to time the relevant forms to be developed. A small number of clauses require consequential amendments to align their commencement with the main warrant of commitment provisions. These are minor and technical amendments.

Another important change in this bill will ensure a future Minister to respond decisively to emergencies or other unusual circumstances by, for example, extending the visas of groups of migrants or granting visas to groups of migrants without needing applications, through making a special direction. As drafted, these special direction powers have very strong safeguards and their exercise would be very transparent. There is a mandatory publishing in the Gazette and on MBIE’s website and mandatory annual reporting. The Regulations Review Committee could recommend that a special direction is disallowed by the House. The special directions cannot be used to disadvantage the people that they relate to. However, some submitters expressed their apprehensions around the breadth and concerns that they might concentrate executive power without the adequate oversight. In response, the select committee has increased the threshold for the Minister to make a special direction.

I’d like to thank the members of the select committee and the people who took the time to comment on the bill. As I’ve already noted, the committee has recommended a number of very sensible changes which improved or clarified some of the proposed changes and I look forward to debating them. Amongst other things, they also require annual reporting on any applications for out-of-hours compliance visits and tighten the definition of a mass arrival group, where the people concerned have entered on more than one commercial aircraft. A number of submitters expressed concerns regarding the proposed expansion of who can be charged a levy within the immigration system and what that levy can be charged for. It is fair that the people who benefit from the immigration system—not just the visa applicants but others such as the New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority requesters, employers, and education providers—can help to address the costs that they contribute to and to make sure that the system remains economically viable.

In conclusion, the bill makes a number of changes which, between them, will improve the integrity of the immigration system and help it to be more financially and fiscally sustainable. These amendments strike a reasonable balance between addressing the real risks to New Zealand and better protecting migrants. I commend the bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Labour’s supporting this bill at second reading. The reason is that it does two important things. The provisions in the bill about system integrity improve and add to the systems and procedures of our immigration system and, I think, attempt to make it fair and consistent and effective. That is important to maintain public confidence in the integrity of our immigration system.

Secondly, it strengthens the adherence to human rights standards in a number of respects, including through introducing judicial oversight in relation to the detention of asylum seekers and also in relation to the use of electronic monitoring. That’s important, because around the world right now, so many Governments are walking away from the 1951 Refugee Convention and rejecting human rights standards as right-wing populist parties demonise refugees and migrants. It’s important now that New Zealand holds the line and that this Parliament strengthens the integrity and effectiveness and the public confidence in our immigration system and strengthens our human rights performance.

I want to use the time I have in this contribution just to run through the nine different initiatives which are contained in this bill and give a sense of Labour’s view on each of them. I look forward to the debate over the coming hours as we move through into the committee stage tomorrow morning and the third reading.

The new ministerial powers that will allow the Minister of Immigration to make decisions, or to grant or amend the conditions, on classes of visas without applications. This is the systems basically saying, “We quite like to have those powers that we gave ourselves during the COVID times. They were practical in times of emergency or unusual circumstances.” We think that that they have adequate safeguards around them, and we think they will be a useful addition to the immigration system.

On the question of deportation and criminal offending, there was a pretty spirited critique at the Education and Workforce Committee by the Law Society and others. I’m looking forward to questioning the Minister about the argument that was made by submitters that, yes, this will allow decisions about deportation to be made by the immigration system and not by a court giving someone a discharge without conviction. But it does, I think, have the effect of undermining an important discretion that we give our courts to make decisions like that. So that’ll be a debate I’ll look forward to having.

The cancellation of residence class visas for people who are judged to be a security risk: the work on this was started by our Labour Government. It followed what’s become known as the Samsudeen case—the guy who wielded a knife in the LynnMall supermarket. The Government was put in a very difficult situation where someone who had protected person status; they could not be deported back to their country of origin. They were deemed to be a risk. They had residence. The Government had next to no leverage over that person and could do nothing but actually keep them under surveillance. This is an attempt, I think, to give a Government some leverage. It doesn’t give much leverage in a very, very difficult situation. We’re, in principle, supportive of this provision. I look forward to getting down into the detail on this in the committee stage.

Out of hours warrants: so the Dawn Raids apology; I think it’s something that across this House there is a lot of feeling for what was, you know, a period of our country’s modern history where the State behaved appallingly to particularly Pacific Island migrants in New Zealand. It was really a stain on our modern history. It has left a legacy. The provisions here, which would require immigration officials to get a warrant from a District Court judge before they could carry out an out of hours compliance visit. There are a number of safeguards around that. We support that. We see it as important and a departure from more punitive approaches to immigration control. It’s one of the aspects of this bill, I think, which ensures that our immigration system remains consistent with both domestic constitutional norms and our international human rights obligations.

The next provision I want to talk about is the one that makes it an offence for someone, an employer or an agent, to knowingly seek or receive a premium in respect of the employment or potential employment in New Zealand of a migrant worker. I’m sure we all agree that the incidence of the exploitation of migrant workers is appalling. We have to work hard to try to eliminate that exploitation. This is one of the aspects of it that is most galling. It’s not uncommon for workers in India, China, Philippines, and elsewhere to pay anything from $20,000 to $40,000 or more New Zealand dollars to some dodgy agent in order to get that job as part of getting the visa to come to New Zealand. The current defence that’s on the books, really, for a number of reasons, which we’ll get into later, doesn’t do the job. This attempts to make it to be much more effective at dealing with that problem. We support that.

The next thing is warrants of commitment for asylum seekers. The Minister in her contribution talked about the report that Victoria Casey KC did. I was the Associate Minister of Immigration when Amnesty International and the Asylum Seekers Support Trust did their report, which exposed that New Zealand was jailing asylum seekers—not huge numbers, but over a period of about 15 years, some 100 people or more were jailed, many of them in Mount Eden. The conditions that the Amnesty report exposed were truly shocking and it was a clear breach of our international human rights obligations. The work that’s gone into this provision to put in place judicial oversight in the system of warrants before people can be asylum seekers, can be detained, is the critical final step in fully implementing the Casey reforms. There is much to be debated in this part about whether or not the protections and the safeguards are adequate.

Next, electronic monitoring: this is going to give Immigration New Zealand the ability to go to a judge—this is not just in relation to asylum seekers; this is right across the immigration system. A person who is subject to deportation or turnaround, they can seek a judicial warrant to have this person wear an ankle bracelet or electronic monitoring. I was one of the people at select committee that I think the Minister was referring to who expressed grave misgivings about whether or not this would become a default soft detention measure, as it has in many, many other countries internationally where electronic monitoring is very, very widespread. By the way, in New Zealand’s criminal justice system, we are one of the world’s biggest users of electronic monitoring. So I think they’re fair questions to ask and I look forward to getting into them.

The bill also expands the definition of mass arrivals by changing the definition to allow instead of a group of mass arrivals coming on a single ship, that it could be a group of aircraft in terms of commercial services. That’s something that we’ll discuss more. We, in principle, are willing to support that.

Finally, immigration levies: it’s a massive, massive cash grab by this National Government, who tax anything that moves. I look forward to debating that more in the committee stage.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s important to put this bill in the broader context, which the previous speaker, the Hon Phil Twyford, did note, where we are seeing countries like the United Kingdom—under a Labour Government, no less—absolutely scapegoating migrant communities, refugees, and asylum seekers. It’s absolutely shameful that we are seeing a growing scapegoating of communities, many who have escaped some of the most harrowing conditions imaginable to people. This bill comes off the back of the previous bill that created, effectively, a legal definition for mass arrivals that was completely critiqued and, I would say, slammed by all, not most, human rights groups, in this country. Most of them were asking the question: why? Why the choice of introducing the mass arrivals regime when Governments hadn’t been able to substantiate that this bill was an actual imminent risk to the country of mass arrivals?

Now, in this bill, what we are seeing is an expansion of that very same definition to, effectively, after the effective hysteria that we were about to receive mass arrivals by boat, now we were told by the Government that we need to taint this definition to include people arriving by planes or cruise ships—literal moral panic.

The thing is that when we compare ourselves to other jurisdictions, we as a country receive a very, very, very small amount of asylum seekers compared to others: literally 1 percent every 10 days. In 2024-25, that amounted to 37 claims at the border, which, for example, compared to Canada, which received 41,350 claims, or, for example, we’ve got in the United States or the United Kingdom, where we’ve also had a much greater amount of asylum seekers arriving.

That, then, poses the question: what is the problem that the Government is trying to fix? Certainly, it is not a large amount of asylum-seeking claims. That is not currently happening in the country.

Grant McCallum: It’s about being prepared.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Being prepared for what, exactly? There we go. Here’s the moral panic: being prepared. We’re a country on the other side of the world where people are not arriving by boat nor by planes nor by cruise ship, and this bill is not just about expanding the definition of mass arrivals without actually justifying the reasons for it. This bill includes other measures which make deportation a lot easier. We did hear the previous speaker, the Hon Phil Twyford, talk about the concerns that lawyers, experts in this field, expressed when it came to those very same provisions. Currently, for example, it would be the courts who would decide whether someone would be liable for deportation by nature of having been convicted for a crime. Now, we’re expanding that to basically add that someone is liable for deportation should they plead guilty or be found guilty, not necessarily being convicted of a crime, which, effectively, makes Immigration New Zealand the one who gets to decide that—effectively, broadening the groups of people that could, for example, be subjected to deportation liability, and, effectively, putting more pressure on our Immigration and Protection Tribunal, on advocates on the ground, including MPs and their constituents, who will receive a far greater number of case work demands of people seeking justice and an ability to remain in the country.

I’ve fought against unjust deportation cases under Labour and National Governments just in these two terms. In fact, I remember that I had to invite, multiple times, the previous speaker, one Christmas, to stop a Filipino man being deported, because this person, under hardship, had taken food vouchers that he shouldn’t have and he admitted that it was wrong, but most people would have understood that during COVID times, people did things that they regretted, including this Filipino man. Fortunately, in his case, we were able to prevent his deportation, but we do see many migrants who, while experiencing huge amounts of stress, isolation, and just duress, end up doing things that they regret.

It is simply yet another case of moral panic, to use one single tragedy and then justify a lot of the provisions under this bill. I think our communities are served far better than this. Our communities deserve a judiciary that is able to process asylum seeking claims in a prompt manner. Our communities deserve an immigration system that is adequately resourced, not an immigration system that is currently seeing cuts to Crown funding under this Government, and then being sort of topped up by a levy which is not even going to be exclusively used to fund the immigration system, which also poses another issue—which is that we have a levy being put in place here, rather than being charged to a group of people, through a system that is then being used to cover other costs that the Government may be experiencing, rather than utilising and fixing the tax system that we have to have decent quality healthcare and quality infrastructure.

For a Government that talks about the pressures that employers face and yet a Government that also recognises that migrant workers will continue to play a huge role within our workforce, they seem to be quite happy to load additional costs on employers and migrants within this levy. So the Green Party opposes the idea of using a levy through the immigration system to fund infrastructure and other parts of our system that we all use, because at the end of the day, that is what the tax system is for, and we’ve got to recognise that this comes off the back of the Government massively hiking immigration visa fees, which have resulted in migrants having to put themselves into debt in order to apply for these visas.

When it comes to other provisions of this bill, I recognise that the Government and the Minister—and we share this concern that premiums being paid overseas for fake jobs are a genuine issue. I think most political parties here agree that this is quite a serious issue. Most constituency-based MPs, and I include list MPs here who care about immigration, deal with issues of migrants who have, basically, been offered fake jobs and have paid premiums just to come here onshore and find themselves with no job whatsoever. I have worked with many of these cases and the sad thing about people finding themselves in those situations and having been scammed is that there’s often not adequate support available for them.

Adding a criminal charge, effectively, for this is a step in the right direction, but the Government needs to go further and needs to do more to support victims of the scams, instead of, for example, gutting the length of the migration exploitation protection visa, which leaves those very same victims of these now new crimes that we’re going to be adding more vulnerable to precarity and to future exploitation. So we’ve got to work at all levels of the system to ensure that migrant workers are adequately protected.

The other component of this bill where we think the Government did not go further is in the out of hour visits by Immigration New Zealand. I look forward to the discussion at the committee of the whole House stage, where we’re hoping to put forward some amendments that will tighten this component of this bill, because out of hour immigration rates should only be used in situation involving public safety or matters of national security. In other types of situations, we acknowledge submitters, and the Children’s Commissioner, for example, who talked about the intergenerational impacts for children and households that are subjected to out of hour rates. We know this because this is not a new issue. We’ve heard from families who’ve experienced the Dawn Raids many decades ago, which the previous Government apologised for, about how these out of hour visits caused humongous amounts of intergenerational trauma and harm to families in the communities.

One of the key issues that we have with this bill is that the Minister is trying to claim that it is about the so-called integrity of the immigration system. But it’s trying to find a problem as opposed to going to the core of the issue, which is that it’s not that migrants are inherently criminals, it’s not that we’ve got an immigration system where we have huge amounts of asylum seeking claims; it’s that we have successive Governments that have ignored the need to adequately resource the judiciary and our immigration systems to aid the process of asylum seeking claims in a humane and prompt manner, as well as ensuring that there’s adequate support for exploited migrants and decent enough support available for migrants who, for example, may be experiencing ill mental health—and I include residency visa holders in that—so that they do not cause harm to others as a result of the ill mental health that they may be experiencing. This is where the focus of the Government should be rather than trying to pretend that this bill is about better protecting refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, when, actually, they’re simply creating more tools for them to be able to deport members of the community who actually have put roots down here and deserve to be treated with respect and dignity as opposed to being subjected to moral panic.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m taking this call on behalf of ACT to support the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. As a member of the Education and Workforce Committee, I would like to start by thanking all 70-plus submitters who submitted on this bill. I also want to thank those who appeared before the select committee and presented their submissions and were also willing to answer the questions that we asked about their submissions.

I must say, it is because of the work that we all did after hearing submissions that we have been able to report this bill back in an improved form. Several changes have been made in this bill, and I won’t list all those changes that have been made, but I would say that immigration is a field where we have to really balance the national interest and also the interest of the individuals—those who use our immigration system. As the name of the bill says, it’s about fiscal sustainability, so we want to make sure that, fiscally, the system is sustainable, and we are not putting all the burden just on applicants. We want to distribute that burden to other people as well—those who are benefitting from our immigration system.

The second part in the name is “system integrity”. Several provisions in this bill are to ensure that we are safeguarding our immigration system to ensure that it’s not open for exploitation. Very quickly, to the Green member who just resumed his seat—he talked about mass arrival groups and also talked about the asylum seekers—this bill is not about the numbers of asylum seekers coming to New Zealand or increasing or decreasing that number. It’s about defining what “mass arrival group” means, and that definition was tightened in the select committee process to ensure that we know what kind of timeline we are talking about when people enter into our country through any commercial routes as well.

A final point I want to make is about exploitation, which the member was emphasising a lot. What I’m really happy to see in this bill is that when people charge a premium in that situation, this bill will extend that as an offence when it happens outside of New Zealand as well. There are a lot of good things in this bill. This bill is about ensuring our immigration system works for all, and I support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak in support of the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. I appreciate the member who just resumed their seat for bringing some logic and common sense back into this debate. This is a relatively complex bill because of the number of components that it is seeking to address, but it is a very important piece of legislation, and I think that is the component about building an immigration system and continuing to strengthen it. There is a lot of moving parts that happen in the immigration process, and, therefore, we have to be vigilant and aware of all of the things that we need to deliver to ensure our immigration system is effective.

It is about recognising greater securities and safeties for those that are in the system and potentially able to be exploited. It astounds me that we are, yet again, being challenged about the idea that we prepare and have a system in place for a mass arrival, should it occur. I mean it is the common sense of fail to plan and you plan to fail. This is exactly what this piece of legislation is doing. There is a naivety in suggesting that if we just close our eyes and pretend it isn’t happening, it won’t happen. Then, when you do have this—

Ricardo Menéndez March: It’s not happening. Look at the facts.

Hon CASEY COSTELLO: Yes. That’s the logic that we’re faced with—“Because it’s not happening, we, therefore, don’t have to worry about it.” Then, when it occurs, we have no systems in place to provide the protections—which we know occurs. We know and absolutely understand the vulnerabilities of children that get trafficked through a process of mass arrivals. We know that we need to have a process by which we can protect and contain people while we provide health assessments, where we can provide health assessments and interventions, where we can do the logical practical things that people who know how to run a system, run a business, and run a process, and not those that like to virtue signal and sloganeer.

This is exactly the point why this piece of legislation is so important. When others campaigned and sloganeered, I spent my working life investigating exploitation and prosecuting offenders. I actually did the work that needed to be done—whereas we have politicians in this House that like to just create slogans and disrupt and be negative. I absolutely commend this bill to the House. I commend the Minister for the hard work that they’ve done to produce this piece of legislation and the select committee for bringing the legislation forward in a practical and logical process that will ensure we have good legislation at the end.

Five minutes—Teanau Tuiono.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to support the call by my colleague and friend Ricardo Menéndez March on this, the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. We did have a few responses from the other side of the House about preparing, and I think Mr Menéndez March made some good points about mass arrivals. I would invite the House to not buy into the right-wing hysteria that has engulfed other parts of the world where they scapegoat refugees, scapegoat migrants, and scapegoat people that are different than them.

If we want to talk about being prepared, I have some suggestions for that side, and that is: to make sure that our public services are well funded; to make sure that we have quality health services, education services, and mental health services. We just heard them talk about making sure that we prepare—how can you prepare when the public services have been ransacked by this Government? Thousands and thousands of people have lost their jobs, and thousands more are getting on the plane and going to Australia to greener and better pastures because of the economic carnage of that side of the House.

If we want to prepare we have to do those things. You have to provide the foundations—the foundations to make sure that when people put deep roots into this country, into their communities, that they’re well supported, that their kids are well supported, particularly if they come here as refugees, particularly if they come here as asylum seekers; as opposed to finding new ways to punish them. Yes, there are issues, but those issues can be solved if we look for solutions that take care of people and if we look for solutions that make sure that your provide the fundamentals. I hope that that message resonates with the House tonight.

This bill has a number of changes. It expands the charging of immigration levies, expands the definition of “mass arrivals”—I just talked about that—provides more powers for ministerial direction, and strengthens protections for out-of-hour raids and detained asylum seekers.

I was here in the last Parliament when we apologised for the Dawn Raids. We apologised for the Dawn Raids that were horrendous and a stain on New Zealand’s history, our Pasifika people were targeted. We were invited to this country during the economic boom to do all the jobs that nobody else wanted to do, and then, when the economics turned, they wanted to deport us and kick us out. That was the time of the Dawn Raids. After we had the apology, what I heard—and I know a number of members around this House heard as well—is that there were still Pacific Island families and others who were still getting knocks on the door at dawn—at dawn—when their children were home, when their families were preparing their breakfast, while they were preparing to go to work, as well, people that have put deep roots into this society. So I do note that the select committee did do some work around what to do about the out-of-hours compliance component of this.

I would invite the House to really consider an Amendment Paper by my colleague Ricardo Menéndez March, which is to make changes to clause 26. It’s an amendment which focuses on the limit of out-of-hours immigration to situations involving public safety or matters of national security, so it’s not a free-for-all, so you have a particular focus. This was one of the options recommended by the Heron KC report, to address the distressing impacts of out-of-hours compliance activity, which, of course, underpinned what happened with the Dawn Raids. So I would really encourage the House to do that as well.

Probably my other reflection—because I wasn’t on the select committee, as well, and I see that there were a number of changes in the select committee report, and that is the work of the select committee: to take some bills, make some recommendations and make them stronger, and I hope that made some improvements and I hope that has happened. But I couldn’t help but notice that there is a 46-page Amendment Paper from the Minister herself, and we are going into the committee of the whole House after this. This is a big Amendment Paper. A lot more work needs to be done on this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. It was my pleasure to chair the Education and Workforce Committee through this process, and it’s great to see the work that has been recognised by the collegial approach we had across parties to ensure we made amendments to the bill as it was guided through that process, to present it to the House for consideration this evening. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mālō e lelei. I rise this evening, even though it’s 11.30 p.m. at night and we are here in urgency. This is a really important bill, the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. My colleague the Hon Phil Twyford, who is our immigration spokesperson, has already talked about one of the many reasons why we are supporting this particular legislation. I do want to commend the Minister of Immigration for all of the hard work and diligence that she and her ministry have put to ensuring that we have this law before us this evening, because there are many longstanding issues that need to be addressed to strengthen the immigration system in Aotearoa New Zealand. I would like to discuss at least two of those in a bit more detail to what our immigration spokesperson has spoken about earlier on.

I’d like to first of all talk about the lessons that we should learn from the 1970s Dawn Raids, which remain seared into the collective memory of Pacific communities in Aotearoa New Zealand and, can I say, particularly for people like myself—Tongans. Because it was, when we look at the statistics of who were the ones who were the most chased by the police dogs, who were the people who were deported the most during the Dawn Raids, who are the people who are still suffering from the trauma of the Dawn Raids the most, I would say it would be people from Tonga.

I remember it as a memorable day: the day that the Government gave the apology—the official apology—for the Dawn Raids at the Auckland Town Hall. As we were walking into the town hall—and I remember because, at that time, I was actually wearing traditional mourning clothes. I was mourning because one of my father’s sisters had just passed away. But it felt for me like I was also mourning on behalf of the Tongans that were affected. As we were walking through the town hall, they played video clips from those days in the 1970s of dogs barking in the early morning of dawn, as Tongans were being raided in their homes. We heard young children crying, because what would you do when strangers are storming through your house in the middle of your sleeping, and that is what you’re woken to? As a child, you’re woken to all of these noises—all of these dogs barking and people stomping their feet to come through and to arrest you.

I want us to learn from our history. This bill has an out-of-hours warrant requirement. I want to be clear: this is not an abstract policy change. It is the direct response to one of the darkest chapters in New Zealand’s immigration history. Because in the 1970s, during the economic recession that followed Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community, the New Zealand Government at that time made a deliberate choice to scapegoat a particular group of people: Pacific Island workers, Tongans, Samoans, other people from the Pacific who were actively recruited by New Zealand to come to this country to fill the labour shortages of jobs that New Zealanders at the time did not want to do. They were the boom years. But the Pacific Island folks suddenly became the targets for blame. Yes, I see you saying that I should narrow it, but the out-of-hours warrant requirement is actually in this bill. It is one of the nine amendments that this bill is addressing, which is why I’m focusing on it.

What followed the Dawn Raids on the Pacific Island homes, which is what I just described earlier on with the dogs and all that—but I want to talk about the statistics, because it tells a damning story. During the mid-1970s, Pacific Islanders comprised roughly one-third of the overstayers, and yet they represented 86 percent of the prosecutions. Americans, British, and Europeans also roughly they actually had one-third of the overstayers, and yet they only represented 5 percent of the prosecutions. This was not just immigration enforcement; this was racial targeting. This disparity was not accidental; it was the direct result of deliberate Government policy at that time. For many decades from that day up until now, the trauma of the families that were affected still lives on.

During the apology, I’d like to quote the Pacific person—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Ms Salesa, we’ve had nearly six minutes. Could we now go to the bill. I know you’ve spoken to one of these, but now we are talking about the bill, please.

Hon JENNY SALESA: OK. So the bill actually has a new section. The new section is 293B(4). This subsection of the legislation is, basically, about the judicial warrants that out-of-hours compliance visits must have. This is, actually, because we do not want to see, in our present and into the future, a repeat of the Dawn Raids.

But, Mr Speaker, if you would just indulge me to quote from the person who actually was speaking on behalf of all of those who were affected. Her name was Her Royal Highness Princess Mele Siuʻilikutapu from Tonga, who has now passed away. May she rest in peace. I quote, “I’m very grateful for your Government for making the right decision to apologise. The right to the extreme, inhumane, unjust treatment specifically against my community in the Dawn Raids era.” She also issued a warning, which is vital to the debate and to the bill that we’re about to pass. I quote: “The trauma and impact of the dawn raids has been intergenerational.” It has haunted my community for years and it will be for years to come if we are not going to do the right thing. That is, essentially, the question that I would like us to answer tonight. The question for this Parliament is simple: are we going to do the right thing?

Fortunately, the section that I just quoted before, new section 293B(4), is the response to that. Because even after that apology was given, dawn raids were not supposed to happen again. Teanau Tuiono spoke about it earlier on. There were still dawn raids happening in my electorate of Tongans, which is why the Michael Heron KC review examined Immigration New Zealand’s out-of-hours compliance practices and found, to the shock of many, that many of these early morning raids—echoes of the Dawn Raids—were still occurring, even in 2024.

Now, this bill changes that, because, from now on, any immigration officer who wishes to conduct an out-of-hours residential compliance visit must obtain a judicial warrant. A District Court judge will examine whether the visit is (a) reasonable in all the circumstance, (b) proportionate to the risk, (c) in the public interest, and (d) a last resort after all reasonable alternatives have been considered. This is not red tape; this is the rule of law.

The other change that this bill is going to affect is charging of premiums. As our ethnic spokesperson and as many of us who are electorate MPs know, there is so much migrant exploitation that actually happens in Aotearoa New Zealand right now. We know that agents both here in our country and overseas are charging thousands and thousands of dollars to people to come here to work. Some of these people, when they arrive—whether they arrive from, for instance, the Philippines, India; and I’m just giving you cases that have come through my office—they come here after paying thousands and some of them over $50,000 New Zealand dollars and there is no job. No job in New Zealand. Then they’re stuck in this country. They don’t want to go back. First of all, they don’t have the money to pay for the ticket to go back. But also because they’ve taken a loan of up to $50,000 New Zealand dollars—they don’t want to go back without actually having the money to go and pay back that loan. I am glad that this bill actually takes the right step of addressing migrant exploitation.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to make a short contribution in this debate on this Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill. The reasons for this have been very well traversed, and I couldn’t say it more eloquently than the previous speaker, and, therefore, I commend the bill to the House.

Listening to the debates, it is clear that there is a difference in opinion, I think, across the House about whether this is responding with a knee-jerk reaction to some form of moral panic or whether this is a way of enhancing civil liberties and human rights by making sure that we have a regime that is prepared to accept the unfortunate reality of asylum seeking that is happening globally.

If I look at the statistics, since 2012 there have been more than 20 million people who have sought asylum globally. Many, many of those have occurred during mass arrivals, and many of them on the high seas. New Zealand has been relatively lucky, through the tyranny—or the fortune—of distance, to be able to avoid the very difficult situation of accepting asylum seekers who have come without a legal process or without an application process. And we have not had to face grappling with the issue of how do we manaaki these people yet also follow our own immigration laws and what is the regime that covers them.

I think my colleague the Hon Jenny Salesa was right to refer to the Dawn Raids as being one of the terrible examples where we came close to what we see over in Australia, for example, with detention centres where people have lived for years or on Christmas Island and in other places. Equally, we had the Tampa ship that came under the Helen Clark Government and was a really vexing question for New Zealand as to how to deal with asylum seekers.

It is very much the view of Labour that preparation is the best way to uphold the human rights of these people and also to uphold the national security interests and other interests of New Zealand. Because if we have a plan and we have a system that is fair and that is agnostic, that cannot be corrupted, and that takes into account the same principles no matter who is arriving, then that is the most that we can do in what is this unfortunate reality. So I do have to take issue with the Greens for taking what they would perceive as a moral high ground, when in fact the unintended consequence of trying to bury our heads in the sand and to say this is not a possibility—or a real possibility, in fact—could be really damaging for the people involved and for New Zealand.

I note just on Radio New Zealand tonight, there is a story about submarine shells—three of them—being found near the Solomon Islands to do with drug cartels, probably from South America. Now, if submarines are being used to carry drugs trans-nationally, it’s not too long before we see submarines carrying people as well. Suddenly, that advantage of distance that New Zealand has been able to enjoy will no longer be available to us.

The question, then, is if we’re going to have this regime, how do we make sure that it is fair, equitable, upholds human rights, has processes that safeguard our national security and our immigration rules, but also safeguards human rights? It is a really difficult balancing act, and the bill that we see before us actually started under Labour and involved many discussions about those competing rights. So this, for those people who think that there can’t be cross-party collaboration, is probably a good example of legislation that has been stewarded via successive Governments and involved a lot of conversation.

Nevertheless, the devil will be in the detail and I note, as did our Green colleague Teanau Tuiono, that there is a really large Amendment Paper on the Table to do with electronic monitoring. That is going to take a lot of scrutiny tomorrow. We’ve also got arrest powers, we have search and seizure powers—quite a substantial bill. With all of these bills, the wording is so incredibly important when it comes to statutory interpretation so that there aren’t unintended consequences and so that we know, for example, that we are not casting the net too widely and maybe penalising people who may not have had a choice about coming here—for example, who may have been trafficked.

These are the many questions that we will be asking tomorrow, particularly with the large new amendment that has been dropped on the floor tonight.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill improves the integrity of the immigration system as well as the fiscal sustainability of it. The changes are sensible and serve New Zealand’s national interests while still respecting individual rights. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s good to be able to take a call on what is actually quite a complex piece of legislation. I wasn’t on the Education and Workforce Committee when this was considered, but I can see from the comprehensive work that has gone into it that it was well-considered at select committee.

These types of bills are never easy, and this particular bill, it appears to me, has gone through a number of issues and potential issues in the immigration system and made some pragmatic responses to that. I think the success of this bill will really be, I suppose, in the spirit in which it is enforced. There are a few issues here that have been highlighted by my colleague Phil Twyford that I think the Labour Party will be very interested in looking at the committee of the whole House stage and also once things are in practice. We’ve already seen in this bill that there is a change to a relatively recent immigration change that was brought in in relation to mass arrivals. So this is something that does need to be updated as time goes on, so I’ll just use my time to go through probably the most significant changes that have been brought in in this bill.

The first one is in relation to the new ministerial powers. Often in immigration cases, visas are only provided when an application is made—to Immigration New Zealand, in this instance. As we do deal with quite tumultuous times around the world—when we do deal with conflict; when we do deal with issues of human rights abuses; when we do deal with international instability—there is a need for flexibility in relation to the immigration system. This particular set of amendments is something that I think most would support in terms of the Minister being able to—in particular instances where there is a particularly compelling case—proactively offer visas to a group of people. I know that this isn’t being unanimously supported throughout the House, but I think that that particular change is one that probably most people would support, so that is good.

There is obviously a lot of ministerial discretion associated with this bill. Immigration is an area where there is a lot of ministerial discretion—it’s something that is quite unique in terms of the way that Ministers deal with applications. We’ll all know, as MPs, that we often get contacted by people about particular issues, and this is one instance where there is ministerial discretion. Whether that is the best way, personally—this isn’t Labour Party policy—I have some questions around that. I know there’s a lot of pressure on Ministers to deal with very, very difficult personal situations. It is, I imagine, extremely tough to be in that situation and to be making decisions in what are sometimes—

Hon Phil Twyford: It’s a good system, Camilla.

CAMILLA BELICH: —life and death situations. Phil’s telling me it’s a very good system, so I take that back—it’s a perfect system. I’m just empathising with—I know there are a few people in the House who have personally had to deal with this, and I do think it is a particularly complex job—one with great rewards but also great responsibility, and it is unique in that instance. I just want to acknowledge that—and there will be even more responsibility for those Ministers after this bill is passed, so hopefully they will make the right decisions.

In terms of the rest of the main changes that I just wanted to touch on: the change around criminal offending is probably a slightly more contentious one. At the moment, there is a way that the courts can avoid the quite dire, in some situations, consequences of a criminal conviction through convicting someone but not entering a conviction—a conviction without discharge? What is the correct—is that right?

Hon Phil Twyford: Yep.

CAMILLA BELICH: Yeah. This bill takes that away, and it’s probably more punitive. I’ll be interested to see how that turns out, because that’s one of the possibly more controversial particular provisions. When those particular scenarios get put forward, we’ll be able to see whether, in fact, it is achieving its aims. I can see the policy logic behind that, but I’m interested to see how that plays out, and I’m sure that colleagues will have questions in the committee of the whole House stage about how that will actually not result in what will be a more unfair situation. Anyway, it’s giving power back to Parliament, and that is, in the end, where our laws are made.

In terms of the cancellation of visas, we did have a particular situation in the past, and I won’t go through all the reasons for that, where individuals who we know are a threat to security—in this particular instance, in Auckland in September 2021—are not New Zealand citizens. There was a lot of anxiety and a lot of, in the end, harm caused by that person, so this is addressing that particular situation. Should it arise again, there are more powers associated with that. It’s very tricky—that is a very tricky situation to determine, especially because perceived harm and risk is always very, very difficult. As I understand it, from what is publicly available information, there was quite a degree of concern around that particular person. We have to have faith that the people who are making decisions around this will make those assessments—and we do, because we’re agreeing to pass this law.

My colleague Jenny Salesa did talk a bit about the out-of-hours warrants. This is directly related to conduct that was occurring even after the Dawn Raids apology. I also attended that apology; it was extremely moving and very, very sad, so I think that it was a very appropriate thing to make sure that there are more checks and balances in place to ensure that that doesn’t happen. Additionally, I think something that is very, very positive in this bill is the move to address the charging of premiums. We know that this is something that happens regularly in New Zealand. We know that there are sometimes instances where migrant workers are charged very, very large amounts of money, which they shouldn’t be, in order to come to New Zealand. Sometimes they are misled, and sometimes they are exploited, and it is absolutely unacceptable. We should be doing as much as we can to ensure that the migrant workers who come to New Zealand—who we desperately need to do jobs in New Zealand that benefit everyone—are respected and not exploited and not put into debt as soon as they start their life in a new country.

Arena Williams: That’s right—do more about modern slavery.

CAMILLA BELICH: Yes—and I actually have that noted down here, Arena Williams, that we do need to do more in relation to modern slavery. This is a very important area that I think we can all agree we need to do more work on to ensure that the exploitation that people are facing in New Zealand, which is very, very important, is also addressed. So that is very important.

Electronic monitoring is something, as I think my colleague Phil Twyford mentioned, that we would be concerned about if it was to become the default measure in dealing with people who are perhaps not in detention—which is good, and that shouldn’t be the default either. There’s also something a little bit icky about electronic monitoring, and we don’t want it to be used to dehumanise people or used in a way that is inappropriate.

The last thing I wanted to mention was just about the definition of mass arrivals. This is a very tricky issue. In the end, we did come down on the side of being prepared for this potential context. We know that we are a country of people who arrived here by waka—be that a boat or an aeroplane, we came here from other places. We know that this is a real possibility. We know that we want those people, when they do arrive in a mass arrival, to be treated with the dignity, respect, and humanity that we would expect from the very, very strong cultural concept, between Pākehā and Māori, of manaakitanga to people who visit our country. That is an extremely important thing, and we will be watching to make sure that that happens. This is a complex bill; I commend the Ministers from both this Government and the past for bringing it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, it’s been a long day which will continue into tomorrow. I just think that sense actually was spoken from the last speaker who made the good point about being prepared for mass arrivals, which, yes, we all hope will never happen, but they just might. It’s really important to be prepared, and it’s one of the main reasons I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): The question is—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: Mr Speaker?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): I had started to take the call. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

This bill is set down for committee stage first thing in the morning. I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Immigration (Fiscal Sustainability and System Integrity) Amendment Bill at 9 a.m. in the morning. The time has come for me to leave the House.

Sitting suspended from 11.59 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Friday)