Locke Keith: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6767] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I propose several amendments to this part and I will go through them quickly. I will make a general comment which flows from the previous part. The question here is justice. 
Hon Member 
: We’ve moved on. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: The question in the bill as a whole is justice and justice requires legal representation—a fair go. This should apply— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: We are on Part 7. I ask the member to concentrate on Part 7. 
KEITH LOCKE 
: Thank you Mr Chairman. The first clause I want to amend is clause 174B which removes the right to appeal in relation to transit visas. It is quite an extreme clause in a way. The clause states: “(1) No appeal lies against a decision of the Minister or an immigration officer on any matter in relation to a transit visa whether to any court the Tribunal the Minister or otherwise. (2) No review proceedings may be brought in any court in respect of any decision to refuse to grant or to cancel a transit visa.” It is just too extreme to cancel that appeal right even to a court because there can be injustices in every area of immigration. Sure transit visas might be the lowest level of visa in the sense that a person might be just passing through briefly but to rule out appeal rights entirely is not correct. 
I have had complaints about the existing provisions on transit visas where sometimes people from Australia or India have had to pass through New Zealand quickly on their way to a funeral or something like that. They were not granted the transit visa or else it was too difficult to get one and it caused great problems. I think that there has to be a provision for appeal rights. 
The next amendment is to clause 195(1)(b) which relates to the membership of the tribunal. The problem with this clause was illustrated by a number of people who made submissions to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. They said that because the tribunal is merging a lot of authorities the specialist experience of the Refugee Status Appeals Authority could get lost. The authority was a specialist tribunal established under the 1951 refugee convention. My amendment will try to reinstate some of that specialist experience in the new body. My amendment states that “at least one of the members of the tribunal has to have extensive experience in refugee law:”. I think that measure is fair enough and it fits into a lot of what was said in the submissions to the select committee. 
People also made submissions to the select committee about the Refugee Status Appeals Authority being viewed as a very respected body that contributes to international jurisprudence on refugee law. It is very hard for the tribunal to do that unless at least one of its members has refugee law experience. There is clause 195(1)(c) where a representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees can serve as an ex officio member on matters relating to refugees. But the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees may not take up that role and it does not have a permanent officer in New Zealand anyway so I think that we need more than that. We need somebody with expertise in refugee law on that tribunal. 
The next clause I want to amend on behalf of the Green Party is clause 231(2). With the present wording of that clause the chief executive of one of the relevant agencies—14 different agencies can provide classified information in relation to the immigration processes including to the tribunal—which might be the Ministry of Fisheries or whatever it might be has the power of veto over the tribunal as to whether classified information that has been provided should be released. The chief executive has the power of veto over even the Supreme Court. If we follow the cases that have taken place in our courts we see that often there is a contestation between those who have classified information and the complainants and the court adjudicates on this matter. 
In the Ahmed Zaoui case the Security Intelligence Service was gradually forced to give out more and more information as part of the risk certificate process. In the Aziz Choudry case back in 1996 the court required the Security Intelligence Service to give out certain information into the public realm because in effect it was part of the court case. I do not think that we can override the courts and my amendment is intended to prevent that from happening. 
My amendment to clause 231(2) states that the chief executive is to be consulted on the question of classified information not that the chief executive has to consent to the release of the information—that is the chief executive of the relevant agency would no longer have a power of veto but has to be consulted before the tribunal releases information that the agency deems to be classified. The next amendment relates to review provisions and it amends clause 234. That clause limits reviews on the use of classified information. I think that if members read it they will see that it is fairly clear there should be a proper ability to review the use of classified information. 
My final amendment relates to special advocates. There is a whole section on the role of special advocates and the use of special advocates has been very controversial around the world. So far we have had only one experience of special advocates in New Zealand and that was Stuart Grieve who was appointed by the Government in the Ahmed Zaoui case. He gave quite a detailed submission to the select committee that was considering this bill. He said that most of the so-called classified information he received was out in the public space anyway on the Internet or wherever. A lot of it was wrong and a lot of it was presented out of context. I think he showed the importance of having some independence in the process. 
The big problem with clause 238 as it is at the moment is that special advocates may not communicate with the people for whom they are being the special advocates after they have received the classified information. Even though a special advocate is the legal person appointed effectively by the Government to represent in Stuart Grieve’s case Ahmed Zaoui no real dialogue can take place between that advocate and the person after the advocate has received the classified information. My suggestion is to eliminate that restriction so that clause 238(1) will simply state: “The special advocate may communicate with person A or person A’s representative.”—that is the client in the immigration case. My amendment would omit the rest of subclause (1). I think we have to trust that person to not convey unnecessarily detailed classified information.