Chadwick Steve: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — Second Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — Second Reading 
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STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 This is one of the occasions when one is really pleased to be asked to take a call. It is another example of a Government that when it came into power in 1999 got on with fixing up an industry that as the previous speaker said was—frankly—a mess. I became an electorate MP following a previous Minister of Immigration and I was simply appalled that constituents in the town of Rotorua were told to go to Hamilton for all matters of immigration. They were told not to go to the MP’s office. That was the culture of the previous Government and of a previous Minister of Immigration who worked in our community. So in our community we opened the doors of the constituency office as an outreach for immigration because we saw the shambles in the service at that time. 
Immigration advice was not provided by the Immigration Service but by advisers. These were advisers offshore who had put people wrong in their country of origin and advisers in New Zealand who had perpetuated a culture of very very bad service for new migrants. As other speakers have said it reflected appallingly on New Zealand as the host country the welcoming country when people were told: “You are welcome here we will help you and these are the steps that you have to go through.” In our community we heard of rorts by advisers from particular countries who were charging an astronomical amount of money for people even to get their services and to start to open the gate before they came to New Zealand. It was the previous Minister of Immigration Lianne Dalziel who asked people to give her the names of some of those immigration consultants who were starting to blacken the immigration advisers’ industry. We did that and the Minister acted immediately. 
I would like to congratulate the current Minister who put this Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill—a tidying-up bill—into the House in December 2006 and here we are in March 2007 at the second reading stage. I think the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has done a wonderful job to get the bill back to us. Making prompt work of bills that are needed to fix up an industry is what this Government is all about. This Government identifies the problem and gets on and fixes it. 
One of the things that is very important about this bill is the issue of reciprocity with other countries. This legislation will bring us into line with countries like the UK and Australia and that is absolutely critical. We also need to be constantly vigilant about monitoring the advice given in other countries to our new migrants attempting to come to New Zealand. 
The other aspect of this legislation that I particularly feel is great is the Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal. People have had nowhere to go other than the Minister’s office when they have had knowledge about these sorts of rotten apples in the advisory barrel. That is why Minister Lianne Dalziel realised that we really had to do something. Nothing had been done by the Opposition for 9 years and the situation was simply appalling. We started to put the case together about the countries where those advisers were giving poor advice. It was only electorate MPs who saw the stresses of immigration cases in our electorate offices who could feed back where we needed to put processes in place to get it right. When we had an electorate MP who sent all cases to Hamilton of course members did not know where the systems were rotten so that they could put in systemic change to put it right. We are hands-on MPs out in our community. We saw the problem we fed it into the Minister and the Minister got on and did something about it. 
I am pleased that the Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal is there. It is independent of the authority and I think that that is a very important aspect of the authority which will have the support of the Ministry of Justice. This legislation will clean up advisers in this industry who have poured disrepute on to immigration and who have set a very bad example. 
This is a fantastic bill. I hope that it will reduce by some 40 percent my electorate office time spent on immigration cases. So if that is the case in a place like Rotorua what will it be like in Auckland or North Shore? It is outrageous! 
Darien Fenton 
: South Auckland. 
STEVE CHADWICK 
: In South Auckland we had no option but for people to come to their MP’s office because there were those dreadfully sad cases of people sometimes having had their passports confiscated until they had paid an amount of money and they could not ever return home. Some were even put into caravans and put into jobs by these advisers who said: “This is what you have to do when you come to this country. We’ll confiscate your passport. We’ll give it back when we’ve sorted out your visas and your residency.” They actually impounded passports in some cases for up to 2 to 3 years. 
I am really pleased this bill has come to its second reading. I congratulate all those who have so reasonably put it together and I look forward to it passing as soon as possible. Thank you. 
Amendments recommended by the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee by majority agreed to. 
Bill read a second time.