Dunne Peter: Immigration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Dunne Peter: Immigration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 As the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee that considered the bill I want first of all to acknowledge the contribution made by all the members from just about every side of the House who participated in that consideration. They all contributed constructively and positively and the bill that has emerged as a result is a much better bill. It is much better not just for their contribution but also because in substantial part the submissions made and the concerns raised have been listened to and accommodated in the revised draft that is before the House. 
Let me put on the record too the fact that the significant majority of submissions received on the bill opposed its original provisions. The committee listened very carefully to a range of those concerns some of which have been paraded before us in the previous speech in somewhat colourful language and they have been addressed. 
Dail Jones 
: No they haven’t. 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: The points raised— 
Dail Jones 
: Rubbish! 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: I say to the member from New Zealand First that I will come to that matter shortly. The points raised by the Human Rights Commission and many others have been addressed in the way in which this legislation has been drafted. 
I turn to the comments made by the previous speaker in respect of the National Party’s minority report. I make this observation. What he is essentially saying is that it is unacceptable to have a situation where the Government of the day has any immigration policy whatsoever. The Government of the day has no right according to his argument to have any view about the type number category or whatever of people coming to this country. That immediately puts him at odds of course with the New Zealand First Party whose minority report decries this bill not for its content but because it does not put in place a numerical limit on the number of migrants coming here. 
What both those views demonstrate to me is an actual lack of understanding or appreciation about what this bill sets out to do. I view it purely as a matter of process. The previous speaker alluded to the fact that the legislation that was passed a few weeks ago cancelled the applications of a significant number of people—20000 I think or thereabouts. One of the problems that we have had in immigration policy under successive Governments for a long time is a huge backlog in the number of people applying who wait for inordinate lengths of time to get their applications considered and who are often not even in this country at the time they are awaiting that decision. Most of them have either remained overseas or been here and gone back to their place of origin awaiting an outcome. It is an unsatisfactory situation and no one could argue in justice that it is appropriate to lead people on for that length of time. 
I find it ironic that now having taken a stand that states that at a certain point in time applications that have not been processed will be allowed to lapse the same people who argue about the delay argue about the high-handedness of putting a deadline in place. 
As I understand it this bill states that what the Government will do from here on in is to put in place a procedure whereby people who meet a certain level of points or criteria are put into a pool and from time to time the Government based on its assessment of the numbers it wants to admit will invite people from that pool to apply for permanent residence. There is no sinister suggestion that the Minister will look through the pool and say: “Oh that one looks OK but I don’t like the look of that one—don’t invite them.” Rather if members look at the provisions of clause 7 in which the Government residence policy is set out—although the bill is not obliged to take account of that in every respect—they will see that the general criteria by which we seek to admit people to this country will be honoured. It is simply a vast leap of imagination to think that there will be some sinister plot by the Minister—either this Minister or any future Minister—to hand-pick the migrants who come to New Zealand. That is frankly absurd. It is interesting despite the puff and the rhetoric of the previous speaker that that is the only point of concern that the National Party raised about this bill during its examination by the select committee. 
The previous speaker is correct: there was concern around the committee table about the issues that were raised with respect to human rights justice and the opportunities provided for applicants to be considered and they have been addressed in the reworking of the legislation. 
I want to make a comment about the New Zealand First position. I respected the contribution that Mr Jones made to the committee. By and large it was a reasoned and informed one which immediately singled it out from some of those of his colleagues. But it would be fair to say to him that this bill did not at any time seek to address numbers of migrants. This bill is about process. It is not about the actual policy that applies. Whether the number is a net increase of 10000 per annum as his party’s minority report suggests or 45000 per annum as he claims the current policy is it does not actually matter. The procedure that is being established by this bill will be essentially the same. 
He can have his argument about immigration levels separately. This legislation is about the process for determining how that level of migration—20000 2000 10000 or 100000—is actually resolved. It has been designed to achieve—and I think the select committee on balance has come to a reasonable solution—to establish a situation that is relatively straightforward and relatively efficient in terms of the time it will take for the processing of applications and that has in an inherently uncertain environment one of the highest levels of certainty possible. 
Because people will go into a pool it has an automatic element of uncertainty associated with it. Because they will then be selected and let us be blunt about it on the basis of the contribution that they can make to this country—and it is a good thing surely that we are getting the best of immigrants—there is an element of risk associated with that as well. But leaving aside those elements the process is as certain as it can be. 
If we ever got to the situation that Dr Smith fears in which a Minister was politically or in some other devious way manipulating the flood or flow or immigrants very clear sanctions would apply. It would be absolutely obvious. The political reaction would be immediate and severe and I suspect that that Minister would not survive in office for very long at all. 
So let us get realistic. This is not some great new sinister plan to flood the country with immigrants of a particular type. This is simply about saying that since the mid-1990s successive Governments have acknowledged that we have a problem in the sense that we have many more people seeking to come here for residence than we can readily and easily process. We need a better system than the current system which has people stacked up in unreasonable hope for unreasonable periods of time. 
It may well be that this is a vast and novel experiment. It may well be that it has not been tried by any other country. Neither of those things by themselves damns the measure. They certainly have not damned New Zealand Governments from adopting similar measures in the past. If that was our attitude we would never have had the economic reforms of the 1980s for a start. 
I say that this bill is about process. It is a better bill because of the work that the select committee has done which all the members of that committee participated in equally and I am grateful for that. What is important now is that the message that is sent to potential migrants is that this country is a place that welcomes quality migration and that it values the input that migrants can have. This bill processes that but a more important issue is that while attitudes attacking immigration and migrants and trying to blame migrants for every conceivable social ill remain in the community it does not matter what the process is this will not be an attractive country to come to. 
I say to members opposite who have played the immigration card for so long that we should not use this as the excuse for somehow blaming our immigrants. If we really value the contribution that they make and if we really believe that this can be a better society because of their contribution as I do we should seek to encourage their participation and involvement and stop the dirty game-playing that has been going on for too long. This bill provides a way forward and I believe that the House should proceed to adopt it.