Jones Dail: General Debate 
Jones Dail: General Debate 
[Volume:625;Page:20236] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. It is no surprise today that New Zealand First wants to discuss a matter of very recent public interest. It is well summed up in the  
Dominion Post  
headline “Oops wrong Iraqi”. This Government has many hundreds of millions of dollars available to it to run the immigration system of our country and it cannot get things right the first time. It has spent another $23 million especially to manage New Zealand’s immigration risk situation and it has failed to do that. Who has resolved the problem for the Government? New Zealand First has. Can we fix it? Yes we can and we will continue to do so. Who is the effective Leader of the Opposition in this House? It is the Rt Hon Winston Peters—that is who it is. He is here and we are ready to go at any time on this issue or on any other issue. If Labour wants to have an election next week New Zealand First is ready for that as usual. 
Why can the Government not get this matter of immigration right? The issue has been going on for years and years and we have warned the Government about it for years and years. The Government is a dreadfully weak organisation. It has changed its Minister of Immigration time and time again yet the Prime Minister maintains Paul Swain in that office. There he sits abjectly in front of the television cameras saying that he thought he had got it right but no oops it was the wrong Iraqi. The Government just cannot get it right. Are those the only two examples? Are there more to come? There may be more and people should watch this space in New Zealand First where the news will come out first. I am sure that the Minister of Immigration is worrying himself silly as to just what will happen next. 
Why can the New Zealand Immigration Service not get it right? Why is it left to people in Bangkok to try to come to grips with Arab names? We warned the Immigration Service about that years ago. It is finally taking New Zealand First’s advice and bringing all those cases back to New Zealand. After all that person Mahdi Saleh Khashaly was travelling not just on a UN passport but also on an Iraqi passport. One would have thought someone in the Bangkok office would have realised that an Iraqi passport backed up by a UN passport should be cause for concern but no there is obviously no link with Wellington in the Bangkok office. Its staff do not think twice and they let those people in. 
I asked the Minister today whether New Zealand still had any links with other countries in the loop. In his first supplementary answer he seemed to say yes but then when I asked him whether he had received communications of any kind from Australian officials or their staff or from any other nations that are fearful that New Zealand may have become a stop-off point for back-door entry into other nations via New Zealand by suspected terrorists and those associated with the Saddam Hussein regime he said no he had not received any communications. We are outside the loop as Dr Mapp picked up on so promptly at question time. We are not in the loop. We have been rejected by other countries; we are no longer within the loop. 
Despite all that the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade may say and try to do our foreign affairs policy is also in tatters. Mr Goff can travel here there and anywhere and people may say anything to him. But really if we were in the loop—where Mr Goff should have put us—we would have answers and support from Australia and other countries. But we are not getting that any more. We are really beyond the fringe in so far as our former allies are concerned. They no longer care to assist New Zealand because of the policies of this Government. 
I also say as a New Zealand First member of Parliament that the Government used to accuse us of racism because of our questioning of immigration policy. I ask the Government whether it stands by that accusation now. I really think and believe that Middle Eastern people living in New Zealand today are being badly served by this Government. There must be many people of Middle Eastern origin who have come to New Zealand lawfully and who are going about their business and are doing everything correctly but who are now under a cloud because this Government cannot run the Immigration Service adequately. I feel terribly sorry for the Iraqis Iranians Syrians Jordanians and perhaps Egyptians who are living here because every time that they go out they must wonder whether New Zealanders think that they are al-Khashali or some other person who is hiding in New Zealand. We in New Zealand First say to them that we will do the job properly. We will catch those sorts of people before they come to New Zealand and if necessary we will pass legislation to get rid of them.