Cunliffe David: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is subject to correctionCunliffe David: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3095. Text is subject to correction.]Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn):The Labour Opposition supports the intent of this bill. It supports the prevention the interdiction and the punishment of the exploitation of migrant workers. But what it does not support is some charade where the Government itself knows that the measures proposed in this bill are not going to work and in fact cannot work. Members opposite have asked the Opposition for two things in this debate. The first is clarity as to why we will not support it and the second is what we would do instead and I intend to set out both—set out both. What is important is that this bill is under-resourced. It creates an inappropriate extension of powers. It is full of legal anomalies and unintended consequences. It does not solve the problem that it says it is going to fix. As such it is yet another triumph of spin over substance and of rhetoric over solutions. It is an example of a Government that has lost its way.If you ever doubt that you know it when members opposite members of the Government sitting on the Treasury benches make a plaintive plea as the member who has just resumed his seat Jonathan Young has done to the Opposition to come up with the solutions even though they have all the resources of the Government at their disposal. You know you are in a third term—a Government that has lost its way meandering through side tracks and embarrassments losing the point and losing the capability to charter a course to the future for New Zealand.Firstly let us look at the context of this bill. There is a growing problem. On that we agree with the Government and we agree with the officials who have worked very hard on this bill. There is as my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway has so clearly stated a lack of skills development in New Zealand which means that our economy is becoming increasingly reliant on migrant labour to fill the gaps. There is a mismatch between our tertiary education system and our job market. That is made worse by the proliferation of low-quality private training establishments which are under-regulated. Too many of them are not about higher education; they are about being visa factories. Anybody who has been in Auckland and looked around those knows only too well that students are brought in on lax courses they are given work rights and they are often exploited by people—I agree with the Government—who are often from their own communities. They are exploited on low wages. As a former Minister of Immigration for 2 years and as a local MP in west Auckland I can tell you that I have seen these cases at both ends—from a supervision and overview point of view and as a local MP reporting cases of alleged exploitation one of which has finally led to convictions in the court system after many years of chasing.What we need to see is a law that will work. Here is what needs to happen instead of what we have been served up. Firstly this bill lacks any kind of whistle-blower protection for the workers who are being exploited. Here is the fundamental problem and why this bill just cannot work. If you are a migrant worker and your temporary visa depends upon the job you have as it often does and you report that you are being exploited you can bet your bottom dollar that you will lose that job because either the employer gets away with it and kicks you out in revenge or if the employer goes down your job may well go down with it. Either way unless you are protected you will not report. That is a fundamental problem with this bill that the Government knows about because it was presented in multiple submissions to the select committee and that it has done nothing to fix.The second fundamental problem is a very sad one and I am almost loath to mention the names but what do Cave Creek Pike River and this piece of legislation have in common? They were all disasters waiting to happen. This bill is a disaster waiting to happen because it provides an unfunded under-resourced mandate. The labour inspectorate has been thrown together in Mr Joyce’s little empire the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment but the labour functions have been run down because the ministry is so set on racing to the bottom of the business barrel that it has under-resourced the labour inspectorate. That is another reason that this bill cannot succeed: it is an under-resourced mandate.Thirdly this bill contains what in our view is an inappropriate and unbalanced extension of official powers. They are in several cases measures that were tried on the previous Government by some of the same officials in the lead-up to the 2009 review—when I was the Minister—and rejected because they failed New Zealand Bill of Rights Act tests like warrantless searches of private property and private home dwellings. Of course officials must have the ability to conduct a thorough search; otherwise they will not get the evidence. But when we start taking away the judicial protections of warranting as the Government is trying to do in the intelligence and security area and as it is doing in this bill what we see is a creeping undermining of democracy. Just ask John Campbell. Just ask Mike Hosking. This Government loves power and it loves control but New Zealanders are getting sick of a Government that is about power for its own sake not about the people it is here to serve.Write us a law that will work and we will vote for it. We support this bill’s intent but we will not window-dress over New Zealanders’ suffering. We will not window-dress. Another example: absolute discretion decisions—under this law there is no Privacy Act protection. The officials—and this will be delegated down to a low level—have absolute discretion to make whatever decisions they like with no legal comeback and not even the ability for an affected party to find out what has been decided and why. You could call it the “Kafka clause” because the Government is exempting itself from the normal processes of a democratic system where a citizen including a migrant or an employing migrant should be able to find out why they have been pinged. Do we want to live in a society where the Government can take arbitrary unsupervised actions by officials—not by the Ministers; by officials—and people cannot even ask what and why? No that is wrong. That was rejected in the lead-up to the 2009 review but officials have come back and snuck it past the goalie and those folks were asleep at the wheel.There is a bunch of legal issues. It is my privilege to chair the Regulations Review Committee. We raised with the committee that considered this bill the fact that the commencement date was outside the normal processes and it did act to tighten that up. In this legislation there is a potentially unmandated levy that has come under considerable criticism from migrant communities. It is very very important that those processes are transparent.In summary we support the intent of removing the exploitation of migrant workers. We wanted to support the bill. We supported it to select committee. We made it clear to the Government that we wanted a law we could pass. But we sadly find once again that the Government has put spin ahead of substance. The sad part about this is that the Government knows damn well that it is doing it because it was clear in the submissions. There is no point in passing a law that protects workers if it does not. If a worker comes forward under this bill they are down the road because either they get the sack in revenge or their employer goes down and there is no protection for the worker. The bill is an unfunded mandate. There is no resource in the labour inspectorate to carry out the functions written in law. Thirdly it is a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and it is an inappropriate extension of warrantless searches and exemptions from the Privacy Act. Finally the bill is beset with legal loopholes and contradictions which is just bad quality legislation.In summary there are many responsible members opposite. The Government has had a worthy intent with this bill. It is not too late for the Government to change its mind and take this bill back and put it through another turn of the legislative spanner to fix these obvious problems. This bill deserves more work. New Zealanders deserve it to have more work. They deserve a Government as intent on substance and fixing the problems as it is on its own power and popularity. Thank you.