Simpson Scott: Immigration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Simpson Scott: Immigration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 03 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1971. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 As we draw to an end this first reading debate on the Immigration Amendment Bill it is a great pleasure for me to rise in the House today to support the bill and to support it with vigour. 
We are a very desirable part of the world. We are one of the world’s most favoured nations and we live in a global environment where there is no shortage of desperate people living in desperate circumstances. They are living lives that they want to remove themselves from because of those desperate circumstances. There is no shortage of despicable people—despicable people—who would seek to trade in human misery. They are happy to smuggle people around the world in the most offensive and miserable circumstances. We must stand as a responsible international citizen to ensure that they cannot and do not prosper. 
So this piece of legislation this very good and wise piece of legislation is designed to ensure that we are prepared for the onslaught that may yet come. I hear voices on the Opposition benches and we have heard them during this debate so far today. We have heard from people who would be the first to criticise if this legislation were not in place and we were to find ourselves being swamped by people-smugglers who were bringing in the desperate the poor and the impoverished who have very few choices. Because we live in this desperate world the responsible thing we must do is be prepared because this country is such an attractive destination. 
As I have listened to this debate this afternoon I have heard members from the Opposition and the Green Party talk in very high-handed and mighty tones about all sorts of things except the protection of what this country values most of all which is its border. We value our border because it is such a wide border. It is a border that has until recent times been protected largely due to our position on the globe. Distance has for our trade environment been a great burden but in terms of protecting our border distance has actually been our greatest protection. But these days with modern science innovation and engineering there is the capacity for very very sophisticated vessels to arrive on our shores laden with the desperate and the poor who are the customers and the victims of people-smuggling. It is this legislation that we must support in order to ensure that that cannot and does not happen. This is the sort of legislation that Australia should have been considering many years ago. The arguments we have heard today are the sorts of arguments we probably heard from people who opposed that sort of thing back then and who now have lived to rue the day. 
We find that people-smugglers today are well resourced well funded and well organised. They will leave no stone unturned in terms of plying their evil trade. They have access to sophisticated technology. They have access to sophisticated steel-hulled vessels. They can and will make the journey to our shores. We must use this piece of legislation as a deterrent to people-smuggling to ensure that their filthy evil trade cannot succeed in our part of the world. This piece of legislation will enhance our ability to do exactly that—to deter people-smuggling. We need to make that option as unattractive as possible so that those people will not seek us out as a soft touch. 
New Zealand takes a firm stance on illegal immigration ventures and we will continue to do so. Queue-jumpers should not be able to push in front of people who are genuine refugees and asylum seekers. We adhere to and respect the process that we have signed up to as a responsible member of the international community. We have an obligation—an absolute obligation—to ensure that that is true. As we conclude this debate I am speaking today very much in support of the legislation and I endorse and commend it to the House.