Woodhouse Michael: Immigration Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoodhouse Michael: Immigration Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:10943. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Minister of Immigration):This is my first call in the Committee stage of this bill the Immigration Amendment Bill whose passage I am responsible for and I had hoped to answer the probing technical questions that had been raised by members of the Committee when the Committee stage started but sadly the debate so far has not been replete with such erudite technical questions. Nevertheless there are elements of the bill that I do want to touch on including its background.But before I do I just want to acknowledge the many hundreds perhaps more than a thousand emails I have received expressing concern about this bill and in particular that it may be in breach of our obligations under UN conventions on refugees and specifically the 1951 convention. I have done my best to reply to all of those emails—I may have missed a few—and I have certainly been appreciative of the further feedback I have been getting in correspondence about this. The point I want to reassure members of the public and members of this House about is that the Government takes its obligations in respect of those conventions very very seriously and is satisfied as is the Attorney-General that this bill when passed will not constitute a breach of those conventions. I must say it does not help when organisations like Amnesty International make comments about unlimited detention under this bill which are simply not correct. It is not possible for somebody to be detained indefinitely as was stated in a recent report that Amnesty International released.I just want to remind the Committee of the background to this bill. In 2011 an exercise was undertaken to assess New Zealand’s preparedness for an irregularmaritime arrival—a mass arrival by boat. This exercise known as Exercise Barrier was a very helpful exercise. It identified a number of issues requiring improvement and this bill is one part of those. It firstly seeks to deter a mass arrival. The simple fact is this: we do not want these people to come. We do not want them to come for the simple singular reason that they are putting their lives at risk. They are paying money to thugs and thieves. They are in desperate situations; we understand that. There are many millions of people who are economic and political refugees around the world but getting on a boat and sailing across the ocean as so many people are doing right now is not the answer. There is no doubt—and I make no apology for it—that this bill contains provisions to make New Zealand less attractive as a destination for those people. Exercise Barrier certainly identified some administrative challenges in respect of the management of a mass arrival should one occur and this bill will also include steps to take in order to identify and remedy those including the ability for a judge to issue a group warrant to house and detain people until their security status—their health issues and the validity of their asylum claim—is sought.One issue that has been raised certainly with our confidence and supply partners has been the definition of “mass arrival”. This was also touched on. I want to acknowledge the support and cooperation of Peter Dunne and the very good grace with which he cooperated with me on the progression of this bill. I also acknowledge the Māori Party who are also supporting the bill at this point. The definition of “mass arrival” has been proposed by Mr Dunne to increase from the number 10 to 30 and the Government will support that amendment.It will not support the other amendments that have been put forward but I do want to acknowledge the Supplementary Order Paper in the name of the Rt Hon Winston Peters. He indeed spoke on this point in the second reading while supporting the bill which I certainly acknowledge. The issue around this was in fact—you know we have competing objectives in respect of the appropriate place for detention of irregular maritime arrivals—that it seemed on the face of Mr Peters’ second reading speech that he wanted to go a little bit harder than the Government was going. I am not quite sure that was actually what was reflected in the Supplementary Order Paper but nevertheless it is an appropriate concern to ensure that those people arriving by boat in this way are detained in a place that is appropriate for and commensurate with their risk and their need. I think that is what is behind the right honourable member’s Supplementary Order Paper and I want to acknowledge that. The Immigration Act itself does not specify exactly what those places of detention might be but it does go on to name certain forms of detention which might be a police station a prison premises approved by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment other residences or domestic residences and all of that would be in accordance with the risk that has been identified.The Government has made a commitment to invest a significant amount of money in the upgrade of the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Centre in South Auckland and that is likely to be the place where the vast majority of refugees irregular or not are going to be located. It is not appropriate and it is not possible for those detained at Māngere to simply come and go. There are severe restrictions on their freedom of movement while their asylum claims are assessed. However it is not a prison. Nevertheless on boats there are going to be three types of occupants. There are going to be those who have paid to be there—the victims of people smuggling. There are going to be the traffickers—the people who are piloting the ships. Then of course there are going to be people who are known by other nations as terrorist suspects and those people need to be weeded out. Where it is appropriate there will be a higher level of detention. Sowhile acknowledging New Zealand First’s concern and the Supplementary Order Paper that has been put forward the Government will not be supporting it.I have a Supplementary Order Paper and it is in response to a very technical error in the omission of three words in the 2009 Act when it was passed. Members may recall the case known as theKonsaijan case. A Thai national was charged with aiding the flow into New Zealand of people for the purposes of working in breach of the terms of their visa but because of three words that were left out of the 2009 Act it was not possible to prosecute. I have committed to putting those three words back in—in fact those who have read the Supplementary Order Paper will see there are a great deal more words than that. I think it is going to be as watertight as possible. If people who have legitimate visas are coming here with the intention of not complying with the terms of those visas then anybody who facilitates that process will be subject to conviction.The last thing that I want to just say at this time is in respect of some rather nonsensical speeches that we heard when this Committee stage started. We heard references to ghost ships. We heard references from Mr Cunliffe that it was more likely that somebody would come from Mars than Indonesia or “Wogistan”. I think frankly that that is not only wrong I believe it is deliberately so. I wonder whether those people know they might not be here by the time a ship arrives so that they do not have to account for the nonsense statements that they have been making. I can go through a number of publicly known attempts by irregular maritime arrivals who have New Zealand as their destination. They date back 10 years and they are continuing. As we know in April this year a rickety 14-metre wooden-hulled vessel with about 60 people arrived at the West Australian port of Geraldton and the Australian customs and border protection officers in their report confirmed that the target was New Zealand—the vessel’s intended destination was New Zealand. They knew that because of the testimony of the master of the vessel and an analysis of data onboard that confirmed the vessel was heading for New Zealand. It was a 14-metre wooden well-resourced well-fuelled vessel. It had GPS on board obviously or satnav because they had onboard data that confirmed that was the target.Anybody who believes that that could not have occurred forgets that most of our ancestors came here on wooden-hulled sailing ships and waka. To say that nobody could cross the Tasman—we have members of our country who have rowed across the Tasman when they are well resourced and they have the right technology. Anybody who thinks this could not happen is being either deliberately evasive or naive. I think this bill deserves better than that. This is an important bill. It sends a very strong signal to those people who would exploit vulnerable people that New Zealand is not a soft touch and that when they get here they will be detained in a place commensurate while their status is determined and they may well be turned around like the 80 percent of asylum seekers in this country are.