Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I stand with great sadness to speak today on this bill. It is a sad day for our nation. It is the first time that a political party—certainly a Government—has made the humanity and the rights of asylum seekers an election-year issue. It certainly doesn't seem like detaining asylum seekers without charge or trial would be a bread and butter issue for a Labour Government but here we are. I stand and speak today as a former child asylum seeker. When I first entered politics I didn't think I'd be doing it as the first refugee MP but I've realised that that representation is actually pretty essential in this House and in politics. So I stand to ground us in who this bill is actually about—people like my parents who had to escape Iran under one of the most oppressive regimes in the modern world. The absolute violence against women by the regime and against its political opponents meant that we had to flee and my little hipster activist parents landed here in New Zealand with their nine-year-old daughter that they didn't want to raise under oppression claimed asylum at the border. We are talking about Afghan women judges who have to cross the border now into Pakistan; we're talking about Hong Kong democracy activists; the Uighur community in China; we're talking about the people of Ukraine. Anyone who's willing to get on a boat and somehow make it to a country like New Zealand in the South Pacific probably deserves a medal rather than to have their rights suspended. So what are we talking about? A John Key Government passed this law first talked about irregular migration first talked about mass arrivals and how we need detention powers—10 years ago—and yes this side of the House railed against it. Today we have a Minister who is also the MP for our country's most diverse electorate of Mt Roskill saying actually what John Key did didn't go far enough: 96 hours of detention to determine whether or not a person is a risk to our country isn't long enough—we want a month; we want 28 days. To put that into context you can be caught with a smoking gun standing over a dead body charged with murder—or to use a real example you can be the Christchurch terrorist—and you still rightly have a fundamental right to appear before a judge or a magistrate within a day to determine whether you are in fact a risk to the community and whether your detention is lawful. Twenty-eight days without the right to appear in front of a court because they've approached our border and asked for help—without charge or trial; without the right to have their risk as individuals determined independently. This isn't their whole asylum case; it's just their detention rights we're suspending. And this is a Government and a Minister who knows that thus far asylum seekers when they land here by air and are detained are detained at Mt Eden Prison and won't guarantee that criminal prisons won't be used to exercise the power to detain asylum seekers now for 28 days without the ability to challenge. We just a year and a half ago had a full independent inquiry into asylum seeker detention in this nation—so far only handfuls of people arriving because it's only air travel that's really available to asylum seekers. They are being held and have been held by successive Governments—Labour- and National-led Governments—in Mt Eden Prison—maximum security criminal prison—and Victoria Casey QC who conducted that inquiry courageously outlined the abuse that they were suffering; the sexual and physical violence that they'd been suffering; the absolute isolation and trauma of having escaped a war or really serious persecution; gay men from Iran who would be executed; Afghan women is what we're talking about. The absolute trauma of having to be displaced and escape your nation—they were being held in Mt Eden Prison and this bill is extending that power today. So let's not call it a technical change" and degrade those communities even further. Let's not talk about how much how many extra rights we're giving them. Let's think about who else in this country we would face—look them in the eye and say "Guess what! We're doing you a great favour. We're taking away your rights to challenge detention. We're going to put you in detention probably in a maximum security criminal prison without charge or trial for a month while we let you access a lawyer maybe." Now the Government says this is because we lack the resource we lack the legal expertise to give these people a chance—like we do to the most serious criminals—to appear before a court and challenge their detention. If they were honest about that if this was what this bill is about where's the resource? Where's the training programme that they're also introducing for lawyers at the District Courts to be able to deal with asylum cases? Where's the resource we're putting into our courts because actually most New Zealanders are having to wait quite a long time to access justice here; where's that? Where's the rest of the Victoria Casey review recommendations where she said that detaining asylum seekers is actually a breach of international and domestic law in this country because it's perfectly legal to approach a border and claim asylum?Let's look at what New Zealand actually stands for. This is a compassionate nation who wants to do our fair share in the global space where displacement has happened where war has happened where oppression has happened. We are much more like Hungary and Poland and Germany who are just coming together to try and feed and clothe the refugees; creating new public transport tickets for them; trying to ensure that Ukrainian children crossing the border by the hundreds of thousands—not just hundreds not just two three hundreds which is what this bill is apparently about. Look at the people of Pakistan when the Afghan community came across. None of those nations made law to detain the refugees. The only countries who have had a punitive response to this fear—and it is just fear—of so-called mass arrivals have been the Liberal Government of Australia and the Conservative Party of Britain who is passing a similar law today.That is who this Government is aligning us with and those are not New Zealand values. What makes me sadder still is that it's election year. This is a Government that killed hate speech law reform because it proudly said it wouldn't make those vulnerable communities a political football in election year even if that law was going to result in protection long term. But it is happy to make our refugee and asylum seeker communities political football today—this year in election year—in order to take away our rights. So it makes me sad for our communities that believed a Labour Party Prime Minister when she said "This is not us." It makes me sad for Amnesty International New Zealand who fought for the Victoria Casey review into asylum seeker detention and celebrated its recommendations. It makes me sad for Victoria Casey QC; the people of Mt Roskill; the Tamil community who've seen the Australian billboards in northern Sri Lanka that said "Don't come here by boat we will detain you" because that's now New Zealand—under a Labour Government. It makes me so sad for all of Aotearoa who turned out thousands upon thousands after the Christchurch shooting happened to say "This is not us." to say "We are a welcoming and inclusive society." It's incumbent upon us to say that you can and have an absolute right to escape torture and oppression to raise your babies in peace and reach a border any way you can. And you know what if we had a Te Ao Māori approach to migration and refugee rights I guarantee you we wouldn't have a punitive approach like this when people arrive. So at best this bill is an unnecessary waste of this House's time; at worst it's breathtakingly reckless. But we will continue to stand with our communities as this bill and their humanity gets debated. We will continue to stand for human rights and I say at least in October we know if this is not in fact us that we're going to need a much bigger Green heart in the Labour Government."