Heatley Phil: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Heatley Phil: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6779] 
PHIL HEATLEY (NZ National—Whangarei) 
: I am thankful for an opportunity to point out to members of the Committee—clearly many members such as the Greens have not read the bill and kept up with progress—the specific significance of clause 2 “Commencement” which states: “This Act comes into force on the day on which it receives the Royal assent.” As they say the devil is in the detail. It is certainly not written in that clause but everyone should be well aware that that clause is in fact the clause that rides roughshod over due process in New Zealand. It rides roughshod over the fact that the bill should be considered by a select committee. New Zealanders from across the country should have the opportunity to make submissions to this Government and to Opposition members and we should see good law being passed in the proper manner. 
I was interested to hear members read out what the Minister said back in 1999. She said: “I do not appreciate a Government using the urgency provisions of Parliament in order to avoid due process. Due process would require the matter to be referred to a select committee for members to be properly briefed by officials and for us to be able to canvass issues as to whether the court would be likely to use the United Nations convention to override the provisions of the statute.” I support that statement from the Minister in the chair Lianne Dalziel. The difficulty is that I supported the Minister back in 1999 when she said that but I certainly do not support her today as she puts this bill through under urgency and asks that the commencement date occur when it receives the royal assent which could be any day now. 
I would like that Minister to know that members of Parliament throughout the country—certainly National members of Parliament—are dealing with immigration cases all the time. Certainly when people walk into my electorate office and into National Party electorate offices throughout the country we go through due process. We do not like the idea of this commencement date effectively wiping out 2 years worth of applications—in fact in some cases people lodged applications to come to this country and work here 2 years ago. We have opened the door to those people. I certainly have in Whangarei. We have worked with genuine people over a period of 2 years and that Minister with this commencement clause will effectively nullify all the work that has been done. It is a very sad issue I believe and the Minister should take that into account. We look at issues—I certainly do in my electorate office—on a case-by-case basis. But that Minister is going to legislate over all cases for no reason and will reject applications for 2 years for no reason at all except of course to avoid her conflict with what the court has stated. 
The major point I want to make about this particular commencement clause is that it simply provides a vehicle for rejecting a whole lot of applications that have been lodged before this Minister. Whenever she does that she will retrospectively exclude potentially very good New Zealanders from working and raising their families in our country. I am disappointed by that because I have worked with people coming to Whangarei on a case-by-case basis as do other National MPs throughout the country. We have taken their issues in hand helped them where we could appealed to the Minister where we could not then we turn round and find out that effectively all that work will be nullified. It does not matter to the Minister whether one person has applied over the 2 years or whether thousands—which is in fact the case—have applied; she is going to make their applications lapse. I wish she would front up to those many many people throughout this country who will be in tears because of all the hurdles they have jumped in the last 2 years.