Carter Chris: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — In Committee 
Carter Chris: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8595] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister for Ethnic Affairs) 
: 
 I rise to support this excellent legislation. I do so in two capacities. Firstly I do so as an electorate MP. Probably every member of Parliament in this Chamber has experienced constituency cases that have been brought to his or her office by people who have been to an immigration consultant first of all. Those constituents have spent a great deal of money—sometimes many tens of thousands of dollars—and in many cases have received no support whatsoever. Documents have not been lodged passports have been confiscated and very large sums of money have been asked for. I have experienced that many times in my electorate. 
Secondly I support the bill as Minister for Ethnic Affairs. I spend every weekend engaging with ethnic communities. In fact I was discussing with the Minister of Immigration the other day the fact that two weekends ago I went to 10 ethnic events during that weekend. I have the opportunity to meet thousands of people on a monthly basis from minority ethnic communities. Many of them have had a lot of bad experiences with immigration advisers who purport to help them often when they are in desperate circumstances to get residency in this country. 
The bill itself was first proposed when Lianne Dalziel was Minister of Immigration. It has been a fair time in its planning but it is very important legislation in providing safety for the community. The bill creates a licensing regime for people who provide immigration advice both in New Zealand and overseas. Any person who provides advice regarding immigration to New Zealand will have to be licensed unless explicitly exempt from that requirement. Immigration advisers will have to meet competency standards and be deemed fit to practice and will of course be subject to complaints and disciplinary procedures. That is long overdue. A number of new offences are also set out including one of providing immigration advice without a licence. A new statutory body the Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal will be established to administer the licensing regime. 
I think it is important that we are clear in our heads as to what this bill is trying to do. We have heard a few whinges and moans from Opposition members already. Although I am glad to hear that they are supporting this bill I am disappointed to hear the degree of whingeing from them. I can even hear some barracking while I am talking now. Actually this bill is about providing safety and security for people who are often in desperate circumstances. 
I can remember that about 4 years ago a large delegation of members of the Tuvalu community came to see me in my electorate office in west Auckland. They were very concerned about global warming. They were not climate change deniers—unlike one or two members in this Chamber. They had become alarmed that rising sea levels around the low-lying atolls that make up Tuvalu would impact profoundly on their safety and on their homes. They were of course desperate to stay in New Zealand. As a result of the combination of their anxiety about environmental impacts and global warming on Tuvalu and their desperation to remain in New Zealand those people were extraordinarily vulnerable. They had met some rather unscrupulous individuals on the North Shore in Auckland who charged them about $10000 each to issue them with false passports. The individuals concerned called them Aotearoa passports and claimed that they would lodge refugee claims on behalf of the people from Tuvalu to try to get them refugee status in New Zealand as environmental refugees. Of course that was completely hopeless and their money was taken. 
Refugee claims were in fact lodged and of course when Labour came into Government it issued the transitional policy that allowed people who had been in New Zealand illegally to regularise their status if they had not broken the law if they were married to a New Zealand citizen or resident if they had had a child born in New Zealand if they had not drawn a benefit and if they had not lodged a refugee claim. That group of Tuvalu residents all of whom were overstayers would have qualified completely for the transitional policy but they achieved a double whammy. Not only had they been ripped off by the unscrupulous individuals from the North Shore but their opportunity to regularise their status in New Zealand was removed because they had unfortunately applied for refugee status. Fortunately through the generosity and wisdom of the then Minister of Immigration—not the present one who I am sure would have been just the same as the then Minister—many of those people from Tuvalu got special directions. 
This is an excellent bill.