Prebble Richard: Immigration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Prebble Richard: Immigration Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:611;Page:8412] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the ACT party to speak to this bill. I intend to respond to many of the points just made by the right honourable gentleman. But first let me tell members what happened in the Committee stage because members would not have picked that up from Mr Peters’ contribution and I want to start with a positive statement about how the bill was debated. 
I appreciated the fact that the Minister of Immigration participated during the Committee stage of the bill. Not only did she participate but she made some useful contributions in reply to points that were made so we had a genuine debate about the bill. I appreciated that because there is a tradition coming into this House of Ministers not participating in the Committee stage and that denigrates the whole of Parliament. In fact some Ministers go so far as not even to sit in the chair but to put in another Minister who has no knowledge of the legislation. I think there is a duty on the Government to debate legislation. I tell Mr Cunliffe who spoke earlier that he did not make a proper contribution. He just indicated exactly the point that I am making. He did not debate this bill. I hope that a Government member will get up and speak about this bill because we should have the bill itself debated. 
I also tell the Minister that I appreciated the offer that she made to me—and I suppose she made it to other parties—to allow me to speak to officials about Supplementary Order Paper 131 which she introduced. I took advantage of that. Up until then I had been considering voting against that Supplementary Order Paper. The reason for that is that the Supplementary Order Paper gives immigration officials very great powers to be able to hold people in jail and in a free society Parliament has been very reluctant to do that. I was not sure from looking at the Supplementary Order Paper whether it went further than was required. 
 However after talking to the officials I am satisfied that it does not do so and that it is necessary when a person has been ordered to leave the country. I understand that countries like Iran Afghanistan and Iraq—although I would like to think that the Americans will fix this—refuse to issue papers until a person signs for them. Those countries ought to take responsibility for their own nations. In those circumstances I think that it is reasonable that this Parliament says to officials that if a person in that position is ordered by the courts to leave the country and he or she refuses to sign the necessary papers he or she should be held in jail. 
I now turn to a criticism of the Minister. When it became obvious that the Minister knew about the Supplementary Order Paper a month ago—and apparently she did consult United Future—I think that she should have consulted the National Party and other parties in Parliament. It is a regrettable tradition under MMP that that is not happening. Mr Cunliffe can say that there is no requirement under the Standing Orders for a Minister to do that. I say so what! I tell that member that in that situation there are parliamentary conventions whereby members should participate in discussing the matter. For me to receive a copy of the Supplementary Order Paper only 3 hours before the debate—and I think it was the same for New Zealand First—was not satisfactory. That reflects upon us as parliamentarians. If we had had earlier notice we would have been able to look at the Supplementary Order Paper and I might have been able to discuss the matter properly with my caucus. I tell that Minister and other Ministers that as a whole I believe that most parliamentarians want the immigration system to have some integrity. ACT would have supported that. I say in a parliamentary sense that if Mr Cunliffe ever finds himself in that situation again he should circulate the Supplementary Order Paper. 
I now turn to the bill itself. I shall deal with Mr Peters’ comments because in my view part of his anger is that this bill is a knee-jerk reaction to the sorts of statements he has been making for the last year. The bill moves away from a points system to one that will enable the Government to discriminate. How do I know that? I was not on the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee but a member from New Zealand First was. The committee’s report to the House stated that one of the reasons it did not like the bill was that it thought people could be discriminated against. How could they be discriminated against? They could be racially discriminated against. In fact under the bill foreigners could be discriminated against and Mr Peters made it quite clear in his speech that that is something he wants this Government to do. 
I realise that immigration is a very difficult issue because we make arbitrary decisions. Far more people want to come to New Zealand than we will ever accept and that is a good situation. We have to work out a way in which people will be selected. All the immigration nations like Canada Australia and New Zealand have moved away from the sort of system that this bill moves back to where priority is given to things like jobs. When one says that jobs should have priority it sounds good. But as I pointed out in the Committee stage one of the skill areas where there is a critical shortage is truck driving. Will that be included? No apparently it will not be; the Minister told us that truck driving would not be included. But what does happen and used to happen—and I have been in this House long enough to know the old immigration system—is that the same consultants who help people to work out their points under the points system will find it much easier to get people into the country by finding them jobs. Will they be bogus jobs? No they may be real jobs. They may even be jobs in Invercargill which apparently are of higher priority than jobs in Auckland. Will the jobs last? Of course they will not. Will there be an internal passport system whereby a person has to stay in Invercargill? Of course there will not be. 
The sort of law that has been put forward in this bill will not result in a better immigration system. I do think that it will discriminate against the Chinese. I do think that it will result in fewer Chinese people coming to New Zealand and that that is one of the objectives of the Government. Personally I do not think that it is a good idea. I believe—contrary to Mr Peters—that the immigrants who have come to this country have done a great job. 
Mr Peters gave us as an example the terrible things that were happening at North Shore Hospital. I can speak with some authority about North Shore Hospital; I spent a week in it after the last election. I had pneumonia was taken to North Shore Hospital and was treated very well. Mr Peters said that North Shore Hospital—and I think I am quoting him correctly—is full of foreigners. That is correct. North Shore Hospital is most certainly full of foreigners; in fact it is a positive United Nations. All but one of the doctors who treated me and treated me extremely well were immigrants. They were not all driving taxis. They were treating me. My physiotherapist was—I think the term is “Cape Coloured”; that is probably politically incorrect now but the ACT party does not worry about things like that—from South Africa and she was a very very competent physiotherapist. The nurses also came from around the world including the Pacific. Did I feel that I received inferior treatment at North Shore Hospital? No I did not. 
I advise the House that but for immigration we would literally be in the shit. Our sewerage schemes around New Zealand are being run by engineers from around the world and many of them are South Africans. Indeed if one looks at skill after skill in this country one sees that the people concerned come from overseas. The New Zealand First Party told us in the Committee stage— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Why is that? 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: It is because we have never had enough skilled people. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Ours have left; that’s why. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: That is true. They did leave and a lot of them left because of the policies previously introduced by that member. A lot of them left because of the policies of successive Governments. I accept and the ACT party does that the best immigrants to come into New Zealand would be New Zealanders. Does this bill help to do that? No it does not. All the policies put forward by Mr Peters will not get Auckland’s traffic going. The reason Auckland roads are jammed is that this Parliament has not voted enough money for roading. We do not have a decent planning scheme and we probably need some immigrants to tell us about one instead of the lunatic measures that we have. 
Then the member made a despicable appeal to Maori as though they were affected by immigration and talked about crime. I ask Mr Peters what the population make-up of our prisons is. Is it made up of the foreigners whom he is referring to? Has he read the statistics? He says he has. What is it Mr Peters? The member is not prepared to answer that because he and I know that the prison population is 52 percent Maori. What is he doing about that? That is a disgraceful statistic and we should do something about it. Blaming crime on foreigners does no credit to New Zealand First. 
I say to the House that I will vote against this bill because I actually think that the Labour Government is not standing up to Mr Peters. I am quite prepared to do that. I say that this House and this country do not need this bill.