Wong Pansy: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — First Reading 
Wong Pansy: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:628;Page:1003] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 Before we pick up on the point about former immigration Ministers and a former Prime Minister how about talking about existing Labour Ministers and MPs. Who did more to undermine the New Zealand Immigration Service? The honourable Taito Phillip Field asked the Associate Minister of Immigration in the Labour Government to intervene in 438 cases followed by the Hon Chris Carter with 176 cases and by the Hon George Hawkins with 172 cases. In the last 3 years when people have come to my office my staff have taken them through the proper procedures. In 3 years I have made only 12 representations because people need to respect our immigration process. 
If Ministers and MPs abuse their positions that undermines our immigration policies and I wonder what part of the bill deals with that issue. Nobody should take too much notice of the member who has just spoken. She did more to undermine the New Zealand Immigration Service by doubting her staff and by not telling the truth to reporters. Who planted material for reporters to find? That behaviour is becoming a hallmark of the Labour Government. That former Minister of Immigration promised that this bill would be in the House in 1999 in 2000 and in 2001. Well I have news for the Labour Government: even though it has put this House into urgency we are still in December of the year 2005. So it is a very slow process and I am surprised that the Hon David Cunliffe now wants to put pressure on the select committee to pass this bill in a hurry. 
There are other problems with the bill because as I said previously the Labour Government is really suffering from what I would call “truth deficiency syndrome”. It will not tell us the cost of setting up this new bureaucracy to regulate immigration advisers but as Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith pointed out it will grow. I ask how much it will cost. We are told in the bill that the Crown will be responsible for the cost of setting up this system and administering the system in relation to individuals who are exempt or for non-profit individuals who are offering advice. Otherwise the commercial advisers will be charged $1000 to $2000 per year. The bill also mentions that there are about 1000 advisers in the sector. On the surface that figure sounds OK; we might have a million dollars to run the system. But if we follow the Government’s logic we are told that there were only 9000 applications for residency in 2003—9000 only—that were handled by advisers. 
According to my calculations and I am a qualified accountant that means those advisers are doing about nine cases per year. We were told that about 66000 applications for temporary visas were handled by advisers which means that full-time commercial advisers would survive doing about say six per week. So how many full-time advisers actually exist in that sector? If we are being told by the Government that 1000 advisers would be affected by this legislation then I have news for the Labour Government: no adviser can survive by doing so few cases per month. So who will pay the additional costs that will be required to run the system? 
The second weakness of the immigration legislation that is before us is that the type of people this legislation aims to regulate handle only 37 percent of the total applications for residency and 17 percent of the other type of visa. Forty percent of those advisers are actually based overseas. This legislation in the next 3 years will not include those overseas consultants hence we will regulate only the sector that deals with about 20 percent of total applications. We are passing this legislation to deal with people who handle only 20 percent of the cases. How effective is this legislation in resolving the situation? 
The advisers who have come to see me raised the issue of some of the powers contained in the legislation—for example the inspection power for administration of the licensing regime. We have just learnt that the new body will exist within the Immigration Service. One of its powers will be that its inspectors can at any reasonable time enter any premises where any licensed immigration advisers work or have worked in the last 2 years or where the inspector has reasonable grounds for believing that a licensed immigration adviser has worked there in the last 2 years and those inspectors have every right to question any licensed immigration advisers and to look at documents in the advisers’ possession. National has some great lawyers in its team like Chris Finlayson. No doubt he will point out and highlight for us whether this type of extremely wide power should be exercised in that manner. 
The well-behaved members of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment have brought this up as a major concern. They ask why their members should be subject to an organisation with such a wide-ranging power. So we certainly want to examine the type of power that will be given to the inspectors under this legislation. 
I also question why after 5 years and after what we will call the knee-jerk reactions and changes to the immigration policy we have seen the international student numbers reduce by 10000 and the net immigration flow decrease from about 30000 to 6000 in the year ended October. The period when there were a lot of problems with immigration advisers was from 2001 to 2002. Now that we are hardly attracting international students etc. the Government wants to bring in this legislation; the number of immigration advisers affected could be in the hundreds only. The Government has seen fit to bring in this legislation when it is almost like the horses have bolted. 
Lastly I want to raise the very good point made by my colleague Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith. I want to see on an annual basis some disclosure of the number of direct representations made by members of Parliament to the Ministers for special consideration. The Associate Minister of Immigration disclosed that annually he has to intervene in 4000 cases. That means he has to look at about 12 individual cases daily.