Belich CamillaCAMILLA BELICH (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. Labour is committed to an immigration system that treats asylum seekers with dignity and respects our obligations under international law. We accept that there needs to be a system for mass arrivals in New Zealand. As the Minister outlined while this is not something that it likely to occur with any regularity it is a known risk. The bill as it is in front of the House at the moment fixes some of the unworkable aspects of the law that was previously passed under the National Government in 2013 and it is designed to ensure that there is a workable system in place to process a group of asylum seekers and ensure their rights are respected in the event of a mass arrival. We acknowledge as the Minister has the refugee and human rights communities who are opposed to this bill and who did make strong submissions at the select committee process. We want to state here in the House that we take the submissions that they made and the concerns that they raised extremely seriously. There are a few changes that the Minister has alluded to and ones we would expect to see in the mass arrivals bill to support it further. We had an unusual situation where the select committee did not agree to support the bill moving forward under the last Parliament so although we understand these changes are coming they're not currently reflected in the way they usually would be in the bill at this stage. So the changes that we would expect would be to establish that prior to a warrant of commitment being issued and a member of the mass arrival group being detained—that that would have to be approved by the chief executive under section 330 of the Act. But that would not be able to be in a prison or a police station—addressing some of the major concerns that were raised by submitters about this bill. Additionally if there was to be a detention there are some safeguards that we think should be included within this bill. That includes establishing clearly why the detention was necessary that it would be for the shortest amount of time possible and the least restrictive necessary to achieve the outcomes how the proposed location of the detention meets the Government's obligations under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—and I won't go through all of these things because I think they were well covered by the Minister. But it includes the safeguards that she alluded to and they were ones that we would expect to see in a bill. We would also be open to further improvements of this bill at committee stage if they could be agreed because we do take seriously the need to minimise the detention and to make sure that any detention is subject to judicial oversight. It was Labour in Government that commissioned the Victoria Casey KC review of the detention of asylum seekers in prison in response to Amnesty International's advocacy and we accepted all of her recommendations. We will also be actively working and I know that our spokesperson on immigration Phil Twyford is keen to work closely with the Minister to consider the further safeguards that may be needed to protect—Hon Erica Stanford: I spoke to him tonight. CAMILLA BELICH: —yeah fantastic—asylum seekers. Some people may question the need for a mass arrivals arrangement and while it may be a low-probability scenario it is not zero probability. Because of that we do accept that this legislation is needed in some form but as I said we are very concerned to make sure that the very serious human rights concerns that were brought up by very respected groups in New Zealand are taken seriously and mitigated and that the human rights of asylum seekers are protected as much as they possibly can be while at the same time we're dealing with a quite unprecedented situation that may occur in New Zealand. So we will be supporting this bill at this reading. However our support through its further stages through the House is dependent on the bill meeting the very high standards that hopefully—and I understand that we do—we share across the House in relation to making sure that the human rights of those asylum seekers are upheld. It's a matter we take extremely seriously. We will be considering the amendments to the bill at committee stage very seriously and as I said working really hard to make sure that hopefully we can come to a situation where the bill is not seen in the light that it has been seen by many of these very important human rights organisations that we have heard from in New Zealand.