Jones Dail: Immigration Amendment Bill — Instructions to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Jones Dail: Immigration Amendment Bill — Instructions to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:611;Page:8292] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 Thank you Madam Chair for the call. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: You’ve got to answer that haven’t you? 
DAIL JONES 
: I must answer that speech made by the Hon Richard Prebble—I was about to say the “member for Auckland Central”. He made a totally uncalled-for remark about New Zealand First’s election policy regarding immigration numbers. I will read out to him our immigration policy from the “What the parties say about” leaflets. It states that we would cut immigration approval to 10000 per year; there would be increased penalties for breaches of immigration laws; there would be a 3-year probation for immigration during which lawbreakers would be deported; there would be pre-arrival health screening including for HIV. Clearly our policy was 10000 and that is why I have put forward an amendment to the Immigration Amendment Bill in order to make sure that the numbers coming in are limited to 10000. I know it is a fairly crude amendment but it is one way of making the point as to just what our policy is. 
I also appreciate Mr Prebble’s reference to the New Zealand First minority report in so far as this legislation is concerned. That is particularly relevant to Part 2. We had evidence from the Auckland District Law Society stating that as a result of this bill the immigration system could not be trusted the system proposed by this legislation could be used in a discriminatory or racist manner the system could be open to corruption and immigration officers could use the powers contained in the legislation to issue unreasonable and unnecessary conditions on permits or make special conditions etc. unclearly inaccurately or with ambiguity. No respectable party in the House could possibly support legislation that is as wide and as far-reaching as this legislation. Obviously the minority Labour Government and the Progressives as well as United Future can support legislation that is open to corruption that could be discriminatory or racist and as Justin Glyn a solicitor from Auckland said reminiscent of apartheid in South Africa. That is the sort of result that we could have from this legislation. 
We read in the August 2003 issue of  
Auckland Today  
that immigration consultants are saying that this Government can use those powers discriminatorily. If a New Zealand First Government had brought in this legislation I can imagine all the hours we would be staying up day and night with the Labour Party trying to oppose it. But no a Labour Government has brought it in—quite extraordinary. If Government members had been on the hustings at the last election saying they would bring in this legislation there would have been all sorts of problems. I remember the last shots of the Prime Minister on election night with people of Indian origin standing around her suggesting that that was the New Zealand of the future. She gave that sort of impression during her election campaign. Now we have legislation which as Pansy Wong has indicated already in so far as lapsing 20000 applications is concerned involving 45000 people seems mostly to affect people of Indian origin. We have seen already that this latest system cannot be trusted and that it can be used in a discriminatory way. 
Of course New Zealand First cannot support this type of blatantly—and even covertly—discriminatory legislation. Our policies are clear and it was interesting to see how close they are—if not similar or identical—to the Council of Trade Unions’ views on the type of people who should come into New Zealand. Mr Prebble has said we should go to a town that has no people in it. We have those towns today and we have 190000 people coming into New Zealand. The problem is that they all come into Auckland. What is the point of saying we will have all these people coming in when they do not go to those small towns that are now closed—they go only to Auckland. How many come to Wellington? Nobody. I walk down Lambton Quay and it is the same as it used to be in 1984. There has been virtually no change whatsoever except that everything is looking much more attractive. The businesses are doing well tax money is coming in because of all the tourism-based economy that we have but there are no Asians in Wellington. 
David Benson-Pope 
: It’s because of the Labour Government. Everything’s going well under the Labour Government. 
DAIL JONES 
: Mr David Benson-Pope can make as much noise as he likes—I am sure they are not in Dunedin either. All his constituents know he is sitting in the House now that I have brought him into the debate. 
This legislation does nothing for the small towns of New Zealand. They are still struggling along. Tourism is helping them considerably but tourism is quite different from immigration. In so far as universities are concerned Auckland University—