Seymour David: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading[Sitting date: 30 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:3104. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT):I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this bill and as somebody who believes the history of New Zealand our country is in fact a history of immigration. I cannot help but respond to some of the comments made earlier by members of New Zealand First that some of this exploitation is being done by their own people. What exactly does that mean? I would love them to give an explanation of that someday but it seems to give an insight into the way that they think. They seem to believe that immigration is a threat to “our” jobs. Well I will tell you something. Apart from the offensiveness of the pronouns they use the fact is that once upon a time New Zealand had no people no immigration and no jobs. We have had a thousand years of immigration and now we have lots of jobs. QED: immigration is actually good for jobs.But I would like to get back to a particularly poignant experience. I had cause over the past week to spend a lot of time in Whangarei Hospital in honour of my unfortunately late grandfather Joe Faithfull. The ward that he was on was staffed almost entirely by people who are recent immigrants to our country. There is a lesson in that for some of the elderly members of New Zealand First: be very careful what you say about immigrants because it might not be too long before they are giving one of you a sponge bath.In particular I want to get back to what Jan Logie was referencing—that is new sections 277B and 277C in clause 61. I would like to thank the Minister Michael Woodhouse and I have to say that I find him to be a very hard-working professional and listening Minister. He was prepared to take on board concerns about the idea that an immigration officer would be able to go into not only a business but a private residence connected to a business—perhaps a dairy or restaurant in my electorate—and ask any questions that they wanted to ask and search for any documents that they wished to search for without a warrant. We would not give that power to the police so I made it clear that ACT’s preference is that we would not have such provisions.However it was clear that the Government was determined to have them so I would like to thank the Minister for being considerate enough to insert the additional new sections so that the search provisions that this bill introduces will actually be subject to greater democratic oversight—that is there will be periodic reporting of the use of what I regard as extraordinary powers—and that after 3 years the sections in this legislation that introduced them will be required to face ministerial review.We are a nation of immigrants. It is not about us and them and our own people and their own people. This is a country that is great because so many people freely come here to access first and foremost due process and the rule of law. I do not believe that this bill is perfect in that regard but I am pleased to have been able to play a very small role in improving it. So I will commend this bill to the House and we will be supporting it. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.