Wong Pansy: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Wong Pansy: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6767] 
PANSY WONG (NZ National) 
: The title of this bill is the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) and we have raised many times in the past the fact that contemporary legislation requires the title to be more transparent and informative. I suggest that variations of that title that would be a lot more informative to the public would be titles like the “Immigration (Government Shuts Door on Migrants) Bill” or the “Immigration (Rejection of Application Without Transparent Reasons) Bill. 
It is indeed quite disturbing to be debating this legislation under urgency under a very uninformative title. The Government’s spin is that the reason for introducing the legislation under urgency is that it could have led to a major increase in applications. In this case that reason is extremely weak because the legislation could be introduced with a time line and certainly would not lead to a flood of applications. On the contrary it actually allows the Minister of Immigration and the department very wide-ranging powers. In this case about 10000 applications will be dropped because the Minister has simply said that those applicants would not contribute to New Zealand. If that is the case I wonder why their applications were accepted in the first place. 
I think that the Minister should take a call and tell us why she did not have a more transparent title for this legislation that would tell the public that this particular bill is an “Immigration (Close the Door) Bill”. Or it could be an Immigration (Legislating Away the Fruits of Victory) Bill” because the second part of the legislation is to do with the lack of confidence of the Minister to win an appeal case against the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investments. 
In the case of this bill when people look at the title they might think that it is just a technical amendment because some Labour Party members have stood up and said that it was a good bill consisting of technical amendments. I reckon that the Minister should take a call to explain that the bill goes a lot further than consisting of just technical amendments. She should take some time in explaining not just to the Opposition but to her own caucus that this little bill goes a lot further than that. It empowers the Minister and the department to lapse applications without having to give those applicants very very good reasons for their applications not being processed any further. Why have those applicants apart from receiving refunds had to wait for 2 years just to have this change suddenly hoisted upon them? 
This title certainly does this bill no justice. It is a bill that has far-reaching and wide-ranging implications. It will impact negatively on New Zealand’s status internationally whereby applicants who have waited for 2 years and who have no idea that their applications will not be paid due consideration under the guise of this bill being passed in urgency will now receive letters from the Immigration Service that do not give them very good reasons for their applications not proceeding further.