Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Madam Chair. I acknowledge that this is the first time the Minister's in the chair on a bill such as this. This is the bill that was started by the previous Labour Government—in fact this is the Labour Party and the National Party colluding to diminish the rights of asylum seekers. Quite frankly I'm yet to see the Labour Party come with a critical analysis of this bill and I look forward to their own contributions around the justification for a rights-diminishing bill.I was keen in Part 1 to touch on the mass arrivals" definition because one of the key pieces of feedback that we received from human rights advocates from people who work directly with refugees and who work with asylum seekers was around the concerns around creating effectively two tiers of asylum seekers who have effectively different treatment by the system. So you would have the people who would be arriving say by plane and then you would have in this bill a categorisation of people who would be arriving by boat.It's difficult to not obviously allude to what's in Part 2 because Part 1 is about creating that category but then it's about how those people get treated once they arrive. So I'm curious to understand particularly since the Minister in the chair is new to this Government what level of engagement he has had in this role since taking on the role with human rights advocates around effectively this notion that there's now a kind of two-tier system around how asylum seekers would be treated by the system and whether he himself has actually engaged with human rights advocates with people who work with asylum seekers on this concern that has been raised in the select committee stage. So that's my first question. I have other questions around the ability for the system to cope with mass arrivals per the definition used in this bill but I'm really keen first and foremost to hear from the Minister around the level of engagement he's had with the sector and particularly concerns around the two-tier categorisation of asylum seekers.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ricardo Menéndez March.RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH: Righty-o. So I'm looking forward to the Minister taking notes and again looking forward to some critical engagement from the Labour Party on this issue seeing as they raised some concerns. You're welcome to engage on this bill so I'll allow the Minister to take some notes and get ready for his reply.But one of the other things that I particularly wanted to unpack was the evidence that he had seen around whether this bill was actually needed because obviously the bill identified in Part 1 the need to create a specific categorisation of people arriving by boat. One of the key debates that has been playing in the media and actually that people who work with asylum seekers have raised time and time again has been the issue that actually the Government and successive Governments haven't actually been up front with the public around the need for this legislation. In fact this is something that other parties that are now in Government and the National Party in Opposition raised as a key concern around the need for this legislation in the first place.One of the key concerns that has been raised by human rights advocates by people who work with asylum seekers from former refugees themselves was the fact that if there were concerns around a large group of asylum seekers coming in then one of the key priorities could have been resourcing the judicial system to ensure that they could be processed. Instead we're creating this whole other categorisation in Part 1.So I'm also keen to get a sense of the evidence base for this bill and particularly the evidence base for the need to create a categorisation of mass arrivals and whether this is based on evidence or say for example fearmongering and dog-whistling. If the Minister does have evidence around this will he be able to finally for once—because the previous Government wasn't able to do that—present the level of evidence around the need for this legislation and the categorisation around mass arrivals? To be honest this idea that this is simply a tidy-up or closing some loopholes around for example people arriving by cruise ship etc. isn't good enough because Part 1 isn't in isolation; we're seeing this in Part 2 in terms of the rights-diminishing stuff.So I haven't got an answer on the stuff around engagement with the sector. I'm reiterating the need for the public to have confidence that this bill is based on evidence and particularly the concerns that have been raised by many stakeholders around a two-tier treatment of asylum seekers."