Franks Stephen: Voting — Correction; Citizenship Amendment Bill (No 2) Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings 
Franks Stephen: Voting — Correction; Citizenship Amendment Bill (No 2) Passports Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings 
[Volume:625;Page:20140] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT) 
: 
 For the ACT party the debate on this legislation has been illuminating as we were not members of the Government Administration Committee and were left with only the committee’s report and newspaper reports to try to piece together what was happening. 
There are good bits in this legislation. We think it is not appropriate to leave open loopholes things that bring a regime into disrepute and things that encourage people to feel that a country is a soft touch. We support the arrangements for making sure that people do not assume that if they have babies here they can automatically eventually shift their families here thereby leapfrogging those who go through the normal criteria. It is correct to bring that to an end. 
There are puzzles in the amendments to the Citizenship Act though—puzzles that the Minister of Internal Affairs did not take an opportunity to clarify—that seem to imply that the Minister has much more limited discretion to refuse to admit people than we would have hoped. We have heard no real answer to our query as to why the two or three provisions that allow the Minister to grant citizenship to a person who does not qualify in terms of length of residence or even to someone who has disqualifying convictions do not appear to contemplate such a grant on the grounds that it looks as though the person will be an outstanding asset to this country. Instead they focus on humanitarian grounds on encouraging it seems people who will be burdens to come into this country purely because wherever they are they will be burdens and they might as well be burdens here. 
 There is not any encouragement here of the idea that citizenship is something we should be actively holding out to the very best students we bring here in the same way as the United States has made such good use of the human capital it draws from all over the world through its educational facilities. I see nothing inspiring in that part of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (No 2). 
I find the amendments to the Passports Act even more troubling. I have to apologise to Keith Locke who had an amendment at the foot of his pages of amendments that I wish I had cast the ACT votes for. He would have removed the provision that entitles the Minister simply to withdraw the passport of a New Zealand citizen and hold it. Although the tests may be suitably stiff may be appropriate when the provision is read together with the procedure that enables the Attorney-General to ensure that evidence presented to a court on appeal is kept secret and may not be properly challenged I think it is an improper intrusion into the rights and liberties of New Zealand citizens. 
On the other hand it is wrong for the same reasons in reverse that people who have no moral or other claim to New Zealand bounty are given the same kinds of protections against the refusal or withdrawal of travel documents as New Zealand citizens have. We have for example the very high threshold test that one has to be a seriously bad kind of terrorist supporter before the Minister is able to deny or withdraw one’s refugee travel permit or temporary travel document. That test should be as stringent as it is for citizens—stringent in the sense of being a high threshold to pass—but for people who come to this country who have essentially cast themselves on our humanitarian instincts the Minister should be free to send them away whenever he or she considers that they present a suspicion of being undesirable. We think this part of the passports legislation is unfortunate. 
We understand the reasons for trimming the term of a passport from 10 years to 5. We assume the select committee had enough evidence to satisfy itself that that was a cost-effective increase in passport security. The proposal will be irksome and expensive. We imagine that the Minister has been persuaded that there is enough net benefit in it to justify it. We have not seen the evidence and we were inclined to vote against that part because of that but in the end we decided that there are occasions when the most obvious questions have been asked by other parties that have been closely involved and in this case they have been. 
So we will vote for this legislation with regret. I respect the position of the Hon Matt Robson in his impassioned speeches on this legislation tonight. I think he has stood for a principle that he patently believes in. They were some of the most lucid and what is more interesting some of the most fluid speeches I have heard him give. I think he is right to remind us how easy it is to give up freedoms and to allow people to set off down slippery slopes which is what I think the provisions about New Zealanders’ passports do. I have ended up with the view that on balance the risk is not such as to cause us to join him but I certainly think it was the right sort of thing to raise in Parliament and I do not think he needed to apologise for detaining us tonight while he ensured that he placed on record his objections and his support of Keith Locke’s objections on much the same reasons of principle.