McCully Murray: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
McCully Murray: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6785] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (NZ National—East Coast Bays) 
: The Minister of Immigration who has just taken a call needs to do some listening. If she does not do some listening she will never get the point that members on this side have been expressing concerns about. 
The Minister makes a point of Part 1 and in particular clause 3 not being retrospective in its impact. Well it does not need to be retrospective in its impact because the rest of the bill has the retrospective impact in it. The Minister is being entirely cute with the Committee and frankly is being less than forthright with the Committee if she thinks she can get away with an explanation like that. 
Part 1 changes the judgment that was brought down by the High Court. I notice that the Minister avoided any reference to that. Part 1 does what the Minister now knows the Court of Appeal was not going to do which was to agree with her interpretation of the Act. The Minister can wax eloquent as much as she likes about whether this was the intention of the Government in passing that bill or whether it was the intention of Parliament in passing the legislation in the first place; she may well be right but that is not the point. The point is that earlier this year the High Court of New Zealand brought down a judgment dated 16 May in which it found that some actions taken by the Minister were unlawful. 
At that point—16 May—the Minister had several choices open to her. One of those choices was to say she did not think that is what Parliament intended and she did not think that was what the previous Government intended in passing that bill so she would go and see her very fine colleague on the other side the Opposition spokesperson on immigration and ask him whether he would see reason and support the Government rectifying something that Parliament had not intended to do. But the Minister did not do that. The Minister was much more concerned about the fact that the original changes that she had made which were the subject of High Court proceedings were changes made as a result of her losing some political arguments. The Minister rightly or wrongly in terms of the merit of the argument had been on the losing end of some political debate. The changes that she promoted were not changes promoted in good faith after careful and serious analysis by officials; they were changes that were a panic reaction in the Cabinet room. 
So on 16 and 17 May after she had the High Court decision from Justice Randerson she did not think: “Oh that’s not what Parliament intended. I’ll have a talk to the Opposition parties and see whether we can without too much delay put matters right.” What she said was: “Oh no this was a politically driven decision made in a panic. I can’t possibly go and talk to the Opposition parties about what Parliament intended and whether we should let the judgment of Justice Randerson stand.” She decided to try her usual trick of bluster and pomposity. As a consequence now further down the track the Minister finds herself embarrassed. 
She put out a press statement. I must say her explanation to the Committee a few minutes ago of the circumstances of that were less than fulsome and I will have some further questions about that before the day is out. She says that she released a press statement on 17 June saying in good faith that she would appeal Justice Randerson’s decision. We are supposed to believe that she did not have in mind on 17 June when she released that press statement some provisions in this bill—a bill that she prepared and got ready for introduction in the House today 2 weeks later. I tell the Minister that she has some more explaining to do if she expects the Committee to believe that. I want to see those Cabinet papers. I want her to table the Cabinet papers produced before and after she came to think of introducing clause 3 as part of Part 1 of this bill. I want to see the evidence of the Cabinet papers and the officials’ advice to her. I tell the Committee that we should oppose this provision because of that background.