Wong Pansy: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading 
Wong Pansy: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6747] 
PANSY WONG (NZ National) 
: 
 This is getting bizarre. We have Labour back-benchers. At least the Labour Maori caucus will take a stand. The other Labour back-benchers simply fall over. Why can they not just admit that they do not receive briefings from their Minister? Why do they just stand and say nothing? It is embarrassing. I could not understand why the Rt Hon Winston Peters was not happy this evening. At least Mr Paul Adams of United Future came out at long last and admitted that Labour and United Future have been studying New Zealand First’s immigration policy. Therefore they were doing quite well in copying New Zealand First’s immigration policy yet obviously they still fall far short. I can look forward to a lot more legislation coming from Labour and United Future modelled on New Zealand First’s immigration policy. At least we got that much truth out of this need for the House to sit under urgency. If it were not such a serious issue it would be almost quite comical. 
There are two parts to this legislation. I was saddened to hear Mr Paul Adams of United Future and of Christian beliefs say that the applications of 10000 people lapsed but that it is better for them even though they paid the money. They were led down the garden path. Why not? How Christian can one be? It is just 10000 people. Hey who cares? What is the big deal? 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: They get the money back. 
PANSY WONG 
: The Minister says their money is refunded. They have been waiting for 2 years putting their life on hold. But she says: “Big deal the people get the fees back.” Let me tease out some logic in the debate from this Minister of Immigration and Mr Paul Adams. They stood up just now on the Immigration Amendment Bill and said that immigration was good and that there is a research paper that shows there is a $1.7 billion net benefit so why complain? They also talked about wanting potential migrants who would contribute. What happened to the resources to process those migrants in the pool? 
There is another point that the Minister of Immigration may want to answer. It is quite interesting. She lowered the passing mark just at the beginning of this year from 30 to 29 and then she complained that there is a growing list of people wanting to come to New Zealand. The Labour Government needs to come clean and accept that it has simply lost the plot. The Minister was never on top of her job. At least we were told by Prime Minister Helen Clark and by Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen that the only reason the Minister of Immigration should keep her job is that at least she is a hard-working Minister—not competent but hard-working. Now we know she is not even hard-working. There is a 2½ year backlog of applications. How can that Minister be described as hard-working? At least the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister come out with this truth. They say that they know the Minister of Immigration is not competent but she is hard-working. Now we know that even that was not true. 
The second part is about overriding a court case. On page 33 of the judgment the judge says that he is satisfied that the immigration policy effective from 20 November 2002 is invalid because of a breach of section 13C of the Immigration Act. The judgment is very clear. Let us spare a thought for the plaintiff that brought the case to court. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: Who was it? 
PANSY WONG 
: The New Zealand Association for Migration and Investments Incorporated. It spent $100000. It used to be mates with the Minister of Immigration. Members can see how fast the Labour Government can get upset. Just now the Minister was reading out an immigration consultant’s letter and because the consultant praises the Minister it is the good guy. If one challenges the Labour Government boy one will get it. 
The immigration association spent $100000 and obviously the Minister of Immigration spent the same amount of taxpayers’ money—wasted—to defend a case that if she had worked hard and sought good advice could have avoided that legal fee being funded by taxpayers. Then she bluffed to the public and said that the judge was wrong and she would appeal. Tonight I think it has been proved categorically that the judgment delivered was correct. What did the Government do? It rushed through legislation in the middle of the night that totally went against the principle that people who won their case should keep the fruits of victory. 
I thought that the Minister of Immigration wanting the cooperation of the Opposition parties could learn to be a bit humble and modest and at least accept that she got it wrong. We will never get that from an arrogant Minster and an arrogant Government. She will not get any cooperation. We will ask all the hard questions and she had better be prepared to come up with some good answers. She should not hide away. She did not come to the briefing session with the Opposition MPs. Instead she fronted up to Television One but she did not talk about this legislation. She talked only about the legislation that was going to a select committee. She did not mention this bill but was caught out by people reminding her of the court case. 
Why is the Minister rushing through this legislation? She built into the legislation the discretionary power to lapse of immigration applications. She has the legislative power to impose that measure any time. There was really no reason for her to try to rush through the first part of this legislation. That is the only way that we can assess her desire to legislate away a victory by the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investments Incorporated. If that is the only good question a Deputy Prime Minister can ask we are a bit concerned. I wish the Deputy Prime Minister were in charge of the Immigration Service. I bet he would do a slightly better job. It would not be much better but it would be slightly better. 
The sad part is that in the last term of the Labour Government the Government sent the Immigration Service to India and all sorts of places to encourage people to apply to migrate to New Zealand. When people listened and accepted that there might be a welcome mat in New Zealand what did the Government do? On 19 November 2002 at 12 a.m. it brought in legislation changed the rules and pulled the mat from under their feet. Then when it lost a case it got even worse. It rushed through legislation and tried to bluff by saying it would appeal the court case. Yet it has tried to abuse the process of Parliament by not briefing Opposition MPs properly by not letting the public have a say by not going through the select committee process. I think that tonight is a very very sad day for principles. There has been a lack of transparency and abuse of process.