Menéndez March Ricardo; Penk ChrisRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Thank you Mr Chair. There are still two more amendments that I'd like to discuss. I also don't agree as a matter of fact with the characterisation of the Minister regarding general comments because these are very specific to (a) the resources that this bill will require and (b) to the safeguards of children which actually were raised by submitters and are in two different sets of amendments. So I do think those are really worthwhile traversing.The Minister kind of proved the point right? He said I cannot guarantee what will be in the operational manual." But this is why those amendments really matter. Because actually by voting for those amendments we're not relying on the Minister of the day or the Cabinet of the day to change the operational manual to then provide us with those assurances or leave it at risk of future Cabinets and Ministers undermining that same operational manual.But anyway going to one of my other amendments particularly drawing on the submission from the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties one of the things that they suggested and that I put forward as an amendment was around narrowing the reasons for a mass arrivals group to be detained to only be to manage security risks instead of it disrupting the operations of the district courts or that it is challenging for the immigration system to manage the mass arrivals group. Part of that was as many submitters pointed out—and the reason why many submitters raised the fact that this bill wasn't necessary—because they thought that the place to start would be to actually resource the courts resource those community centres rather than creating a detention regime independent of the level of risk that some Ministers may or may not be privy to regarding the impending or otherwise arrival of a mass arrivals group.This amendment—and why I want to get the Minister's comments on whether it would not be more suitable to narrow the scope of the bill for that attention to be around managing security risks which in and of itself won't be perfect. There will still be issues around how those are applied but that actually would allow for a far more human rights or less-human-rights-diminishing approach to this bill. Because I guess that raises to the more philosophical point of the question—and it is not a general point; it goes back to I think the little Part 2 dance around the detention regime.If the Minister thinks that there are other reasons to detain people other than to manage security risks those then need to be really explicit in legislation to ensure that again we have those safeguards and clarity for people for when they're detained about what those reasons may be rather than just detain them for the sake of having the courts actually be able to go through those processes. Those processes can actually go ahead independent of detention.So I do want to get the Minister to comment as to why we wouldn't just narrow the reasons for mass arrivals to be detained to be only to manage security risks. That goes back to my comments that I mentioned in Part 1 around the two-tier way of treatment of asylum seekers. I know the member Phil Twyford talked about the previous practices of putting people in prisons but effectively what we're doing here is still creating a practice world. While we may not be using prisons and those facilities may be unsure you could be detaining people who actually have posed no risk to the community when it comes to health or when it comes to security. But this bill doesn't allow for those nuances to be made really clear.So my question to the Minister is: why wouldn't we narrow the scope of the reasons that people can be detained to "simply manage security risks" which would go back to the heckling of Shane Jones actually in Part 1 where he was yelling "Security security security!" Actually if he's so concerned about security I would see a great reason to then support narrowing the scope off the bill. I almost think New Zealand First is in support of this by the looks of it because it seems like security is one of the key concerns and why not just make it more specific.The last point I've got in regards to my amendments will be around disabled people and I'm just foreshadowing to the Chair because I want to give the Minister an opportunity to answer the questions around my amendment regarding narrowing the scope for people to be detained.Hon CHRIS PENK (Associate Minister of Immigration): Thank you Mr Chair. I can answer very simply the reason that we do not think it appropriate to narrow the scope of this bill effectively to just national security considerations important as those may be in many situations. It is that to do that and to define the purpose of a mass arrival warrant in that way would be to strike the reasons that currently are recorded in the bill which include to effectively manage the mass arrival group and to uphold the integrity or efficiency of the immigration system. Of course that must be an aim of any major aspect or regime within the Immigration Act. I'm just confused that any member of this House would suggest that we shouldn't aim to effectively manage an arrival and to uphold the integrity of the system. To implicitly encourage as might be a message that would be taken away from such an amendment the inefficient operation of the system or an attack on the integrity of the system—and I recognise of course that a mass arrival group is by its nature outside the established legal protocols including those available to refugees and potential refugees—that's clearly something that I think any responsible Government wouldn't support."