Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's good to be back here in the Chamber debating this bit of legislation. I want to acknowledge the Minister the Hon Erica Stanford for her contribution and make a few final comments as the bill makes its way through to the conclusion of the third reading.The Immigration (Mass Arrivals) Amendment Bill makes a few tweaks to a system that was put in place I think back in 2013 if I remember correctly—legislation that provides arrangements for the kind of processing of members of a mass arrival who might arrive in this country presumably making it to these shores in a steel-hulled vessel. This bill excited vigorous debate both at select committee and in the House here and in the community of asylum seekers refugees and human rights advocates who pay close attention to these issues. Why did it do that? Because locking up asylum seekers is not a good thing. Arbitrary detention of asylum seekers is not consistent with New Zealand's obligations under international law and it is right that we should take this very seriously.I note that when this bill was before the select committee the National Party opposed it—publicly at select committee and in the House—and I note that the National Party in Government has changed its mind presumably because it read the security briefings that indicate that actually a mass arrival while a very low-probability event is not a no-probability event. And it is something that we must as a country take seriously and prepare for.There were four safeguards that we discussed in some detail in the earlier stages of the bill's progression through the House and those safeguards emerged out of the select committee hearings. They were developed by officials and taken to Cabinet under the former Labour Government and agreed in principle. Now they are in the bill and it was Labour's position at the second reading and at the committee stage and now at the conclusion of this process that we would only support the bill and vote for it if four of those additional safeguards were included in the bill. In our view they are substantive. They make a significant difference. They will have the effect of minimising and limiting the degree to which members of a mass arrival are deprived of their liberty freedom of movement and they bring judicial oversight to the whole process. And that is a good thing.I want also to comment briefly on the three extra amendments that I tabled in the committee stage on behalf of the Labour Party that the Minister referred to and I regret actually that the Government has chosen not to support these amendments. The first one would have been a commitment in the legislation not to separate families. I take the Minister's point that there may be some particular circumstances where it would be very difficult not to but I believe actually it would have been a pretty easy drafting fix to provide some space for those kinds of exceptional scenarios.I feel worse actually about the question of the independent monitor. It is true that for example the legislative mandate of the Ombudsman gives that office the job of monitoring the treatment conditions of people in prison and so on. But the fact that the Ombudsman does do that work and could do it in this scenario doesn't mean it will. The Ombudsman is a completely independent Officer of Parliament and cannot be told what to do by the Government of the day. The fact that the International Committee of the Red Cross and their New Zealand representative the New Zealand Red Cross routinely do this work of monitoring treatment conditions and conditions of detention internationally including within immigration systems—the fact that they do that and are international experts at it and could do it—doesn't mean they will. There's no obligation to do it. Previous Governments did not have independent monitors of asylum seekers who were imprisoned while they were waiting for their cases to be heard. I'm not aware that any independent organisations monitored their treatment of conditions. So I regret Minister that that second amendment wasn't taken up and I honestly think it's a lost opportunity.In terms of the amendment around the scaling of the amount of time allowed while a warrant of commitment is being sought linking the number of persons in a mass arrival to the number of days allowed for that warrant of commitment application to be processed the Minister's argument against that was that there may be other factors like the health of the mass arrivals group or if it took place at Christmas and therefore members of the refugee bar weren't available to help. I honestly don't think those are substantive objections. The calibration of the time allowed per number of people in the mass arrival I think could easily have been tweaked to allow sufficient flexibility. So I regret that.I want to finish with a point that I actually did make at the committee stage and that is that the reason why we should be going the extra mile to put safeguards and judicial oversight and checks and guard rails in this process is that left to its own devices the bureaucracy won't always pay attention to those things. I remind the House again that for many many years Immigration New Zealand was jailing asylum seekers—not big numbers of them but nevertheless jailing asylum seekers—while their claims were being assessed. There are documented cases of those asylum seekers suffering terrible trauma and abuse in our prison system. That was an egregious breach of New Zealand's obligations under international law and Victoria Casey KC said as much in her report that our Government commissioned that led to a change in the policy—that asylum seekers will not be held in Corrections facilities or Police facilities and there are extra safeguards in place to make sure that doesn't happen again unless there are particular security or risk-to-the-public issues.So that should be a cautionary tale for our system and when we are creating a situation where asylum seekers who are convention refugees entitled to exactly the same protections and treatment as quota refugees—when we are putting in place arrangements for them to be detained for periods of time we should be going the extra mile in terms of putting in extra safeguards. We are willing to support this bill and vote for it now at the third reading on the basis of those four safeguards going in. But I do regret that the three amendments that we put up at the committee stage weren't supported. Thank you.