Logie Jan: Immigration Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Immigration Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:10966. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):Thank you Mr Chairperson.Hon Member: Good choice.JAN LOGIE: Good choice indeed. I would like to speak and also offer my opposition to the title of the Immigration Amendment Bill which I do not think describes what is happening here at all. There are many things I would like to call this bill but most of them I am not allowed to say in this Chamber I must say. So I will constrain myself to polite language in alternative titles though to be honest they will not reflect how I actually feel about this bill. The Minister of Immigration may have called me sanctimonious for quoting the Human Rights Commission. You know it was not actually my opinion I was offering; it was the Human Rights Commission’s opinion. If that makes me sanctimonious well I will live with that.Being on the side of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees of people working with refugees in Australia—you know I am OK siding with those people and their views of this bill. I am sure they would come up with quite a few titles for this bill that were not “Immigration Amendment Bill”. I think one title maybe would be the “Needless Fearmongering Bill”. I do want to speak to that title a little bit because it speaks to some of the heart of this for me around the difficulty of speaking to this bill. It is difficult because when we talk about that in fact there is not going to be a mass arrival because—despite the fact that you know waka arrived here from the Pacific a while ago and we had some large boats—the world is different now.We know that the boat that made it to Canada that had 500 people on it was a multimillion-dollar boat I think and was funded by a very wealthy Tamil community in Canada. We know that in New Zealand we have had advice from the officials that we have no such wealthy refugee community in New Zealand who would be capable of funding such a venture. So it is incredibly incredibly unlikely.The fact that a boat made it to Australia carrying people who said they wanted to come to New Zealand means nothing—nothing at all—because your first point of arrival is where you seek refuge. And to say you want to go somewhere else means nothing. But in speaking the way I am speaking right now I am really conscious that it creates a sense of fear that actually we would not want an arrival of people that it is something we need to shore ourselves up against and we need to create barriers to prevent these people from coming here. That is not an impression that I want to give because these are people who are fleeing wars who are fleeing persecution. Many are people who are trying to do the right thing who may be going against their military and the call from their Government to kill people which they find morally repugnant and they are fleeing for their lives in the belief of doing something right. These are notpeople we should be shoring ourselves up against and creating barriers for in order to prevent them from entering our country.Our country does very very little actually globally in terms of supporting asylum seekers. In terms of Australia actually we are talking about not wanting the terrible situation that is happening in Australia. Globally Australia takes in very few asylum seekers compared with other countries. Look at what is happening in Lebanon at the moment and how it is welcoming refugees and asylum seekers into its country into its systems. It is not setting up camps. In fact it is just allowing people to integrate because it recognises its role in the global community in protection and that fundamental value of us having a place to go in a time of strife. That is what we should be striving for. That is what the convention committed us to. This bill should be titled the “National Day of Shame Bill” the “Bill Lacking in Humanity Bill” the “Not Doing Our Fair Share in the World Bill” or the “Ruining our International Reputation Bill”. I can list off flippant titles but this is not a flippant matter. This does come down to the leadership we are going to take in the world in terms of ensuring people’s safety and being able to stand up and say that we have a role to be able to ensure people’s safety we need to sort out the UN systems and we need to sort out the refugee camp systems. I went to a refugee camp this year for the first time in my life and they are no life.