Cunliffe David: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
Cunliffe David: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6761] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Firstly I acknowledge my colleague the Hon Pete Hodgson. For one thing his was an amazing story that not only was he able to get those two Cameroonian gentlemen off that boat but also he took them in to his home for 4 years. I would like to publicly say that that tells us something about the man as well as the former Minister. 
I will divert slightly and recognise the immense courage of the refugee community. Many of us have been to a refugee and migrant day for example at one of the Auckland festivals. I remember going to one early in my time as Minister of Immigration and coming away thinking that it was we who are privileged to have that body of people in our country because most of them are amazing individuals with incredible qualifications. The fact that they have survived what they have been through to get here tells us that they have amazing character as well. 
On that note I will come back to the points that my colleague David Parker made with great eloquence. The State has immense resources. Two gentlemen who were traumatised who were cooped up in a cabin for 6 months who could not speak the language who had false documents and who had no friends and no phone numbers had the whole power of the State the ministry and the Minister arrayed against them. The State of New Zealand does not need these illiberal clauses for truth to prevail in refugee decision-making. 
The Minister said that if refugees act in good faith and tell the truth then they will be fine. I am sure he believes that. We would all like to believe that that would always be the case but here is the rub: usually telling the truth is not good enough in the law. It was not good enough for the mums on the domestic purposes benefit when the Minister’s colleague the Minister for Social Development and Employment outed their personal files. That action was deplorable it was unethical and it should have been and may be illegal. It was not good enough for the prison officers who testified at a select committee recently and who were told by the prison service which was backed up by the Minister’s colleague the Minister of Corrections that they stood to lose their jobs if they dared speak out against a provision of the Government. We live in a democracy and we ought to treasure that. We ought to at least offer some rights to have the considerations of democracy extended to refugee claimants. 
Going back in history a way it should not have been the case that Robert David Muldoon outed Colin Moyle in the Chamber not because he was allegedly gay but because Robert Muldoon was violating his sworn duty as the Minister responsible for the Security Intelligence Service and in the Chamber used as a political debating point information that came to him by law in a different capacity. 
Chris Tremain 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. The member is a senior member of the House; he knows that we are debating a particular part of the bill on refugees and he is using the debate to go way outside the scope of the bill. Can I ask him to come back— 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: I will come back to the bill Mr Chairperson. I take the member’s point. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Righto. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: The reason why I brought up those unsavoury examples is very very closely related to the bill. In all cases the judgments of the three Ministers concerned—Bennett Collins and Muldoon—were arguably outside the law and they argued against the rights of the individual. What it boils down to with the Supplementary Order Paper—which runs against the swim of the rest of the bill which has a good balance—is that refugee claimants cannot even inadvertently have their information going into the public domain without being liable to be deemed by a desk officer in the Immigration Service to have acted in bad faith. Therefore they are prevented from having their case heard. It will not be the case of a decision being found against them or there being a bias against them; they cannot even have their case heard because they are judged to have waived their rights and thereby all their defence. The State does not need that power. 
In regard to the other clause in the Supplementary Order Paper about the supporters of a claimant refugees deserve to have referees if they have them. There is alpha and beta risk here. Yes it is true that it is possible in some cases for referees to be duped but it is equally true probably more often true that there can be valid referees whose appropriate testimony is disallowed under this provision because somewhere along the process in circumstances such as those that my colleague the Hon Pete Hodgson outlined somebody is deemed to have told an untruth or supplied a document that may not be accurate in all respects. Anyone who is familiar with refugee claims knows that after the hell that claimants go through somewhere along the line that situation is not uncommon. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 32 in the name of the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman to Part 5 be agreed to.