Cosgrove Clayton: Immigration Bill — Third Reading 
Cosgrove Clayton: Immigration Bill — Third Reading 
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Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour—Waimakariri) 
: 
 I join with other members in supporting the Immigration Bill. As has been previously said this is the biggest rewrite of the Immigration Act in two decades. It is worth acknowledging the contribution of a number of Ministers of Immigration and latterly of course the current one and I am sure he will take a call today on this bill. I think it is also worth acknowledging that this bill deals with some very very emotional and high-profile issues. Throughout this debate we have had debate about the ability to use classified information and I am sure a Green member will probably deal with that again when the Green Party takes its call. 
We have had debate about the ability the bill gives not to truncate but to put in place a single independent appeals tribunal. Whereas there were four appeal authorities before which created—and a number of us who were Ministers at the time had to deal with this—the ability for those who were inappropriately in New Zealand to bluntly drag the chain through appellate body after appellate body after appellate body and then make request of Ministers. This bill will not truncate their rights or somehow decrease their rights but I am pleased that the House has accepted a single appellate tribunal to deal with all those rights in an efficient but fair way. I think those perhaps from the Green Party or outside who may stand in this in debate and make an argument that the rights of individuals are somehow being eroded because we have simply amalgamated in its crudest form the four appellate bodies into one tribunal miss the mark in their argument. 
I have said and I said when I was Minister that I think that people in New Zealand will have confidence in an immigration system and confidence that that immigration system is bringing the right and appropriate folks into this country as migrants only if they have an equal amount of confidence that we are appropriately and fairly dealing with those who are here under false pretences and those who are or potentially are bad guys and that we are removing those people who would abuse our good graces as a country and our generosity as a nation and who would also abuse our borders. If through this legislation we can get that balance right we can increase the confidence in the community that we are attracting efficiently processing allowing into our country and welcoming into our nation the right and appropriate folks which is defined over a whole series of personal assets that they have. We need to do that and I believe this bill will do that. We have to balance that with giving our immigration officials and department the appropriate tools to deal with those who would bluntly take advantage of our generosity. I think that this bill also gives us a basis on which to do that in terms of evidence. 
As the previous Minister of Immigration I have said in a number of the debates we have had as this legislation has gone through that I do not believe it is appropriate that we use as a measurement as to whether people should get into our country factors such as that they are seen to be popular by some interest groups—well meaning though those groups may be—that they have cooked for presidents or that they may have converted to another religion en route to New Zealand via Seoul airport or wherever. Nor should the measurement be that there is enough public pressure on either politicians or appellate bodies that those factors should be the measurements and benchmarks for allowing people to stay in this country. If we get to that stage then we may as well do away with any relationship with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees for instance. We may as well dump the legislation if our benchmarks are to be the court of public opinion and listening to those who shout the loudest on behalf of a migrant. There have been such cases. I dealt with some my predecessors dealt with some and I am sure that the current Minister of Immigration will have to deal with those cases if he is not doing so already. The pressure goes on from outside often on religious grounds or on other well-meaning grounds that we should acquiesce to that pressure and not make decisions based on the capability of our intelligence agencies or the capability of our Immigration Service. Somehow we are meant to put aside any reference to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as the people who set the international benchmarks and we are meant to make decisions based on public pressure. To put it bluntly I think that some of the arguments that have been made by some individuals that a person is a good bloke a good woman or a nice person do not hold water. 
I have said in earlier debates that I think all Ministers of Immigration carry with them the responsibility—and I choose my words carefully—to ensure that we secure our own borders. This is not to be confused if members will excuse the pun with a “New Zealand first” definition of what is right. Both meanings are relevant in this debate whether it be in terms of our nation or in terms of the political party that does not exist in this House today. That party took a very very different view and it was one that I think did this country no credit in respect of immigration. I am glad that Tau Henare who is a former New Zealand First member nods in agreement with me. Maybe we have all grown up as a nation. 
I think this legislation hits the mark. I was the Minister of Immigration just before the election. I recall giving a presentation to a particular group and the current Speaker Dr Lockwood Smith who was National’s immigration spokesperson at the time stood up and basically said that the National Party agreed with the legislation in the form that it had been put forward. I think that improvements have been made to it since. I think it is also appropriate that we acknowledge the officials who have worked on it. The officials were ridden pretty hard by a number of Ministers including me to get the legislation into shape. We relied as Ministers on the technical knowledge of people like Graham Buchanan the Deputy Secretary of Labour. I hope that I have not truncated his career by naming him in the House while I am an Opposition member but I acknowledge Graham Buchanan as the senior lawyer if you will in respect of this legislation. I acknowledge his legal team the names of whom will be etched I suspect on the pages of the draft copies of this legislation as it went through. 
I think this legislation is future-proofing at its very essence. It deals with new technologies. It allows more flexibility at the border for our immigration folk. I think that it gives appropriate levels of power to our Immigration Service and an appropriate level of discretion to the Minister to do the job of protecting our borders. It also has the counterbalance of making our immigration system more efficient—to grease the wheels if you will—to allow a free flow of immigration with appropriate migrants. 
From the self-interested view of the previous Minister of Immigration I am particularly pleased about the delegations that the Minister will be allowed to provide in terms of residency policy. I know that I and other Ministers of Immigration often had to deal with almost a couple of hundred applications a week it felt like. We dealt with them on planes on buses and in cars and the silver suitcases followed us around the country. But I as a Minister often found it was reasonably absurd that the work had been done by a plethora of technicians and officials in the department and then it was up to the Minister to have the file put in front of him or her. The Minister has no technical knowledge on the subject—very few Ministers of Immigration who get that warrant have that knowledge and if they do they are very lucky—but is asked to make decisions on the papers. I recall that we often involved a number of senior managers in those decisions because those senior managers worked with the units and had the intricate knowledge. So I am glad that there will be some discretion and that the ability to delegate has been put into the legislation. 
I will conclude by simply restating Labour’s support for the legislation. I hope it will breathe new life into the Immigration Service a department that has been kicked around by politicians—some who are here and some who are not—for many many decades. I would note that although things have gone wrong in the department and there are individuals who have sinned and there is one in particular whom I will not mention I believe that the department as a whole is in very good heart. Immigration decisions by their very nature deal with human beings’ lives. In my view they are more of an art than a science. No two immigration decisions that I ever dealt with as the Minister were exactly the same in every particular way.