Goff Phil: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee[Sitting date: 31 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2729. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): I have got some questions for the Minister in the chair relating to clause 94 of the bill which deals with the question of migrant levies. We have not had a lot of discussion about migrant levies in the Committee but as the Opposition spokesperson on ethnic communities I am particularly concerned about the implications of the change that this clause makes for those people who are coming to New Zealand. We have long had the requirement that there is a levy paid by migrants who are coming to New Zealand but this has been on the basis of an understanding that a migrant pays a levy that is then reinvested into the new migrant community to pay for English language training to help that new migrant individual or family to understand the customs of the country and the language of the country and to give that migrant the chance to settle as quickly as possible into New Zealand society.For all of those reasons I have not been a critic of the migrant levy that exists in the current Act. But there are some serious changes in clause 94 and I want to refer the Minister to the Legislation Advisory Committee’s comments on the changes that have been made. I think it is worth reading to the Minister what the Legislation Advisory Committee said about the changes in this particular clause. It said: “The existing Migrant levy is narrowly focused and raises approximately $4.5 million annually or about 2 per cent of the Immigration budget. The current levy’s purposes are expressly restricted to funding settlement programmes formigrants and research into settlement issues.” This is exactly what I have been explaining to the Committee. It says: “The existing levy is clearly not a tax.” but the change that the Government has made in clause 94 makes the levy into a tax. This is a new tax—a tax being smuggled in through this legislation—and one that has not been explained to the migrant community.To go back to what the Legislation Advisory Committee said about this it said that in contrast to the existing levy “the proposed Immigration Levy could be construed as a tax.” The Legislation Advisory Committee is not a political body. It has advised on this bill and has advised on things that it regards as poor legislative and statutory practice and it says this is poor practice. It says that “Clause 94 broadens the potential purposes for the levy considerably including helping pay for any immigration system infrastructure and operations and funding the Immigration Advisers Licensing Authority.In principle such general expenditures should preferably be met from tax revenue or from properly targeted fees for services where these can be identified.”So what we have got here is a fundamental change that the legislation is making without the Government giving justification for why that change is here. If you are going to levy a tax call it a tax. Explain to the migrants that you are now taxing them to pay for the basic functions of the Immigration Service but do not come into the House and smuggle a piece of legislation like this into the House that detracts from the levy that helps people to settle in New Zealand and requires the migrants to pay for a fundamental core Government service. And when the Legislation Advisory Committee chaired by Sir Grant Hammond makes a criticism of this magnitude the Minister needs to take it seriously.So I would like the Minister to take the next call and explain why the old levy—helping people to settle in New Zealand; a justifiable objective that the migrant themselves could be expected to contribute to—is suddenly becoming a tax to pay for the basic bureaucracy of the immigration section of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment. This is a serious change. It has not been advertised as such. It has not been referred to by the Minister in the speeches that have been made. It has not been justified to the House. And I am saying that in this Committee stage the Minister has the opportunity to get to his feet and explain why that change is being made.