Dalziel Lianne: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6769] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Minister of Immigration) 
: Mr Chairman— 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: I struck a nerve. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The only nerve that has been struck by the member is the one that has reacted to the fact that I never thought I would ever sit in this Chamber and hear that member promote the interests of migrants coming to New Zealand. I am absolutely gobsmacked to be hearing that member stand up and justify the bringing to New Zealand of up to 10000 migrants who have applied for residence in New Zealand when there is not one shred of evidence—to use a phrase that is well known to that member—that they will ever get work in their area of profession expertise or skill. And that member wants us to continue to invite people to this country when we know they are being set up to fail not set up to succeed. The Rt Hon Winston Peters is arguing that in this Chamber. 
I am going to quote from a letter I received from a man who is here from India on a job-search visa. He wrote to the Prime Minister earlier this year and I think it is important that people hear what he says. He says to me in this letter that his job-search visa does not expire until September but he has already booked to go home and that is as a result of the multiple job rejections he has suffered in the time he has been here under a job-search visa. There is no guarantee of residence when one gets a job-search visa. There is a 6-month period non-transferable and non-extendable to come and look for a job. 
He speaks of meeting other Indians 95 percent of whom he says are working in menial jobs. In fact he tells me in the letter that they have actually even had to undersell their own qualifications—pretend they are not engineers; pretend they are not highly skilled migrants—so they can work as forecourt attendants in garages as cleaners or as farm labourers. It is an outrage that any member of this Committee would support that occurring. He is going home because he has pride. He said he is prepared to take a step down on the ladder but he is not prepared to go to the bottom of the ladder and start all over again. 
This is what he says in his letter: “In my case I am almost ruined. I left my Class 1 engineer post in India and I have already spent about half a million rupees. Even I had to ask my son in the UK to send some money meant for his studies.” That is what the current policy does to people. It brings people here to fail. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Your policy. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: The member says it is my policy but it is not. It was the policy I inherited. People can argue about how long it has taken to address it but that is not the issue. The issue is that this Government has the courage to face up to the fact that we cannot allow that policy to continue to operate in this way. 
This bill does three things. It introduces global prioritisation so that those people with relevant job offers are able to have their cases determined first. Of course that will advantage those migrants who have their residence applications in the system who are already in New Zealand and who already have job offers. Those people are going to be at the top of the list. They will be advantaged by the changes we are ensuring can be introduced. We are lapsing applications from those who applied last year and who do not have high points a job-search visa or a skilled job offer. Why would we not lapse them? If we did not lapse them we would be inviting them to come to New Zealand to fail and New Zealanders have had an absolute gutsful of seeing engineers Korean pharmacists Indian information technology specialists and Russian agricultural scientists—these are real people I have met—who should not be in our country driving taxis. If they come to our country they should come here to do their real jobs. 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (NZ National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 We are here in the Committee stage under urgency debating the title to this bill which as Mr Peters has told the Committee is a monument to the failure of the current Minister and her predecessor over the last 4 years. I turn first of all to the fact that we are dealing with this matter under urgency. On a previous occasion when an immigration bill was before the House a member had this to say about dealing with immigration matters in this way: “I do not appreciate a Government using the urgency provisions of Parliament in order to avoid due process. Due process would require the matter to be referred to a select committee …”. There is more: “These matters ought to be addressed in terms of proper process …” said the member. “I say that is not good enough. That is not how the Labour Party will work in practice. We will allow for open government for proper consultative processes and for real involvement of members of Parliament in these decisions.” That is wonderful stuff! Members are still guessing who said that I see. It was the Minister in the chair the Hon Lianne Dalziel when she was in Opposition and was attacking a former Minister for using the urgency provisions to make changes in exactly in the way that she has embarked on the use of urgency today. 
I say to the Minister in the chair that those words will come back to haunt her time and time again this morning because there is a word that starts with “h” that the Standing Orders will not allow me to use in the Chamber. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: It ends with a “c”. 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY 
: It ends with a “y” actually. Members who say when they are in Opposition that they will do one thing and then come to the Chamber and do another when they are in Government are the ultimate enactment of the “Maharey principle”. Ministers who do that deserve to be roasted when they bring their bills to the Committee and that Minister will be roasted by Opposition speaker after Opposition speaker for an ultimate act to which that “h” word applies. 
I also lament the fact that we are here in urgency because the toadies and lackeys of the United Future party have decided to sign up to the use of urgency without even testing the questions that they should properly have asked. I have been doing some research on them. Mr Peters expressed an interest in knowing what was in United Future’s policy given that party’s strong commitment to the rule of law family values and so on. I tell Mr Peters and other members of the Committee today what United Future members had to say. They said: “United Future is committed to policy which gives certainty to immigrants”—certainty to immigrants—“and provides a mutual benefit for them and existing citizens. Immigration is seen as entirely positive and beneficial. We must have faith that our immigration policies are fair objective and sustainable.” 
The United Future members have done a grubby little deal with the Minister of Immigration to support the use of urgency in order to try to cover up that Minister’s and this Government’s 4-year mess in the immigration area to change the circumstances retrospectively of a large number of Africans who have applied to become New Zealanders and what is more to change retrospectively the decision of a High Court judge that is currently before the Court of Appeal. The United Future party which stands for the rule of law has decided to help the Minister out. Having lost the case in the High Court and having told the country on 17 June that she would go to the Court of Appeal the United Future party has come along and told the Minister not to worry about the old appeal court judges. It has said the Minister need not bother with them because it would help her to slide some legislation through under urgency in the middle of the night.