Peters Winston: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Peters Winston: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
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Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: This bill’s title should not read the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) but the “Lianne Dalziel (How I Stuffed Up on Immigration) Bill” the “How to Climb Down from an Immigration High Horse Gracefully Bill” or the “I Don’t Know What I am Doing but I Like the Baubles of Office Bill”. 
If members look at paragraph 94 of the court case they will see that the judge said: “A theme of the Minister’s submission was that the job-search visa might not be granted and that in any event the Minister had a discretion as to whether or not it should be granted. It was also submitted that even if the job-search visa were granted a relevant job offer might not be obtained. All this”—said the judge—“is beside the point. The plaintiff seeks only that general skills applicants should have the opportunity to apply for job-search visas under policy existing at the time of their residence application whether or not the application is ultimately successful.” There it is in a nutshell. The Minister got it wrong but not just in a small way she got it wrong for tens of thousands of people who had a right through their immigration agents to bring their case. 
So what does she do? She sets out to damn immigration agents—all of whom she has empowered of course—and then she says something else which she knows nothing about. She says these people are all overseas. She does not know that of course. She does not know anything about her portfolio and my evidence for that is that there are almost 20000 overstayers in this country. In a computerised society she has no idea where they are. That does not happen in any other business I know of. If a library book is overdue the day it is overdue up flips a card and someone goes and finds where that book is and who the last borrower was. It should be likewise for immigration. In a computerised society the day a person does not leave and appears not to have left up comes the card and the department goes and finds where 20000 people are. 
Dail Jones 
: They don’t want to do that though. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: No the department does not want to do that does it? That is because it has such crap programs and administrative devices that do not work that it has no idea what is going on. Yet she has the effrontery to go on radio and television saying it is all about foreigners. 
Craig McNair 
: They don’t have the will. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: The Government does not have the will it does not have the nous it does not have the wit and above all it does not have the commitment to this country’s long-term economic and social interests. 
It is extraordinarily embarrassing to see someone who has legal training—I do not know what sort of legal training—come along and argue that retrospective legislation is of no moment. Members will know there is a party that prides itself on decency and family values; I wonder which party that is. Members would probably think that a party that says it is for family values would consider fairness a family value would they not? Members would think that treating people as equals before the law was a family value would they not? They would think upholding rights under the law was a family value. But for the United Future party it is not. A family value for that party is hugging up to the Government and being a doormat so its members can keep their jobs. Those members know that if they were to stand up for their own people and for the interests of the people of this country there would be a snap election—goodbye United Future goodbye salary. 
Craig McNair 
: Goodbye Pork Pie. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Goodbye Pork Pie. The question of retrospectivity is the core of this issue. The question of whether we can just legislate away people’s rights goes to the heart of how Parliament operates. Lianne Dalziel having screwed up and mucked up would not be getting away with it were it not for Peter Dunne and his merry men. That is a fact. I thought these United Future people when they campaigned were people of honour. I thought they were people of integrity. There was not a family value they did not stand for: Easter Christmas holidays the tooth fairy—you name it they were for it. But they are not for fundamental human rights they are not for standing up for the law and they are not for doing their duty. That is why both the Labour Party and United Future will go down at the next election. 
I will tell the Committee why that is. Lianne Dalziel just found out—