Logie Jan: Immigration Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Immigration Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:10946. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green):This bill the Immigration Amendment Bill enables the courts to detain any group of 10 or more people though there is in front of this Committee of course a Supplementary Order Paper from Peter Dunne Supplementary Order Paper 239 to extend that number to 30. I have not heard the Minister of Immigration speak to that in terms of whether the Government will still be supporting that—I missed that. That is one of the things that this bill does.This bill also limits family reunification to immediate family for those claiming refugee status after a mass arrival. I hope to speak more on that point later. This bill provides the power for suspending processing of all refugee and protection claims byregulation without the oversight of this House. This bill removes the right of some claims to be heard before the Immigration and Protection Tribunal for subsequent claims along with the removal of certain rights of judicial review. In short this bill breaches the refugee convention international law and our own New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee heard amazing submissions through the select committee process from a very wide range of experts in this area—New Zealand - based groups internationally based groups and Australian groups who all too tragically have in-depth knowledge of policies that treat asylum seekers as if they are something to fear who seek to say that in their country they have seen the really high consequences of treating asylum seekers in the way that in my belief this bill frames asylum seekers.We heard from the Human Rights Commission after this bill was reported back. When the Government is saying that maybe there were some criticisms earlier but it has made some amendments and actually the bill does not do those terrible things we are suggesting in this Chamber that it does—well let me tell you what the Human Rights Commission has said on the amended bill. It has said: “the Bill and associated policy changes unduly penalise asylum seekers for irregular entry to New Zealand in clear breach of Article 31 of the Refugee Convention. The detention provisions in the Bill will result in arbitrary detention in breach of both New Zealand’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and section 22 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The suspension of applications from nationals of specific countries without providing them protection is discriminatory and may violate the right to seek asylum as guaranteed by international law. Restrictions on the right of judicial review proposed by the Bill goes against the basic and longstanding constitutional right to challenge the legal validity of government actions as protected by … the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.”This is commentary on the bill in front of this Committee from the experts in human rights in this country. That is the bill that we are now discussing—a bill that clearly breaches Acts and conventions that we have had consensus on for 50 years. This is a big deal. It is not something to be taken lightly. It is not something to be done at all.This bill is being promoted by the Government as a deterrent to people-smuggling and as a just and sensible pre-planning initiative to enable it to process a group of asylum seekers. Well that is clearly—very very clearly—contrary to the evidence that we were given in the select committee. It does not do those things and even if it did it would still be breaching those fundamental rights and there is no justification for that in this area. The only mention of people-smugglers has now been added in Supplementary Order Paper 232 an amendment at a later date—except in the text justifying the bill. It was not in the content of the bill and it does nothing fundamentally to address people-smuggling.If this Government or any party in the House that wants to support this bill disagrees with the Human Rights Commission’s analysis of this bill or disagrees with my position on this bill then I challenge them to support my Supplementary Order Paper 243 which will put consistency—