Bennett David: Immigration Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBennett David: Immigration Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 16 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9396. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): On behalf of the National Party and the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee members I would like to support this bill the Immigration Amendment Bill. I am a very pro-immigration person. I think that New Zealand’s immigration rules are too strict if anything and I would like to seeimmigration opened up quite considerably but the country is not quite ready for that situation yet.I found it very distressing and very sad that the Labour Party comes into this House tonight and tries to prey on the most vulnerable people out there and makes accusations about this bill that are simply not true. This is a Labour Party clutching at straws trying to paint a picture of something that is not the case. It is trying desperately to create fear and that is very distressing I think when people put their lives on the line when they are migrating. They make some very specific choices in their migration as well. So it is very sad that the left wing is taking that approach to politics here tonight.It is also sad when you consider that we have a working arrangement with the Australian Government and the Australian Labor Party is no doubt in control in that Government. It is unusual to see the Labour Party here being so different from its colleagues across the Ditch. I bet you a Labour Government here would actually be signing exactly the same thing because Labour knows it is in the best interests of New Zealand and Australia going forward.This is not a turning point in politics or in the approach of New Zealand to migration. It is certainly not a turning point in our approach to refugees. We have a very strong refugee focus in New Zealand. We are one of the few countries in the world that actually takes in refugees. We do our share. We do our share compared with other countries in this world. What we are doing here is making our share a bit more realistic for the problems that we face in our area. That is what we are doing. That is something I do not think anyone would hold against us.There is one other big thing. I think we heard the Labour Party say things about the Tamil population in Canada being a reason for people to go there. That is just rubbish. There is a big population in New Zealand. There are the same incentives as any other country. But the real unfairness of the Labour Party’s argument—the real unfairness of the Labour Party’s argument—is to those people who follow the rules. It is to those people who come here the hard way who have to come through the New Zealand Immigration Service who have to learn English who have to pass our English language tests who actually do everything by the book; the people who come into our electorate offices week after week struggling to get through our immigration systems—they are the real people whom the Labour Party is hurting. In putting those people down that is what the Labour Party is doing. Those people are doing everything right. We need a migration system that understands that and does not give somebody else a lift over them. That is not the problem.Phil Twyford: David you still don’t understand the issue.DAVID BENNETT: I understand the issue very well Mr Twyford.Phil Twyford: You don’t.DAVID BENNETT: We do; we do understand the issue very well. It is a bit of a disappointment for the Labour Party to take that approach to it.New Zealand has a strong commitment to refugees. We have done that year in year out. That commitment still stays. This bill assists the New Zealand Government in meeting its commitments. It looks after those migrants who are doing everything right as well. It does not send the wrong signals. It is not an attack on migrants as the Labour Party and Green Party say and New Zealand First will just be against it because it does not like any immigration at all. The Opposition has painted this incorrectly.This bill is in the best interests of New Zealand it is in the best interests of our migrant populations and it is in the best interests of our country going forward especially our refugees.