Peters Winston: Urgent Debates — Report by Secretary of Labour—Immigration Service 
Peters Winston: Urgent Debates — Report by Secretary of Labour—Immigration Service 
[Volume:611;Page:8335] 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 This is a matter that reflects abysmally on the Immigration Service the Minister of Immigration the Minister of Labour and the Prime Minister and it has a sense of déjà vu and a ring of familiarity about it. We are talking about a dysfunctional department and a dysfunctional Minister. I remind members of the background to this issue. It happened members will remember in the Minister of Immigration’s office. Everybody remembers but her. This is a person who day after day in the House disowned all the facts and now seeks to make a virtue out of a crime against the public where disclosure is important. 
The background to this issue involves a so-called asylum seeker who should never have been allowed into this country and who has already cost us over $100000 in legal aid and penal costs to have him here. Meanwhile we cannot service our own people in our schools in our social welfare system and in our hospitals. It was all about hushing this issue up so that the people of New Zealand would not know what was going on. We have a suspected terrorist in our midst and this Government does not believe that New Zealanders should be told about it. Just the other day an Afghan refugee shot a woman while she was hanging clothes on her clothesline. Where did he get the firearm? Who brought him here? What is he doing here? He was on release when he committed that crime. It is not the task of the Immigration Service to tell the people primarily; it is the task of the Minister who stands condemned today for the incompetent Minister that she is. I want to know where she fits in in respect of the background of this subject. It all happened in her office but strange as it might seem she claims not to know—just like the Prime Minister claims not to know despite all the documentation. 
Every day in the House when the Prime Minister is asked: “Why have you got confidence in the Minister of Immigration?” she says: “Because she is a conscientious and hardworking Minister.” What a joke! We have 20000 overstayers in this country. We have no idea who is here what is here what diseases they are carrying and what their social welfare costs are while New Zealanders cannot access hip operations cataract operations and all the normal expectations that we have of the social welfare system. 
Jill Pettis 
: I bet they don’t suffer from dipsomania. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: There goes the fishwife again—it must be market day. Why is a civil servant taking the rap? This is a case of an in-house snow job on Parliament and on the public of this country. Why is no Minister in Helen Clark’s Government ever responsible when things go wrong—whether it be corncobs or an alleged terrorist? On 20 February shortly after the 1999 election the Prime Minister promised a hard line on accountability. She said she would go all the way to the top—including sacking bungling incompetent Ministers. 
Ron Mark 
: Yeah right! 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Yeah right! When are we going to see that happen? By gee there is a tonne of evidence for it. Did Helen Clark tell the caucus at the time that Cabinet was elected that everyone was there on performance and there were plenty of others waiting to take their job? Quote: “ ‘They will tell you it’s true’ she says.” 
Dail Jones 
: Yeah right! 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Yeah right! What are the offences? Well here they are. Immigration officials had poor standards. On numerous occasions they breached the Official Information Act. They withheld information. They would not even give it to the Ombudsman. In fact when it first went off they deleted these comments from the PR man communications adviser Ian Smith who said this: “I was let down badly. Everyone had agreed to lie in unison but all the others caved in and I was the only one left singing the original song.” Deceit and lies. Do members know what he told Dr Buwalda—who had been the head of the labour department for a matter of days and who conducted an in-house snow job? He said that it was “intended as a sarcastic and humorous response to media criticism of departmental staff failing to answer media questions about Mr Zaoui.” What has happened to him? He is still working for the department but he is not handling media inquiries any more. If a person is involved in a cover-up for his boss and his Minister and if he does not tell the public that the Minister knew and that therefore the Prime Minister had to know then that person gets his job preserved in this rotten corrupt venal Labour Party administration. 
Dail Jones 
: Like “corngate”. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: Yes it is just like “corngate”. No one ever gets fired. As bad and as damaging as this in-house report is we are told that it was all a matter of levity and humour. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: The member should stick to water at lunchtime. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: I tell the member what I will stick to—I will stick to not taking Valium as she does. I am not a person with a problem handling stress as she has. I am not a person who had to take leave for months as she did. We can handle the truth in this party unlike her—and if the Minister wants to go there she can go there and see how painful it is. [ 
Interruption 
] The fishwife from Wanganui can go there and find out how painful the experience will be for her and her colleagues. That is her last warning because we do not muck around with people who want to be clever and personal in this House. 
Jill Pettis 
: Get up earlier. 
Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS 
: It is obvious who has been getting up early in her family. It shows does it not? The reality of it all is that this is a rotten venal corrupt report from a rotten venal corrupt administration who when they are caught telling lies blame someone else. All of this happened in the Minister’s office but she gets up in this House and says: “I know nothing of it. I was not part of the conspiracy.” Do members know what a conspiracy is? A conspiracy is an agreement between two or more to break the law and on this matter they did. They hid the circumstances of a terrorist because the heat was on this Minister. But she is doing it over and over again. In the North Shore Hospital right now there is a man there with a disease that no doctor knows about in this country—it is usually associated with horses. So inexperienced are our doctors with this matter—[ 
Interruption 
] No not mad horses; not mad mares either—it has to do with horses. So inexperienced are the doctors that they are feeding him an equine cure in the hope that it might work and the staff have been told to tell no one. These incompetent people put at risk the health and security of New Zealanders. They think they will get away with it but they will not. I make a commitment to this House that we will carry on exposing their incompetence day in and day out until they are gone from service to this country.