SpeechHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call in support of this bill at first reading and I have to say since I heard about it in the last two or three days I was having something of a sense of—Erica Stanford: Déjà vu?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —flashback and déjà vu exactly. As the immigration Minister said there are a number of people in this House who have memories of this bill first passing 10 years ago and I was the Minister at the passage—not at first reading which was introduced by Nathan Guy in about May 2012 but from subsequent readings from March 2013 to the middle of 2013.I have very clear memories of a Labour Party that went to war with the Government over this bill—and my how the worm has turned. Let me just remind the House of the sorts of things that Labour members were saying: Charles Chauvel basically said that he was embarrassed by the bill. Darien Fenton—if one remembers there was an advertisement on the TV; I think it was about road safety and it had the term ghost chips"—well she referred to these as "ghost ships" repeatedly; saying "This would not happen" and "Why are we wasting the House's time?" David Cunliffe who very shortly after this bill was passed became Leader of the Opposition basically said there was more chance of little green men coming from Mars than a boat landing on the shores of New Zealand.Never mind that for 1000 years wooden-hulled vessels have travelled the Pacific to be here. Never mind that ships were crossing the Indian Ocean with the intention of going around the Australian Bight and into the Tasman Sea that a steel-hulled vessel had gone from Sri Lanka to Canada with 500 people on board. These things were real and so I must commend the Labour Party for having a change of heart and being alive to the risks—the very real risks—that this could occur. I'm not sure if they are as alive to the serious consequences that could emerge if even a small vessel—with a relatively small number of people—did arrive on our shores and I want to go into why I think that's a bit of a problem with some of the changes that we're making because it does have this impression that things would happen in an orderly fashion. If one talks to those countries that are routinely experiencing irregular maritime arrivals they will tell you that it is absolute chaos. And on those vessels we are going to have those snakeheads—the pirates. In fact if there is a hell the hottest spot in that place should be reserved for these people smugglers. It's also going to have victims—what I described 10 years ago as "willing victims" but victims nevertheless—and very often children.Now the detention requirements for all of those groups whether they are male or female whether they are elderly or very young whether they are criminals or not—is going to be different. And I think what the Government is doing in this bill is confusing the process of refugee determination and the period of that with the process of detention. Now regardless of what one thinks about the ability for a mass warrant of detention it's my view—and that's why I supported and passaged the bill 10 years ago—that it is necessary to work quickly to determine where the risk is and manage it. And I was at pains to point out that the detention facility should be commensurate with two things: the person's individual rights and the rights of New Zealanders to be kept safe from some very dangerous people or to establish the identity of people. Now if we take up to 32 days simply to make a decision about whether somebody should be detained for up to six months it seems to me that there's a somewhat circular argument here. What's going to happen to them in the meantime? Well it's a bit hard to tell and I think the answer—and the select committee should flesh this out—is that they're going to be detained somewhere. So why are we changing the law to detain someone while a judge decides whether we should detain them? There are certain laws—and I think the lawyers in the room will know much better than I—under the Crimes Act regarding what a suspected criminal has in terms of rights and obligations for detention pending charges and then their appearance before a court. What we're essentially doing here is giving the courts and Immigration New Zealand up to 32 days to determine that. Now I fully support the ability of a person who isn't a regular maritime arriver to have the right to access legal representation and for them to understand what their rights and obligations are. But I'm not sure that the extension of time in this situation is going to ease or add to the chaos if a ship arrives on a Northland beach—or more likely gets into distress in the Tasman Sea. Of course our international maritime obligations to protect go all the way out to I think New Caledonia nearly. And then international maritime law requires a rescuer—if that's the New Zealand Navy or other vessels—to deposit those people at the nearest jurisdiction which would be New Caledonia or Vanuatu. I mean that's very unlikely that that would be practical and so the likelihood is that these people are going to come back let's say on a frigate or an offshore patrol vessel land at Devonport and then be processed. But let's be under no illusions this will be chaos. Their medical needs their legal needs their identity requirements the need to speedily decide what the right level of risk is and the right place for detention is are not necessarily going to be aided by this. I'm open to being convinced and I know the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee will do a good job on it but there are some serious questions here.What I like is that at least the Labour Party are now taking this seriously because they didn't 10 years ago and they went very quiet while they were in Government up until now. They did a review and in fact Immigration New Zealand and other agencies' desktops review these scenarios from time to time—maybe they've identified a new risk that they're tightening up that's fine. But I think we should all agree on one thing and I would leave the House with some consideration of another: prevention is the best approach because not only is this illegal; it's hideously dangerous. I recall in my second reading 10 years ago I think the count that year alone—because the jump spot from Cisarua to the East Timor Sea was becoming a very very popular trade route; trading in people sadly—600 people drowned in the period leading up to that second reading. Perhaps it was in the previous year I can't remember. And that was only the ones they knew about. There could have been hundreds more. So it's a threat to life and we need to—even in our deterrence—make sure that that's prevented. The second thing is I think the refugee convention is actually out of date. It was written in a time after the Second World War where there was the mass movement of people displaced by that terrible conflict. And it had provisions in it that imagined a scenario of people basically walking from one country to another and the principle of nonrefoulement was well you can't send them back. But of course there are some countries around the world where asylum seekers have moved across several countries to get to a particular destination. So we have an obligation not to return them to the country that they started in but we're under no obligation to keep them here. It didn't anticipate long-distance maritime arrivals and I think it's time perhaps for the United Nations to have a good look at that convention if they have the courage. But with that I'll support the bill."