McCully Murray: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading 
McCully Murray: Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading Second Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6738] 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY (NZ National—East Coast Bays) 
: 
 The question that will be on the lips of those who have listened to the Minister’s introductory comments and also listened to the earlier debate is what is the Government trying to hide here? What is the Government trying to pull the wool over the eyes of Parliament and the public about with this measure? As I said in relation to the earlier bill this is not a measure that has been paraded with great fanfare by the Prime Minister and other Ministers through the normal routes prior to it coming to the House. This is a measure that the Government has snuck into the House under urgency and that it now expects the House to deal with through all stages. I ask the Minister what the justification for that urgency for all stages of this bill was in her speech. There was none. What we got was a decent load of political flannel from a Minister who is essentially trying to do a retrospective tidying-up after many months of neglect and incompetence in the management of her portfolio. [ 
Interruption 
] The chief Government whip might well say why he was complicit in this cover-up as well. He was the one who was trying to shepherd politicians from other political parties to go to some trumped-up briefing being held by officials from the Immigration Service over in the Minister’s suite this afternoon. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: They never asked us. 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY 
: They did not invite Mr Peters? That was a very serious oversight. Mr Benson-Pope should take note that the Rt Hon Winston Peters should be on his invitation list next time he is going to hold a briefing of this sort. 
I want to say to that chief Government whip—who is a smart alec beyond all smart alecs in the House—that that member had better get used to the fact that if he is going to try those sorts of cheap political tricks as he introduces legislation into this House under urgency expecting it to go through all stages he will find he will have to work a lot harder for his money than he has so far. 
The concern I have about this legislation is that it is fundamentally challenging the expectations that people are entitled to have when they do a deal with the New Zealand Government and the Minister did not give us good and sufficient reason—and she has plenty more stages of the bill to go through to try to earn her keep—for the retrospective legislation that is currently before the House. 
I want to put it to the House that it is pretty simple. The Minister had some months. She had a briefing document when she was appointed Minister she was given some advice by her officials she had plenty of opportunity to change the criteria at that stage and she did nothing. She did nothing and much later in the piece—I give credit to Mr Peters here; one might regard his motives as good or bad but he put the blowtorch on her—the Minister engaged in a panic reaction. I have seen the paperwork that went to the Cabinet which she delayed releasing under the Official Information Act as long as she possibly could. It demonstrated that there was not a good and proper analysis and a good and proper process around the changes that were made. It showed me quite clearly that it was simply a panic reaction because Mr Peters put the blowtorch on her. 
Whether Mr Peters was right or wrong I say to the Minister that it was quite wrong for her to embark on major changes to the immigration policy of New Zealand affecting the future make-up of our country our growth prospects and everything else on the basis of a knee-jerk panic reaction. And now we have a Minister who was taken to the High Court by one of the interested groups involved and had Justice Randerson deliver a judgment of some 64 pages which I have had a look at. I refer the Minister in particular to page 31 in which he basically says the Minister had no legal authority for what she did. Not only was she engaging in a panic political reaction because Mr Peters put the blowtorch on her but also she got it wrong in law. She did not actually do her homework about what her legal authority was and she did not take any decent advice. Members just have to read page 31 of Justice Randerson’s judgment to see that. 
The Minister thought “Oh well there is a bit of a problem here.” so she announced on 17 June 2003 that she was going to appeal this case to the Court of Appeal. 
 I have a copy of that press release here which states: “Government to appeal immigration case”. The Minister called a press conference put out a press statement and told the nation’s media and the public that Justice Randerson was wrong and that the Government was going along to the Court of Appeal which would put it right. The Court of Appeal would prove the Government and the Minister right. Today under cover of urgency and a last-minute briefing of some political parties—but not others—we have a bill introduced to the House that is designed to do what Justice Randerson would not do in the High Court and what the Court of Appeal most assuredly would not have done on the basis of the shonky case that that Minister would have taken to the Court of Appeal. 
I say to members of the public who are tuned in to this and those who are interested in immigration policy generally that we should cut through the political flannel and all the weasel words of the Minister in charge of the bill Lianne Dalziel and just focus on a couple of things here. The Minister has engaged in an accumulating series of political bungles. She finally got caught out and had to make some retrospective changes and finally had the High Court say that she could not do legally what she wanted to do. She said that she would appeal to the Court of Appeal and now knows that she has not got a hope in hell of winning in that court so she is here tonight asking nicely whether Parliament will kindly pass this bill through all its stages under urgency. I say to the Minister that that is sheer cheek and if she had any good faith in this matter she would have approached the Opposition parties and told us that she knew she had made a mess but New Zealand would suffer unless we do something to tidy up the mistakes she had made and that she was asking for our indulgence. 
If she had done that I would have had a look at it. I am sure Mr Peters if he had been invited to the briefing and if he had had an opportunity to indulge the Minister in that way would have given it very careful and thoughtful consideration; and that Mr Prebble who is known as one of the most reasonable members of the House and a man who brings a fine legal mind to these matters would have weighed up the political embarrassment of the Minister on the one hand and the need to tidy up the affairs of New Zealand’s important immigration policy on the other. I am sure that sheer sweet reason would have appealed to his judgment in this matter as well. 
But that is not what the Minister has done. The Minister has gone along behind closed doors and done some shabby little deal with the United Future party which has somehow managed to find its way to the presiding officers of Parliament but nowhere else. That party is now being cut in on the Government’s speaking time on this legislation under urgency while we shamelessly try to rectify the foolish mistakes that this Minister has made. 
I say to United Future that this will not be forgotten if those members want to cooperate with such a stupid shameless exercise in covering up for the incompetence of that Minister. This is a measure that that Minister will need to justify clause by clause to the House and to the Committee of the whole House as she insists on taking this legislation through all its stages over the next day or two. 
I say that these are important matters of principle. The principle of not passing retrospective legislation is an important one. It is overridden by Parliament from time to time for good reasons and the Minister needs to front up with those reasons. If she wants to plead good reason on this occasion she also needs to apologise. She needs to come clean with the House about the mistakes and the foolish errors she made that got her ruled against by the High Court. She needs to apologise for telling the country the media and Parliament on 17 June that she had a solution to her woes that was to be found in the Court of Appeal and that she has now had some advice that proves that that is not the case. I say that that Minister will have to do a good deal better if she wants us to pass over that principle of not passing retrospective legislation on this occasion.