Dalziel Lianne: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
Dalziel Lianne: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6756] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am surprised that the Minister will not take a call because we are raising— 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: I will take one. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I am yielding to you. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: The member has sat down so that is the end of that call. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Oh hang on! 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: No I need to tell the honourable member that there are only four calls per part. That is her fourth call. She has sat down and the yield has not been taken up. The Standing Orders stipulate that that is the member’s last call but I will give the member the opportunity to resume her call. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Thank you for your assistance in that regard. I am disappointed that the Minister has not taken a call on this part because it is a serious set of issues we have raised. My colleague the Hon David Cunliffe has reminded me of why I would not trust this Government with the particular provisions that it wants to put into our law. The Minister for Social Development and Employment went public with the personal details of two individuals who dared to challenge the Government about its particular approach on the training incentive allowance. The funny thing is that if the Minister had actually read the interview given by the individuals she would have found that they said they were extremely grateful for the money they had received on the domestic purposes benefit but they needed a little bit extra to assist them to get off that benefit. 
The only reason the Minister went public with their names is that she thought I had given their names to the media when in fact the media had worked out all by themselves who those beneficiaries were and had approached them directly. The Government allows a vindictive approach to be adopted against particular individuals when it does not like what those individuals are doing in particular like challenging the Government. 
This amendment would enable the Government to speak publicly about a particular immigration case whenever it feels like it because it will always be able to satisfy itself as the Minister for Social Development and Employment did so unfairly to those two particular individuals. The Government will always be able to satisfy itself that individuals in question had impliedly given their consent. 
I do not think that people on the other side of the Chamber are taking this seriously enough. The previous Labour Government got rid of the vast bulk of the manifestly unfounded claims. They have gone from the system. As I said earlier I inherited 3000 claims when I became the Minister of Immigration and that was down to 300 by the time I finished being Minister. We addressed the problem. The vast majority of the claims being dealt with now are genuine claims for refugee status. 
The risk that is taken when one plays God as it were with this particular situation of identifying individuals is that if they were returned to their home and the Government was wrong to release that information the consequences are lethal—they are fatal. I think that the Government is playing a very very dangerous game by writing this into the law stating that implied consent would be sufficient to allow that information to be released. I simply do not think that it does. 
The other thing that we have not mentioned in this particular part is that Supplementary Order Paper 32 inserts new subclause (2A) of clause 125: “A refugee and protection officer must decline to accept for consideration a claim for recognition as a refugee if the officer is satisfied that 1 or more of the circumstances relating to the claim were brought about by the claimant—acting otherwise than in good faith; and for a purpose of creating grounds for recognition …”. How on earth will a refugee and protection officer know to decline a case on the basis that it was brought otherwise than in good faith? 
The bottom line is that this is again a section that is being written into our law on the basis of one or two very hard cases. As we have said before hard cases make bad law. We think there is a very high risk for the Government to go down this track. We will not be supporting the Supplementary Order Paper unless the Minister suddenly gets up and surprises us all with a very clear basis for doing so. We think there are high risks with the Supplementary Order Paper and we think that the amendments ought not to be supported.