Locke Keith: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
Locke Keith: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6686] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 I will provide an explanation of my amendment to clause 30 which is a clause dealing with the use of classified information in decision making. The amendment particularly seeks to delete subclause (2) of that clause which relates to refugee and protection decision-making claims. There is good backing for my amendment because internationally the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees very strongly states that classified information should not be used in that way. In fact in a discussion paper during the earlier review period for the Immigration Act changes the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees under point 21 of its paper said “As acknowledged in the discussion paper refugee/protection decision-making is different from standard immigration decision-making. Accordingly UNHCR urges the Government of New Zealand to maintain the  
status-quo 
 and not adopt practices that allow asylum claims to be determined and rejected on the basis of classified information. Classified information should not be used unless declassified and shared with all parties concerned. In UNHCR’s view such a practice would be at variance with international standards of best practice.” 
Amnesty International backs that up. It says in its paper: “AINZ therefore concurs with the UNHCR recommendation to maintain the status quo and that classified information should not be used unless it is disclosed to the claimant and open to challenge. As it stands clause 30 could see asylum-seekers disadvantaged by denying them natural justice and is contrary to the practice in similar jurisdictions including Canada The UK and Australia.” Amnesty International seeks the removal of the clause 30 extension to asylum seekers. 
So there is good backing for my Supplementary Order Paper and the reason is a very practical one too. A lot of false information about asylum seekers comes into the hands of Immigration New Zealand and the hands of appeal bodies. It comes in because asylum seekers come from situations of conflict situations of repression and situations where the Government of their country is not particularly keen on them because they are very often dissidents or religious minorities. Because of that incorrect prejudicial information comes through the system and lands in New Zealand. Also because asylum seekers often come from politically or religiously divided countries the communities here spread rumours. One group could be against another group because it reflects political or religious difference from their home country so false information about these people is fed into the system. 
Sometimes even more democratic allies of the countries where the asylum seekers come from spread false information. We can look just at the Ahmed Zaoui case where the French Government explicitly supported the military dictatorship in Algeria. So it was in the French Government’s interest to spread false information about Ahmed Zaoui who was a democratic opponent of the military dictatorship in Algeria. That is what came through the system and that is what caused a whole lot of problems in the system—this democrat was subject to false information by not only the military dictatorship in Algeria but also its democratic allies in Europe. So I think it is important to support my amendment. 
There are a number of improvements in this part some of them relating to the questions I have just talked about. For instance one of the improvements is to make sure that when classified information is provided it is provided in a balanced way so that it contains not only the negative information about someone but also the positive information. In the Zaoui case right at the end of the process after years and years the SIS admitted that it did have quite a bit of positive information as well as the negative stuff that came from overseas. That information was put on the table and it was one of the reasons the security risk certificate was taken off him. 
I will briefly indicate a couple of other positive developments. The committee did a good job on bringing about these positive developments. One of the things that has been mentioned already is bringing in the Privacy Commissioner and adopting a whole procedure of privacy orders when biometric systems are being brought into the immigration processing system. That was a progressive change. Also there was improvement in clause 32 where the protection of classified information did not limit the application of the Ombudsmen Act the Official Information Act and the Privacy Act. That was a good step forward so the committee did quite a good job in bringing in a number of improvements—although not sufficient in terms of the overall context of the bill—to meet with the Green Party’s support.