Hodgson Pete: Immigration Bill — Second Reading 
Hodgson Pete: Immigration Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1594] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 The outbreak of peace across the House continues tonight with the Government speaking in favour of legislation that happened to be in the name of the Hon Clayton Cosgrove because that member was the Minister of Immigration prior to the election when the Immigration Bill was introduced and put to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. 
It is probably timely to remind ourselves that the select committee did a lot of work on the legislation. The legislation is significantly amended having come out of the select committee. It is really important to point out that this legislation has passed through a positive Human Rights Act vet. Unlike the “three strikes” legislation this legislation is regarded as being consistent with the human rights legislation in this country which is something we should be pretty pleased with. 
The select committee made a number of changes one of which did not make it into the legislation as reprinted. I heard the Associate Minister of Immigration Kate Wilkinson when she gave her address say there were going to be some minor technical amendments with one of them to do with the deportation order being able to be cancelled where appropriate. That recommendation was made by the select committee but was not put into this draft of the bill so I am glad the Associate Minister picked that up. 
Immigration is always going to be a balance. The immigration laws of this land and other lands are always a balance. Immigration is a positive feature in New Zealand society. It is how we have come from our bicultural beginnings to our multicultural future it is how we engender new blood and new global linkages it is how we have an export education industry and it is why this country now has such a wide range of ethnicities and cultures which is a remarkable feature of our country. 
It is also legislation that is designed to keep out bad people. Bad people might be people who are here pushing drugs or they might be people running a bunch of rackets and coming across our borders to do so. Anyone who has been a Minister of Immigration—I am pleased to say I am not a person who has held that portfolio—is full of war stories of the underside I suppose of human nature. 
It is always going to be a balance. It is also going to be a balance in terms of numbers. The legislation allows for the Government of the day to set quotas in various forms for immigration purposes and those numbers need to be kept under review. Interestingly in very rapidly changing economic times such as this they need to be kept under review on a very regular basis. It is not yet clear to me that this Government is doing that. However National members without a hint of irony advised that this legislation which they can thank the outgoing Labour Government for allowed them to go into the hustings to say they are going to have a world-class immigration system. Let me say to the Associate Minister Kate Wilkinson who made that remark that law does not a world-class immigration system make. Law is a very good start for a world-class immigration system but there needs to be a budget there needs to be attention given to quality of service and there need to be standards of interaction between those who seek to come to New Zealand and those who are dealing with their applications. Onshore and offshore we should be treating people well and politely and that does not always occur. 
I can remember about 10 years ago when some refugees fetched up in my life. They are both now New Zealand citizens but they waited for 21 months for their first interview. During that 21-month period they were not entitled to anything that was available in New Zealand. They were not entitled to anything. They could not work and they could not draw any support from the State. They were allowed to go to English language lessons and that was it. They waited 21 months for their first interview. 
That was a second-class immigration system and it begs the question of whether there is enough funding for immigration even now. The issue back then was one of funding under a previous National Government and one wonders for example whether the removal orders that are drawn up week after week in this land to have people returned whence they came will be able to be actioned or whether the budget for removals has been cut. If the budget for removals has been cut—and some say it has—then the removals will not be able to take place. 
The Associate Minister might like to get one of her colleagues taking call after me to respond to the possibility that there might be some constraint in the removals budget. How would it look if there was a decision to remove someone who was regarded as not a proper person to be in New Zealand and there was no budget to send that person back home? A world-class immigration system requires world-class legislation and it requires more than that. I leave those thoughts with the Associate Minister. 
In general we have legislation that is now simpler. We have a visa system that is simpler. Those of us who have always struggled to work out the difference between a visa and a permit and exemptions to both do not need to worry about it quite as much as we used to. We have a more transparent deportation system. Those of us who have struggled to work out the difference between deportation and removal or revocation of a visa or whatever it might be and have tried to work out the technical differences between them do not need to do that any more because we have one word for that and it means “Be on your way.” 
We have if you will quite a lot of simplification of this system but it is also a system that has some inbuilt security including some stuff that I think some members of this Parliament might find awkward. I am referring to the use of various “biomarkers”. We use photographs as a “biomarker” we use fingerprints as a “biomarker” and we can photograph someone’s iris and use that as a “biomarker”. All three “biomarkers” can be used under this new legislation before us that is being considered today although the only “biomarker” that will be used for New Zealand citizens getting across their own border will be as it always has been just a photograph. 
We have a more robust system in terms of protection and the Associate Minister has gone through the changes that have been made in respect of section 4A of the Immigration Act and the new approach that has been put in place there. 
It is worth noting that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee changed this bill materially. It did not change it in any way fundamentally but it made a lot of small to medium sized changes and the select committee needs to be given some credit for the time and effort it put into it. I cannot remember who chaired the select committee. I wonder whether it was the Hon Mark Gosche—I think it was—so let us remember his work. He is no longer with us but Mark Gosche was a pretty good chair of a select committee and I think he ran a pretty good ship. I offer my congratulations to him and to other members of this Parliament past and present who sat on the committee and have given us at this second reading stage legislation that the Associate Minister thinks is almost right. Minor technical amendments excepted we think we have got it about right so we should not debate it too much further.