Little Andrew: Immigration Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLittle Andrew: Immigration Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:10964. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW LITTLE (Labour):Thank you Mr Chairman for the opportunity to take a call on this bill the Immigration Amendment Bill which is probably one of the most insidious pieces of legislation this House has had to consider since last Wednesday when we had the first reading of the dreadful Employment Relations Amendment Bill. Now we come back to this. This is a time of electoral desperation for this Government. Anything it can do to divert and distract attention it will do. So it will trot in all these dreadful pieces of legislation when it suits and now tonight it is the turn of the Immigration Amendment Bill. It deals with so-called mass arrivals. The most unusual thing however—I just want to make this observation—is that so many pieces of legislation that have come through this House in the last few weeks or months have created injustice upon injustice. So it is refreshing at least to see that it is the Minister of Immigration as opposed to the Minister of Justice who has introduced this latest piece of legislation which creates the latest dreadful injustice we have to contend with.There is no question that this bill is absolutely and utterly meaningless. It will apply to nothing. There is no risk for it to address. There is no remedy that it can provide to any meaningful problem. Passing this legislation is taking up the time of this Committee its energy and I might add its intellectual capacity although that is really affecting only this side of the Chamber. Mr Woodhouse looks at me quizzically and curiously. He is sitting there thinking: “Intellectual capacity? I’m an accountant. I’ve never heard of that before.” So a more suitable name for this piece of legislation would be as my colleague Rajen Prasad suggested the “Immigration (John Howard Reprise) Bill”. This bill is a throwback to an age of political chicanery duplicity and manipulation that we have not seen for a long long time. We certainly have not seen it under the Julia Gillard Government—that straight-shooting Labor Government across the Tasman. We have not seen anything like this for some years.This bill might otherwise be named the “Immigration (Electoral Desperation) Amendment Bill”. Whenever you are in trouble when your coalition partners are floundering around and evaporating before you what do you do? You create a distraction. The only mass arrival that this Government has been looking forward to—and that has not happened—is the people turning up to the United Future membership recruitment office. There is no one turning up there to sign up any more. That party is history and its one and only member is history as well. This Government is desperate to cobble together something that looks like a stable and credible Government. Well it is not happening and it is disappearing fast.The only other suggestion I have for this piece of legislation—because humour aside it is embarrassing frankly for the Committee to be spending its time on legislation of this nature; it runs counter to the international obligations and commitments that we have made—is an alternative title which is the “Immigration (Degradation of International Reputation) Amendment Bill”. This is a bill that cuts across our reputation as a country that has established itself firmly as one that offers the hand of solicitude support and succour when it is needed to our international friends—those who are left stateless those who are by the circumstances in their countries left to flee for a better life and a better time. This legislation does not reflect that value that approach of this country and its role as an international citizen. It is an embarrassment and as politicians of this country travel the world over the next few months and years they will be collared and asked how on earth a nasty insidious piece of legislation like this could get passed. And we will have to respond that it is because of the nasty insidious Government that put it through.