Fenton Darien: Immigration Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Immigration Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:10957. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour):I want to make a contribution to Part 2 but I start by responding to the Minister of Immigration. I find it very interesting that he thinks he knows better than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees the Human Rights Commission various refugee organisations and a range of people who came to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and opposed this Immigration Amendment Bill very strenuously and who have been ignored as we expected they would be and sadly as they expected they would be as well. Whether or not it is a breach of the convention no doubt will be tested in time. I look forward to that occasion and to that Minister having to front up in international fora and justify this bill.Part 2 deals with just one issue really which is changing one of the forms from the Immigration Act 2009 to deal with supplying a warrant for mass arrivals. I wanted to go over the issue of mass arrivals and the definition of “mass arrivals” again. If we go right back to the very beginning of this bill the justification for it was as included in the regulatory impact statement that a mass arrival for the purpose of this bill: “means an arrival: by a substantial group of people (by sea or air)”. Then it went on to talk about assumptions around the bill that were made in the regulatory impact statement including that “500 people would be involved in a mass arrival”. This was when it first came to Parliament. It was over a year ago and it was around about the time when there had been a steel-hulled vessel arrive in Canada with 500 people in it. That sent our Ministers into overdrive to find an excuse to introduce this bill to cover up for the cabbage boat issue that was happening at the time. It was coming down the river or going up the river—I cannot remember exactly what it was.Then when the bill actually arrived in front of the Parliament the mass arrival that is referred to in the warrant was 11 people. That does not constitute a substantial group of people arriving by sea or air—11 people. That is ridiculous. It is a joke. Surely it is a joke. A mass arrival is 11 people! New Zealand under this bill could not cope with 11 people arriving by boat or by air and claiming asylum when we actually cope every year with something like 300 asylum seekers who come by plane. So that was crazy and then we moved on to the last part of the joke which was Peter Dunne proposingwhich has just been passed in Part 1 that the mass arrival definition be moved to 30. Now what we are saying in the bill—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! I am listening very carefully and Part 2 is about consequential amendments. I am just waiting for the member to draw this debate in to the subject matter of Part 2.DARIEN FENTON: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. Perhaps you can help me with this because the Minister of Immigration started off the debate with a fairly wide-ranging discussion on Part 2.David Bennett: No he didn’t.DARIEN FENTON: He did. I am concentrating on mass arrivals which is what the warrant is about so I thought that actually I was addressing Part 2 in a way that the Minister had not.The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I was kicking his shin under the table. Look let us not try to justify where we are. We will try to keep this debate focused on Part 2.DARIEN FENTON: OK. Well I am concentrating on the warrant which is in Part 2. If you read the bill everybody you will see that the schedules are about altering the warrant that applies to a mass arrival. That is the major amendment here. That is what I have been talking about—mass arrivals; what is a mass arrival. Under this bill it started at 500 then it went to 11 and now it is 30. It is really confusing.Dr Rajen Prasad: When is a boat a boat?DARIEN FENTON: Well when is a mass arrival a mass arrival? Is it 500? No obviously not—obviously not. In the meantime we have all sorts of other mass arrivals if I may say so and I wanted to mention them—in particular a mass arrival of something like 1000 workers being employed by Weta Digital overseas workers—The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Oh no look—[Interruption ] Order! [Interruption ] Order! Come on. The member is drawing an extremely long bow and the changing of a form under the consequential amendments is—the member has gotten outside the scope of what Part 2 is. So I just remind her and ask her to come back.DARIEN FENTON: OK well I will come back to mass arrivals if I may because that is the major change in the form in schedule 2. The only reason we have got schedule 2 is that we have a bill that deals with mass arrivals and form 5 is the “Warrant of commitment (mass arrival warrant)”. The whole reason that we have this form in schedule 2 is that we have a bill that describes what a mass arrival is. I go back to my earlier point that I am still very very unclear about the original justification.