Gosche Mark: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — Second Reading 
Gosche Mark: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:638;Page:8373] 
Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 I stand to speak in this second reading debate on the Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill. This is one of the bills that it gives me a great deal of pleasure to have been part of putting together. Although not a lot of members of the public will listen to this debate with great interest—many would ask what Parliament is on about in terms of licensing immigration advisers—I am pretty sure a significant number of electorate agents of MPs up and down the country will be sitting listening tonight and applauding this Parliament for the work it has done in this area. 
I say that in great seriousness. The workload for many many MPs with constituencies is heavily weighted towards immigration. Certainly up and down the country our electorate agents do sterling work in dealing with the mess that is created in the area of immigration. Much of that mess will be taken care of we hope with the passing of this bill. 
The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee heard a lot of evidence. I congratulate all those members who sat on the committee during the hearing of that evidence and the consideration of the bill. The select committee members did that with a great deal of self-interest in terms of trying to clean up the mess that MPs’ offices too often have to clean up. I could probably sit here and read out a list of names of the consultants and lawyers in my patch who cause us great strife but I have only 10 minutes. I also know that the Standing Orders really do discourage us from naming members of the public in the House but I am tempted. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Even though that lawyer over on that side of the House David Bennett fought valiantly for his union interests in terms of the legal profession we did very carefully consider whether lawyers should be brought into the coverage of this bill. I think it was a very close decision on that one for those of us who are not lawyers. We looked across the Tasman where for instance lawyers are in fact caught by the regulatory process and we were tempted—sorely tempted. I cannot say it was the power of argument from David Bennett that swayed us; it was more the advice we had from officials in terms of looking at the recent change of law in respect of lawyers. 
The members of the select committee have sent out a clear warning to members of the legal profession that we trust them to take care of this issue in their own way under their legislation but that a future Parliament will not look kindly upon them if they fail to do that job properly. I say that with all seriousness. Many of the lawyers who came before the select committee who were practising as immigration consultants rather than as lawyers encouraged us to have lawyers covered by this bill. But in the end we accepted the advice of the officials and lawyers are exempted by the bill. 
One of the other good parts about the select committee process was the series of submissions from the not-for-profit sector. In particular I congratulate the people from the Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux who made an excellent submission and the people from the community law centres who put their case very well and asked for the exemption to be specifically placed in the law rather than taken care of later by an Order in Council. I absolutely agree with that position. I think the select committee made a wise choice there. We heard about the significant amount of work that citizens advice bureau volunteers do in the area of immigration advice. We did not want to interfere with that. Volunteers would have been in the situation of having to exit from that area altogether if they were not exempted. We can imagine the flood of work going into MP’s offices that would have occurred if that had happened. I offer my congratulations to the Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux on its very good submission and to the select committee members on taking note of it as we have in our report. 
The select committee looked at the whole question of offshore education advisers. Again many questions were raised. I remember Pansy Wong raising this issue a great deal in her work on the committee. Once again we wanted to be convinced that there should be an exemption if you like for those people to leave them out of the coverage of the bill. We will have to wait and see and it will be a matter for future Parliaments to consider because—as Pansy Wong said—quite a considerable amount of immigration advice goes on behind the scenes with those people. But we took account of the fact that we operate in an international environment and that to regulate in this area would have put us outside the mainstream as far as the rest of the world was concerned. We certainly do not want to put our very good international education industry at risk. 
I will comment on the other thing raised by Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith around the coverage of people who were formerly Ministers or people who had worked in the immigration area for the Department of Labour. We heard submissions from in particular representatives of the Federation of Ethnic Councils I think it was—or certainly representatives of the ethnic community—about their concerns about people who have worked for the Immigration Service and who almost immediately after they have left the job have set up as immigration advisers and have advertised the fact that they are former Immigration Service officials. Those people are seeking an advantage if you like by portraying to their prospective customers that they have the inside running having freshly come out of the Immigration Service. We also know from personal experience as MPs that some of the people who have come straight out of the Immigration Service have actually performed very badly as immigration advisers. 
 The issue is not that we do not want former Immigration Service officials to use their knowledge down the track but we want to take away the perceived advantage that they have with their customer base and the sort of impression they give that they can get immigration cases through where others cannot because of their contacts within the Immigration Service. So it was an important issue to consider and it is no doubt one that will be debated in the Committee stage. But I think on balance we got it right even though there was some disagreement in the select committee and in the report. 
Equally to go back to the concept of exemptions—and the not-for-profit sector obviously succeeded in its desire to have that exemption—we also had to look at the question of MPs their staff and public servants who were exempted entirely by the original bill and to ask whether that should be the case. We have changed it so that the exemption will apply to MPs and their staff—and so it should—but we have narrowed the definition of public servants who can give advice without being covered by this law. I think that is also a sensible and wise decision. 
As Dr Smith said one of the other important changes made by the committee was to make sure that the appearance of independence by means of an immigration advisers complaints and disciplinary tribunal was not only an appearance but also a reality. I believe that the move to have that administratively supported by the Ministry of Justice answered the criticism—the valid criticism—of most submitters. In fact I think all submitters asked us to look at that. 
Bringing the implementation time frame down from 5 years to 3 years is absolutely necessary. We have had for far too many years dodgy practices poor operators bad rip-offs and all sorts of shenanigans going on in the area of immigration advice. Virtually anybody could just hang up a sign and say he or she was an immigration adviser charge enormous amounts of money and quite often take things like passports and documents off their customers and never return them. The stories are legendary and very sad. Many many people have ended up in this country illegally because of the poor advice and poor service of the people whom we seek to regulate here. 
I thank the select committee for its good work and I also commend the bill to the House and look forward to its passing.