SpeechHon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. National will also be supporting this bill to the select committee. And just following on from that last speaker's point the Green Party did raise some very valid points around the issue of people seeking asylum in New Zealand and it's probably a very rare event that anyone will get to New Zealand in these circumstances. The major issue is really the Australian border that effectively has become the New Zealand border in this situation. And what happens is that Australia has taken a very tough stance over a number of years and different colours of Government as well have continued that tough stance purely because of their geographical location. And we're not far off when you consider our wider sea location as well. In some ways you probably would want to welcome anybody that comes to the country at the moment because we can't get anybody into New Zealand through the immigration system. And I guess in some ways if they do make it all the way to New Zealand they do deserve that gold star. But the reality is that this is a bill that's there for a valid reason and that valid reason is that we want to have integrity of the immigration system. It's not just about those people that may be able to get on a boat and get here. It's actually about all those people that come here through working holidays come here through other mechanisms that set up home in New Zealand have a family here maybe don't meet the income thresholds maybe don't meet the education thresholds and find that they have to leave. That's part of our immigration system that actually needs to be looked at as well. If we're going to have an open book as the Green Party says for asylum seekers then how do we treat people that actually work hard in the country that have come here got a job got a family got a situation going and then we send them home after a number of years? That's the dilemma that we actually face as a country and that's the reality on a large scale.So if we're looking at welcoming people that's actually the biggest deficiency in the New Zealand system at the moment. The reality is that people just can't get into the country under the current Government settings—the settings that have destroyed a lot of New Zealand's economy. They've put back a lot of New Zealand vital industry and service providers and you know really are a reflection of very poor policy settings from this Government over a number of years. The opportunity is now to change that. The Government addresses it every so often in a very cursory manner without any real change. We've closed our borders to letting people into this country effectively and that shows that New Zealand's closed to the rest of the world. There's a certain point where people won't want to come here anyway you know. At the moment we still provide a standard of living that's worthwhile to come to. But you can see the situation if the current economic malaise continues that people will just not want to come to New Zealand. And you're already seeing that in migration now. The top-tier migrants don't come to New Zealand. They don't. We don't get the top-tier migrants in the world. They go to Australia Canada America or they go to the UK. They don't come here and that's because our economy isn't strong enough. If we want the best people here which we do and if we want as many of the best people here as we do and if we want as many of the people that just want to make a chance for their future life here as we do—asylum seeker or hard-working people that have come on other visas—then we should welcome them. This legislation has a distinct purpose but the real issue in New Zealand about immigration is that we don't welcome people. We're not open to people coming in. We're not open to people coming in with no qualifications no income but that have aspiration and hard work in their genes. We should be more open to those kind of people as well. They're the future of this country and we missed that opportunity and it may not last forever because they've got plenty other choices in the world to go to.