Hodgson Pete: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
Hodgson Pete: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6662] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I thank the Minister of Immigration for his generous remarks. There is an outbreak of peace that will endure for much of the evening although not perhaps all of it. The legislation has been well described by the Minister. I endorse his remarks and I do not have to repeat them. That means I might get my introductory remarks made within 5 minutes instead of within 10 minutes—we will see. 
Certainly Labour has been very involved in the legislation and the Minister was kind enough to acknowledge previous Ministers of Immigration. I think it would be a good idea if we reminded ourselves that the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee spent an awful lot of time on the legislation after Ministers themselves had spent years on it. The current Minister has had it on his desk for many many months. The Hon Vui Mark Gosche deserves mention because his contribution as the chairperson of the committee was undoubtedly pivotal. He was a South Auckland MP. He is a man who has a history in the union movement. He understands job substitution. He understands the needs of Pacific Island communities. So he has a very good idea of the balance that the Minister spoke of and I think he has a clear view that the bill in its current form is in pretty good shape. 
Since that time Supplementary Order Paper 32 has been tabled by the Government. It is a biggie. It is bigger than most pieces of legislation to come before this House—there are 106 pages of it. Labour members were granted a copy of it by the Minister and today we have had an opportunity to have a first cut at it with officials including some very capable officials. I thank the Minister and his staff for affording us that opportunity. It has increased our understanding of some of the detail. 
Frankly some of the technical detail is above my head but fortunately it is not above the heads of previous Ministers such as David Cunliffe Lianne Dalziel in particular who is a lawyer and Clayton Cosgrove. We have got ourselves to a point where we are prepared to debate some of the details of the legislation to gain further information to support much of it—in fact a great deal of it—and to make up our minds on some aspects of it that may require us to suggest alternative wording or may indeed end up with our simply opposing this or that clause. 
One issue where we do have an interest and are at variance with the Government is the issue of review. Our considered view is that with legislation of this size—which after all replaces legislation that is 22 years old—and of this complexity and breadth and which has this sort of impact on the individual lives of a number of people who are either visiting or wanting to live in New Zealand having a review clause might not be such a bad idea. In fact not reviewing the legislation after a period of time is almost certainly a bad idea. All major legislation that has come to the House in my time in the last couple of decades almost has been subject to review either by statutory requirement or by dint of necessity—that is to say legislation that is as big as this and as complex as this notwithstanding the scrutiny given to it will be subject to interpretive differences either by the court or by officials who are putting it into place or by the positive or negative actions of immigration lawyers and immigration consultants. 
So it is somewhat dynamic and therefore review is inevitable. If review is inevitable why do we not make it a matter of statute? Just as soon as the Labour Party members have worked out which part we want to amend we will as a matter of course put up a couple of review clauses—and I hope we are supported by other parties—to give the Government a couple of options to see whether it will buy that. 
The case against a review clause is worth noting and it is that strictures are caused. If the legislation states that a review will take place within this time or within that time it might turn out that it is not the ideal time. There are ways round that using wording and I will demonstrate that when I sit down and get my pen out. But I think that officials have an aversion to thinking about a review now; having just spent so many years working on the Immigration Bill in the first place they do not want some troglodyte coming along and saying “Let’s have a review.” I absolutely understand that from a human perspective but the truth of the matter is that a review clause simply puts in statute that which is inevitable. One thing it does do is enable the Government of the day to say to the complainant of the day that a review of the legislation is coming up—that actually it is a statutory requirement—and the complaint or the observation or the concern can be taken into account in that review process. I think the Government should think carefully about that. 
So there we are. It is a good bill with a long gestation and it is very substantially but probably not entirely supported by the Labour Party. We acknowledge the significant number of amendments that have come forward from the Green Party. We may or may not support them. We would like to hear the arguments especially those from Keith Locke. We acknowledge the contribution of the Maori Party and its amendment to Part 1 and we will hear about that soon. For the moment I will close by thanking the Minister for the generous use of his time and his officials’ time reasserting my appreciation of Vui Mark Gosche and saying that the passage of the bill is to be commended.