Cunliffe David: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
Cunliffe David: Immigration Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:657;Page:6775] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 Part 8 is an important part of the Immigration Bill. It applies to the powers of immigration officers required to undertake enforcement duties and also deals with certain aspects of the provision collection and sharing of biometric information. I wish to briefly discuss both aspects. 
Firstly I acknowledge the work of the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee and the officials who serviced it. They did a very thorough job and it is quite instructive to read the committee’s report in particular pages 25 to 27 where the committee notes the need for adequate protections in avoiding the overextended powers of immigration officers. A series of recommendations follow which extend those powers somewhat further. I compliment the officials who served the committee; that must have been some discussion! They are trying hard to keep a straight face. 
These are important provisions. I think we are all aware of the fact that immigration officers have a difficult job to do. They need to be empowered to do it but they also need to have appropriate safeguards in place to ensure that those powers are not abused. The Minister may wish to take a call because one of the issues that confront every Minister of Immigration is how to appropriately draw the line between ministerial accountability and the operational independence of the enforcement arm of the department. I still have a lingering suspicion that on occasions where somebody did not particularly want to write a report to the Minister about a particular issue the issue of operational independence was raised as something of a smokescreen for “I was playing golf” or something. That might be a bit harsh but I can think of one or two examples where the “head” of the department was pointed in the appropriate direction and the “tail” did not wag at the right time. 
I say to the Minister that I think he should take a call to reassure the Committee that nothing like that has ever happened on his watch and that he is entirely satisfied with the operation of the department’s enforcement arm. Sometimes the enforcement arm operates rather too much at arm’s length from the department head office shall we say. That is why it is very important that the extension of powers given in this bill to immigration officers on the front line is not extended past the point of good sense. 
The Minister has introduced by way of a Supplementary Order Paper certain further amendments to Part 8 around information matching and sharing. The Labour Opposition will support those amendments on the grounds of the assurances we have received from the Minister’s officials that these amendments have maintained a clean New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet and have the support of the Privacy Commissioner. We wish to record that we do so only on the basis of those assurances. And further in respect of the sharing of biometric information there is the explicit assurance of officials that some of the safeguards negotiated in the earlier version of the bill around on-passing that information to third parties have remained and will be effective in this bill. 
If a non-citizen goes through an airport check and has biometric information taken such as face patterns fingerprints and iris scans perhaps it is recorded on a database and matched against information on a partner country’s database for example Australia the United States or the United Kingdom. That information is shared and may be retained for some period but only for the purposes for which it was collected. The understanding that has been reinforced by officials and that is part of the protection which is a condition of our support is that sufficient protections exist to avoid the on-passing of that stored information to third countries or to third parties in those countries beyond the purpose of legitimate immigration or perhaps police activity. It is very important that this measure is not an open-ended opportunity for officials the world over to swap individuals’ private information beyond the reasons for which it was legitimately collected. 
We are also interested in the amendment around information matching for health provisions. We think this is more sensible because we have probably all heard stories about members of the community who may have fronted at a hospital—some of whom by accident or design may not have been entirely clear about their immigration status. Further there may have been language problems or it may have been such an emergency that it was not possible to ascertain whether they are legally entitled to receive free hospital treatment in this country. The information-sharing provisions here will help to iron out any inconsistencies and any lack of clarity—in the end to the benefit of potential migrants and the hospital system. I say that for two reasons: firstly there is a significant loss of funds to the health system when ineligible people claim health benefits in New Zealand. That is not appropriate and we do defend it. Secondly where individuals who are either unclear or possibly untruthful about their immigration status do get treatment and incur debt it can be a terrible burden for them and their family to have to work their way out of it. It is better to know at the start and information matching can assist both the hospital and the claimant to clarify the situation if clarification is required. 
We want to underline too that the provisions around biometric information are different between citizens and non-citizens. We emphasise that it is a condition of our support that the biometrical information of citizens cannot be stored or used for purposes other than for the departure they are undertaking and that sufficient privacy protections apply. We are reassured by the officials that the Privacy Commissioner is happy with these provisions and that is and remains a condition of our support. 
So to sum up these amendments provide what we think are necessary powers. The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has warned against them being taken beyond the purpose for which they are intended and has introduced some safeguards in that process. Some extensions have been included which we are comfortable with and the Minister has included further extensions through his Supplementary Order Paper that take us to the limit of what we can support. But we do so firstly on the basis of the assurances that we have received from his officials that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act has been respected and it has been approved under the Act and secondly that the Privacy Commissioner is happy. 
Finally I 
repeat my exhortation to the Minister to confirm to the Committee that he has never had cause for concern that any of the enforcement arms of the department may ever have been operating at should we say it somewhat further than at arm’s length than he might like. I look forward to his assurance in that regard.