Prasad Rajen: Immigration Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePrasad Rajen: Immigration Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 June 2013. Volume:691;Page:10963. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr RAJEN PRASAD (Labour):I am pleased to take a call in the Committee stage of this bill and really reflect on the title of the bill. Although calling it the Immigration Amendment Bill is putting it into a wider context this bill creates a different category called protected persons and they are not refugees. If you look at schedule 1 which we just passed there are refugees and protected persons and protected persons are really not to be protected. So if I were to give this bill a proper name it would be something like the “Protected Persons Bill” or the “How Not to Protect Protected Persons Bill” because it does create this crazy dilemma that we have now created in this bill a new category called protected persons. To all intents and purposes they are refugees but we will not deliver to them the kinds of services we are delivering to refugees. Refugees come to the border not categorised as refugees but they claim refugee status. They get treated quite differently but in respect of this particular group of protected persons that we have created in this new category it makes no difference to their plight. We take no responsibility really because what this bill does this “Protected Persons Bill” as I am now calling it is ensure we do not protect them because we will put them in situations where they will be in danger of mental health difficulties and the other kinds of difficulties that the Australian example shows us.We are really giving a very clear signal that we do not intend to honour our obligations to the refugee convention. The convention dictates how we are to behave and yet we will take them we will lock them up and we will treat them quite differently for long periods of time. So I think that something like the “Protected Persons Bill” or the “How Not to Protect Refugees Bill” might be appropriate names for this because this bill gives that very clear signal that we will not be protecting them.That leads me to perhaps another name and it could be something like “The National Party’s Disinterest in Refugees Bill”. One has to wonder what it is about the National Party that it does not like refugees. I wonder whether the present refugee population of New Zealand actually understands that and appreciates that because here are Government members taking groups of people like them—like the present refugees but at an earlier stage—and treating them in this vile and objectionable way. So this actually shows the National Party’s antipathy towards refugees.Hon Michael Woodhouse: They are not refugees; they are asylum seekers.Dr RAJEN PRASAD: Well we treat the others who come seeking asylum much better. We do not lock them up. We actually provide services to them Minister so why is it for this group of maybe only 30—the Minister originally intended it to be a group of only 11—that we lock them up in that kind of way? Minister we have presented argument after argument that there is no evidence for the need for this. [Interruption ] There is not. No boat has come this far. Despite Abel Tasman and despite the Māori canoes getting here as speakers on this side have said there is no need for this bill. It has not happened yet and there are other ways of dealing with this situation if it occurs. The Minister defends that by saying that this bill is not National against refugees but in fact that is the effect of it. When people become refugees they become part of our refugee population. The Minister is dancing on the head of a pin when he says these people are not refugees. We have responsibilities under the convention to make sure that we treat them properly. There are guarantees in the system the Minister has designed here that they will not get that fair treatment.Look at the mental health statistics out of the Australian example Minister and look at what those examples tell us. Listen to the Australian examples. But no another name for this bill is the “John Howard Lookalike Bill” because this is indeed what John Howard did. Look at what happened to him in the end. He might have won an election but he told lies to the Australian people. [Interruption ] Mr Howard did—the AustralianPrime Minister did. Remember what he said about children being thrown back into the water? He lied about that. There is something similar about this particular bill in that in a sense it is intellectually dishonest to say that they will come.