Chauvel Charles: Immigration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Immigration Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 03 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1957. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 Labour opposes the Immigration Amendment Bill for the reasons that were very ably set out by my colleague Darien Fenton in her speech earlier. I will summarise the key reasons for that opposition. This bill addresses an issue that simply is not before New Zealand as a threat at the moment. It is a waste of the time of Parliament and that is why people have legitimately asked during this debate already why we are dealing with this issue in this Parliament now. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that it is because of the scandals that National is facing and having to manage at the moment. “What shall we do if we are faced with scandal? We know” say the managers of Government business “we will come up with targeting an unpopular group we will come up with some imaginary enemy and we will come up with legislation that makes us look tough in dealing with them.” Well I think we can do better than that. New Zealand is a better country than that. I thought we might have a better Government than one that was simply going to channel John Howard at his worst. But at least when John Howard was dealing with this issue he was dealing with a real issue. 
New Zealand simply does not face the threat that this bill would contend with. If anybody needs proof of that they just need to look at the regulatory impact statement that is advanced supposedly in justification for the legislation. First of all it contains a number of very questionable assumptions. The assumption that officials were working with either because they were instructed to by Ministers or otherwise is that there would be 500 people involved in a mass arrival. Let us just remember the geography here. The Minister himself in his introductory speech conceded that the recent cases involved some 10 people in Darwin who by all learned accounts from people who have navigated from Australia to New Zealand just had no chance of getting here given the size of their craft and the time of the year that they were planning to sail. Everybody agreed that it would be a suicide mission if they tried it which is why they did not and which is why we do not get arrivals of boat people in New Zealand. It is because we have a series of natural defences that just make it very difficult if not impossible for that sort of exercise to be contemplated in a way that the Australians have to face a threat in reality that we simply do not. 
If we want to think about further questionable assumptions there are all sorts of strange figures in the regulatory impact statement. There is an assumed 62 percent decline rate for those who would come and the assumption that the appeal and review process that would be invoked by all unsuccessful asylum seekers would be completed in around 18 months but by then they would have been granted refugee or protected person status or become eligible for deportation. But what is even more disturbing about this regulatory impact statement is the appearance throughout of the sinister words in square brackets and bold “information withheld”. Anywhere that the reader tries to get an idea of what the actual threat is: “information withheld”. Anywhere that the reader tries to gain some understanding of the real justification for this bill “information withheld” appears in square brackets and bold. 
The other problem with this legislation is that the leader of the National Party himself recently admitted that it is not necessary. In July 2011 he said that New Zealand was “ready to deal with a boatload of asylum seekers should one make it to our waters”. That was in the  
New Zealand Herald  
on 12 July 2011. Apart from the scandals that beset National at the moment we have to ask what has changed. He said: “We’ve upgraded our operating manual … in the way that we’d deal with a mass migration issue if it came to New Zealand and we’re confident that we understand our legal position. I don’t want to go into detail but all I will say is we’ve got the capability and we’ve modelled that we understand what we need to do.” He also said: “We haven’t proposed major changes at this point because we don’t think that’s necessary although we’d be in a position to do that if required.”  
What also demonstrates the political opportunism at play here is the minutes of the Cabinet committee on domestic and external security. On 16 August 2010 the committee first looked at this issue and then it got a report back from officials on 30 September 2010. Presumably the Prime Minister in July 2011 was reporting back the fruits of that exercise—that is no major change required and everything is OK as it is—and yet 18 months after that committee meeting we see this legislation. This is the worst sort of legislation before the House a waste of the Parliament’s time and opportunism trying to stoke up fears amongst the public that simply do not exist. 
Why are we not looking at a Government doing something that would really make a difference to the people-smuggling problem? Why not do what the Prime Minister said should be done when he was in Indonesia recently? Why is it that we have a leader who is a lion overseas and a lamb at home on these issues? He said we should work with our friends in the region to target the people-smugglers themselves—the people who make enormous amounts of money offering and peddling false hope to people in desperate situations by cramming them into boats and then shipping them to Australia which is where most of them end up. Those are the people who need to be targeted and the way to target them is to negotiate with the Indonesians and with the Malaysians and with other Governments in South-east Asia which is the transit route for most of the people who end up in Australia and who are targeted by a similar regime there to the one that this legislation would set up. That would not require a showy piece of legislation at an opportune time for the Government. It would not require Nathan Guy to go on  
Checkpoint 
 and sound tough on a problem that does not exist. It would not allow for the sort of scaremongering against this group of people that we are seeing now but it might actually make a real difference to the reality of the threat. 
Deal with the people-smugglers. Look to those who profit—cui bono—and deal with them. Deal with them properly. Ensure that there are reciprocal agreements in place as between New Zealand and Indonesia and Malaysia so that there is an undertaking by the police forces of those countries and by the immigration agencies that those people-smugglers those who really stand to gain from the traffic in human misery are targeted are subject to proper punitive regimes and are hit in the pocket when they try to make massive profits from that traffic in human misery. But instead what we see is a bill before the House that is offensive in many ways.  
David Bennett 
: Rubbish! 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: First of all—oh “Rubbish!” said David Bennett. Well it has Draconian penalties including provision simply on the warrant of one District Court judge for mass detention of human beings. It suspends the right—the ancient right that everybody has—to go to the High Court and ask the question: “Did the lower court get this issue right?”. You have to get— 
Moana Mackey 
: David Bennett said it’s not an ancient right. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Oh it is not an ancient right according to that jurist on the other side who knows these things back to front. Well I am sorry but it is. It is a fundamental right for anybody. It is one of the things that makes our democracy great. The ability to go to the court at any time and ask whether or not the Government or any agency of the Government has got it right is suspended and is available only by leave under this legislation. 
I am ashamed of this bill. The Minister of Immigration spoke of how good New Zealand’s reputation is concerning bona fide refugees and migrants. Once I would have agreed with him until I recently had some personal contact with the system and saw how precarious its funding arrangements are in order to deal with people who come properly and lawfully to New Zealand and when I saw the refugee study grant cut by the National Government making it much harder for bona fide refugees in New Zealand to complete a tertiary qualification and properly integrate into this country. 
One of the finest moments that I can recall—one of the proudest moments I can recall—about being a New Zealander was when we stood up to xenophobia and we took those  
Tampa 
 boys out of the Australian system and we saw those people become fine upstanding members of the New Zealand community. That is New Zealand at its best not taking this shabby leaf out of the Crosby/Textor manual. We can do better and the Government should be ashamed.