Mark Ron: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMark Ron: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 12 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5699. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]4.RON MARK (Deputy Leader—NZ First) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: Does he have confidence in his department?Hon PETER DUNNE (Minister of Internal Affairs): Yes I do.Ron Mark: Did the Department of Internal Affairs advise the Minister to strip the citizenship of 27 fraudulent refugees when their fraudulent claims were discovered?Hon PETER DUNNE: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I seek your indulgence. The answer that I am about to give in the interests of giving all the facts may be slightly longer than usual and I just seek your indulgence for that.Mr SPEAKER: Thank you for the warning. The Minister can proceed.Hon PETER DUNNE: Perhaps it would be useful for the House and the member if I just outlined the history of this situation very briefly. We are talking about people who came to New Zealand in the main between 1994 and 2000. They were granted refugee status at that time. That is a matter for the Immigration Service. Subsequently ironically under a New Zealand First Minister of Internal Affairs most of their citizenships were approved in the late 1990s. They have been citizens since that time and many have had their own children who are now citizens by virtue of being born in New Zealand. I am advised that at no time have any of them come to the attention of authorities as being problematic. An investigation by Immigration New Zealand in the early 2000s revealed that some of them may have obtained their residencies fraudulently; I emphasise the word “may”—it was never definitive. A subsequent approach before my time as Minister was made to the Department of Internal Affairs by Immigration New Zealand requesting that the citizenships be withdrawn. Following legal advice and the precedent of other cases the Department of Internal Affairs concluded that that was not only not appropriate from a natural justice point of view but it was also given the uncertainty of the circumstances a very uncertain set of circumstances to be following. In a number of cases the persons affected would have been rendered Stateless by the decision to remove passports. That is the full background of the case and I appreciate your indulgence in being able to explain it.Ron Mark: In appreciating that long explanation I still will ask the question. Can the Minister reiterate to the House then and make clear to the House why in his decision not to intervene recently did he claim that it was because of an operational matter when he had full powers to intervene under section 17(2) of the Citizenship Act which would have allowed those people due process through the courts?Hon PETER DUNNE: I was actually advised some time around a year ago of this course of events and the actions that had been taken and in the circumstances I deemed those to be appropriate.Ron Mark: Can the Minister explain his department claiming that it acted on humanitarian grounds when a decision to cancel citizenship would have meant that it was able to avail itself of the processes of the courts and to prove that case? Did he not think that that was the appropriate course of action—Mr SPEAKER: Order! The question has been asked.Hon PETER DUNNE: I think I have answered that question in my first supplementary answer. There was no guarantee given the circumstances of these cases that legal actions could have been pursued successfully and in any case these people have been resident in New Zealand for a very long time have been operating effectively as model citizens and have their own children who are citizens—Clayton Mitchell: You can’t shift the responsibility on to anybody else.Hon PETER DUNNE: And if that noise to my right would be quiet for a moment the responsibility that I accepted was that in the circumstances the appropriate actions have been taken for humanitarian and other reasons.Ron Mark: Can the Minister advise the House then about what steps he has taken to identify whether this is just the tip of an iceberg bearing in mind that these fraudulent refugees have been accessing welfare and whether or not that has allowed them to use family reunion processes to bring more refugees in who on that basis should not have been brought into the country?Hon PETER DUNNE: All of those questions actually relate to immigration and are matters for the Minister of Immigration. What I can advise the member of is that this case has highlighted an issue that the Department of Internal Affairs has addressed and that was that at the time there was no requirement on any of these applicants to indicate that the applications that they made were made with the full information of the other facts. That is—Clayton Mitchell: This situation requires your full ministerial attention.Hon PETER DUNNE: Again the empty vessel to my right proves the validity of the old proverb. The reality is that I have acted. We have tightened up the procedure. This situation would not occur now because people are required to disclose their previous circumstances and anything that is fraudulent is then immediately drawn to the attention of the police.