Cunliffe David: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — In Committee 
Cunliffe David: Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8665] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Immigration) 
: 
 I thank the member who has just resumed her seat Pansy Wong for her intervention. I am happy to confirm that the Government has absolutely no intention of raising the combined levels of application fees licensing fees and adviser levies above the indicated level of a maximum of $2000. Indeed I am advised that the charge will quite likely be set at significantly below that level. 
But it is true that the Government has had to introduce a clarifying amendment on the definitions in the bill and I am happy to say that that is on the basis of recent legal advice. The issue is really one of definition and it turns as follows. A fee must as close as possible relate to the value of a service provided to the person who paid the fee. If there was any margin above that the fee would instead be defined in law as a tax and would therefore be outside the Treasury guidelines and be unlawful. Therefore those proportions of the amount that is needed properly and constructively to cover the industry-good functions of the authority and the administration of the tribunal must be defined in law as a levy and cannot be defined in law as a fee. To be fair that is an issue we probably should have foreseen in the original drafting; we did not. The lawyers have clarified it more recently. But what I took exception to in the member Pansy Wong’s remarks was any accusation that this was a matter of bad faith; it certainly was not. The amendment will not impact on the total charges faced by the industry. 
The member has raised I think two subsidiary arguments. The first is that the charges should be enshrined in legislation through an amendment of her own to somehow provide protection for immigration advisers. The problem with that is that it is extremely bad legislative practice to write a nominal dollar amount into primary legislation. Why is that? It is because it is a long process and very expensive in terms of the public’s time and the resources of Parliament to put an amendment bill through the House. If we put in a nominal dollar amount which of course erodes in real terms every year due to inflation—a little maths lesson for the member—it is unlikely in nominal terms to be realistic in 10 or 20 years’ time. Why would we commit the faux pas of putting a nominal amount in legislation? That would violate best regulatory and legislative practice in which by convention we embody the principles in legislation and policy and then the implementation in subsidiary and delegated legislation regulations or  
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 notices by Order in Council when things like fees should be set. So that is the reason quite normally and in keeping with good legislative practice why we are correcting this anomaly in that way. I do not think I need to spend any more time on that other than to say that I have heard the views of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment and that its members have nothing to worry about. 
The member has bandied about a number—I think 2000—in terms of advisers in the industry. I think the member might be confusing the number of advisers in the industry with the number who are members of the New Zealand Association for Migration and Investment the former being significantly greater than the latter. Therein lies the problem and therein lies the proof that we are doing the right thing. The good advisers along with other advisers benefit from that proportion of their levy that funds the industry-good functions that protect their reputation. The honest and reliable individual adviser who pays his or her levy that supports the industry-good functions and keeps the industry clean and reputable benefits directly by that reputation because frankly it grows the market for the whole industry. If that were not the case the reputation of the industry would erode and the market would shrink and that is when we would have the potential for disruption and a black market to arise. So I am very very comfortable that this is the right thing to do and that it is good regulatory and legislative practice. It is also an act of good faith by the Government in order to correct as quickly as possible an anomaly in the original drafting. I thank the Committee for its time.