Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Minister of Immigration) Link to this

I move, That the Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill be now read a second time. In speaking to the second reading of this bill, I first extend my thanks to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee. The committee has worked hard and given full consideration to the public submissions received.

Most immigration advisers provide quality services that facilitate the entry of skilled migrants to New Zealand. Some, however, do not. Like many MPs in this House I have heard many stories of migrants being ripped off, misled, or taken for a ride by liars, crooks, and thieves calling themselves immigration advisers. These dishonest, so-called advisers threaten and undermine—

Dr the Hon LOCKWOOD SMITH (National—Rodney) Link to this

It is not often I agree with the Hon David Cunliffe, the Minister of Immigration, but we do need migrants in this country. Of course, we need them to replace the thousands of New Zealanders escaping from this Labour Government in New Zealand at the moment. In the last 12 months, 22,000 people have headed off to Australia to get away from the controlling tentacles of this Labour Government.

In speaking to the second reading of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill, I will not repeat the detail the Minister has given on what the bill does. In many ways for the National Opposition, it was a matter of some judgment that we exercise in supporting this bill and its second reading. The dilemma is that the bill sets up yet more Government bureaucracy. This country is just being weighed down by a massive growth in Government bureaucracy, but, on balance, we accept it is important that immigration consultants and advisers are registered.

I congratulate the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee on its examination of the legislation, because originally, as the Government had introduced the bill, this bureaucracy was all to be part of the Department of Labour. I think that would have been very unfortunate, because that department has a few problems on its hands. It is not one of our most successful departments, in my view. It made a lot of sense for the select committee to recommend that the complaints and disciplinary tribunal now be established within the Ministry of Justice, and the bill has been altered accordingly. Having that kind of independence from the Department of Labour is a smart move, and I congratulate the select committee on doing that.

Also National listened to what the people making submissions had to say about the bill. It is worth noting that, I think, all submitters, including immigration consultant groups, supported the thrust of the legislation—that immigration consultants and advisers should be licensed. So National’s having listened to that helped it to support this legislation.

One issue that the Minister mentioned still needs further thought—that is, the restraint of trade. To suggest that certain people should not be able to be immigration consultants or advisers for a period of time, such as former Ministers or employees of Immigration New Zealand, is an unnecessary constraint of trade. I was once an Associate Minister of Immigration. I have no desire to be an immigration consultant. I guess that after having handled as a constituency MP so many immigration cases, I have no desire to be an immigration consultant. But to have legislation imposing that kind of restraint of trade is not necessary, and I think that my good colleague Pansy Wong may move an amendment during the Committee stage so that members have the chance to reconsider that issue.

So with some of those concerns about the risk of adding yet more to the massively burgeoning bureaucracy under this Labour Government, I think that there will be pluses from this legislation—as long as the establishment of this process to register and license immigration consultants is kept efficient. National will support this legislation, but we will be making sure that as it is implemented, the bureaucracy and bureaucratic requirement is kept to a minimum.

Hon MARK GOSCHE (Labour—Maungakiekie) Link to this

I stand to speak in this second reading debate on the Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill. This is one of the bills that it gives me a great deal of pleasure to have been part of putting together. Although not a lot of members of the public will listen to this debate with great interest—many would ask what Parliament is on about in terms of licensing immigration advisers—I am pretty sure a significant number of electorate agents of MPs up and down the country will be sitting listening tonight, and applauding this Parliament for the work it has done in this area.

I say that in great seriousness. The workload for many, many MPs with constituencies is heavily weighted towards immigration. Certainly, up and down the country, our electorate agents do sterling work in dealing with the mess that is created in the area of immigration. Much of that mess will be taken care of, we hope, with the passing of this bill.

The Transport and Industrial Relations Committee heard a lot of evidence. I congratulate all those members who sat on the committee during the hearing of that evidence and the consideration of the bill. The select committee members did that with a great deal of self-interest, in terms of trying to clean up the mess that MPs’ offices too often have to clean up. I could probably sit here and read out a list of names of the consultants and lawyers in my patch who cause us great strife, but I have only 10 minutes. I also know that the Standing Orders really do discourage us from naming members of the public in the House, but I am tempted. [Interruption]

Even though that lawyer over on that side of the House, David Bennett, fought valiantly for his union interests in terms of the legal profession, we did very carefully consider whether lawyers should be brought into the coverage of this bill. I think it was a very close decision on that one for those of us who are not lawyers. We looked across the Tasman, where for instance lawyers are in fact caught by the regulatory process, and we were tempted—sorely tempted. I cannot say it was the power of argument from David Bennett that swayed us; it was more the advice we had from officials in terms of looking at the recent change of law in respect of lawyers.

The members of the select committee have sent out a clear warning to members of the legal profession that we trust them to take care of this issue in their own way under their legislation, but that a future Parliament will not look kindly upon them if they fail to do that job properly. I say that with all seriousness. Many of the lawyers who came before the select committee who were practising as immigration consultants rather than as lawyers encouraged us to have lawyers covered by this bill. But in the end we accepted the advice of the officials, and lawyers are exempted by the bill.

One of the other good parts about the select committee process was the series of submissions from the not-for-profit sector. In particular, I congratulate the people from the Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, who made an excellent submission, and the people from the community law centres, who put their case very well and asked for the exemption to be specifically placed in the law rather than taken care of later by an Order in Council. I absolutely agree with that position. I think the select committee made a wise choice there. We heard about the significant amount of work that citizens advice bureau volunteers do in the area of immigration advice. We did not want to interfere with that. Volunteers would have been in the situation of having to exit from that area altogether if they were not exempted. We can imagine the flood of work going into MP’s offices that would have occurred if that had happened. I offer my congratulations to the Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux on its very good submission, and to the select committee members on taking note of it, as we have in our report.

The select committee looked at the whole question of offshore education advisers. Again, many questions were raised. I remember Pansy Wong raising this issue a great deal in her work on the committee. Once again, we wanted to be convinced that there should be an exemption, if you like, for those people, to leave them out of the coverage of the bill. We will have to wait and see, and it will be a matter for future Parliaments to consider, because—as Pansy Wong said—quite a considerable amount of immigration advice goes on behind the scenes with those people. But we took account of the fact that we operate in an international environment, and that to regulate in this area would have put us outside the mainstream as far as the rest of the world was concerned. We certainly do not want to put our very good international education industry at risk.

I will comment on the other thing raised by Dr the Hon Lockwood Smith around the coverage of people who were formerly Ministers or people who had worked in the immigration area for the Department of Labour. We heard submissions from, in particular, representatives of the Federation of Ethnic Councils, I think it was—or certainly representatives of the ethnic community—about their concerns about people who have worked for the Immigration Service and who, almost immediately after they have left the job, have set up as immigration advisers and have advertised the fact that they are former Immigration Service officials. Those people are seeking an advantage, if you like, by portraying to their prospective customers that they have the inside running, having freshly come out of the Immigration Service. We also know from personal experience as MPs that some of the people who have come straight out of the Immigration Service have actually performed very badly as immigration advisers.

The issue is not that we do not want former Immigration Service officials to use their knowledge down the track, but we want to take away the perceived advantage that they have with their customer base, and the sort of impression they give that they can get immigration cases through, where others cannot, because of their contacts within the Immigration Service. So it was an important issue to consider, and it is no doubt one that will be debated in the Committee stage. But I think, on balance, we got it right, even though there was some disagreement in the select committee and in the report.

Equally, to go back to the concept of exemptions—and the not-for-profit sector obviously succeeded in its desire to have that exemption—we also had to look at the question of MPs, their staff, and public servants, who were exempted entirely by the original bill, and to ask whether that should be the case. We have changed it so that the exemption will apply to MPs and their staff—and so it should—but we have narrowed the definition of public servants who can give advice without being covered by this law. I think that is also a sensible and wise decision.

As Dr Smith said, one of the other important changes made by the committee was to make sure that the appearance of independence by means of an immigration advisers complaints and disciplinary tribunal was not only an appearance but also a reality. I believe that the move to have that administratively supported by the Ministry of Justice answered the criticism—the valid criticism—of most submitters. In fact, I think all submitters asked us to look at that.

Bringing the implementation time frame down from 5 years to 3 years is absolutely necessary. We have had for far too many years dodgy practices, poor operators, bad rip-offs, and all sorts of shenanigans going on in the area of immigration advice. Virtually anybody could just hang up a sign and say he or she was an immigration adviser, charge enormous amounts of money, and quite often take things like passports and documents off their customers and never return them. The stories are legendary and very sad. Many, many people have ended up in this country illegally because of the poor advice and poor service of the people whom we seek to regulate here.

I thank the select committee for its good work, and I also commend the bill to the House and look forward to its passing.

KATE WILKINSON (National) Link to this

I would like to speak very, very briefly in support of the second reading of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill.

PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) Link to this

Much has been said on this Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill, and I share the view of my National colleague so I do not intend to repeat the detail, but this bill has been a long time in coming. It is an important bill because, although some immigration advisers are obviously very good and on top of their game, some others tend to give the impression that they are somewhat lacking in the knowledge and detail of how they apply their competency—if they have any, at all.

I have to say to the Hon Mark Gosche that it is not only constituency MPs who sort out the mess that is quite often left by poorly informed, poorly educated, or lazy immigration consultants. Just recently I had the case—I say recently; it was late last year—of a very fine guy and a family. He showed me the accounts he had got from a particular immigration adviser, and the advice came down to: “I do not know, and I cannot help, at all. Try someone else.” He went to someone else and was told that the first adviser had put him totally crook, that he should now do something different, and that the second adviser would do it for him. That got him nowhere and ultimately, in his desperation, he came to see me. It took about 10 minutes to fix it, yet this guy had paid the best part of $20,000 in getting that advice.

An immigration adviser has an important role. It is an important role for immigrants, but it is also an important role for this country as a whole. We do not want immigrants coming here who are being mucked around, and who are being made illegal immigrants in some cases, when they have come here in good faith to play a working part in, and to make a valued contribution to, the country.

National MPs have touched on the issue of our having too much bureaucracy. I do not believe that this bill has produced too much bureaucracy. In fact, it is better to have a little more bureaucracy than to have too many illegal immigrants or frustrated immigrants, or to have people’s lives mucked up because of incompetent people. This bill imposes a standard and it imposes a disciplinary regime.

It is true that we looked at the situation of lawyers, and some of us were very, very cautious in giving lawyers the exemption that this bill does in fact award them. But the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee made it quite clear that we want to see lawyers toeing the line, acting properly and professionally, and taking care of their disciplinary measures under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act. If they fail on that account, then we believe that Parliament must relook at the lawyers’ exemption.

This bill is essential. This country must handle its immigration problems and its people sensitively and fairly. Some of the immigration advisers we have handling these issues at the moment are a long way short of handling them competently and fairly. New Zealand First supports this bill.

TE URUROA FLAVELL (Māori Party—Waiariki) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tātou i tēnei pō. Ā, i ngā rima tau kua hipa, i te putanga o te Kōmihana Whakatau Tikanga Tangata, arā, a Greg Fortuin; nāna te kōrero, he wero tonu, a hunga manene nei mō te noho i Aotearoa nei. I kōrero ia mō tōna mana tuku iho mai i Āwherika i te Tonga, ā, e pēnei ana tāna: “My heritage is a gift I had no say in. I’ll always be proud of who I am, but I’ll embrace the identity of my new homeland. It’s just damn difficult to know what the identity of my new homeland is.”

Koia nei kei te pūtake o tēnei take. I te wā i kōrero Te Tōrangapū Māori i te pānuitanga tuatahi, i kōrero tonu mātou mō te hunga manuhiri e hara mai ana ki Aotearoa nei, mai i mārakiraki, i mātongatonga, i ngā tōpito katoa o te ao. Ko te kōrero i kōrerohia, arā, ko tērā o roto i ngā whāinga matua o Te Tōrangapū Māori e kī ana, mēnā ka whakatuwherahia te kuaha ki taua hunga, me kaha tiaki, me kaha tautoko tātou i a rātou. Ka mutu, i a tātou e manaaki ana i a rātou, kaua tātou e whakatūtū i ngā taiapa ki te hunga manuhiri kia kitea pū nei e taua hunga i te āhuatanga o tō rātou kāinga hōu. Ko tā mātou kē e pēnei ana. Ko te tiaki, ko te manaaki i te tangata he mea tuitui, kia noho tahi i runga i ngā kaupapa me ngā tikanga kei roto tonu i te taonga nei o te motu, Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Kei te pūtake o tēnei pire, ko ngā kōrero rangatira nei, hei awhi i ēnei manuhiri kua tau mai ki Aotearoa nei. Kāti, me pēhea e taea ai te whakakaha nei i te i ingoa o Aotearoa hei wāhi noho, ki te kore tātou o Aotearoa nei i te mōhio ko wai hoki tātou?

Kua oti kē i a James Chang tēnei take te titiro. I hara mai ia ki Aotearoa nei i a ia e tamariki ana. Kua āta tirohia e ia ko te noho o te hunga Āhia i tēnei whenua. Hei tāna mahi rangahau, ko te wāhanga tuatahi hei tirohanga mā te hunga Āhia, ko tērā e pā ana ki te noho i Aotearoa nei, me te noho anō nei nō tēnei whenua tūturu koe.

Me noho ko Te Tiriti o Waitangi ki te pūtake o tō tātou pāho ki te ao nei, āe, he whenua motuhake te whenua nei. Āe rā hoki! Ko taua Tiriti tonu i tangohia mai e te Minita Mātauranga i te marautanga o ngā kura; ko taua Tiriti tonu nā te waimarie i whakahokia e te tumuaki o te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga; ko taua Tiriti tonu i te 26 o Hōngongoi i te tau kua hipa, i puta te whakatau o ngā Mema 50 o Reipa, me kī, ko te katoa o ngā Māori o taua rōpū tonu, kia ūkui katoa i ngā ture o te motu.

Kei reira tonu kei Hansard te kōrero, i te marama o Hōngongoi i te tau kua hipa, arā, 111 i whakaae ki te ūkui i ngā whāinga matua o te Tiriti o Waitangi, ko Reipa 50, Nahinara 48, Aotearoa Tuatahi e 7, United Future e 3, Act e 2, Progressive 1, ā, 10 noa iho i whakahē. Ko ngā Kākāriki e 6, me te 4 o Te Tōrangapū Māori.

Koia nei Te Tiriti i kōrerohia e Tākuta Ranginui Walker me tana kī, koia nei te whāinga matua tüturu ake mō ngā take kaiheke. Hei tā Ranginui Walker, mā te Tiriti, ka taea e ngā manene o tāwāhi te uru mai ki Aotearoa, ahakoa nō hea rātou. Ko te hōhonutanga o te Tiriti he mea hei momo kirimana o te noho tahi o ngā tikanga e rua, arā, ko te Karauna me te Māori. Kei tōna pūtake, ko te tūmanako tonu ko tērā e kī ana, ko te tikanga a te Tiriti nei, ka kōrero ngātahi te Māori me te Karauna mō ngā take katoa e pā ana ki te noho o iwi kē, ki Aotearoa nei.

Kei te noho tino mārama te tangata whenua ki ngā whakatau o te hunga nā rātou te Tiriti i tāmoko i te tau 1840. I mārama tonu ngā hoa haere e rua i ngā pānga nui ki te whenua, ki te ao Māori. I te mōhio tonu te hunga hanga i te Tiriti i tōna tīmatanga, ka whakatauria e taua Tiriti ko ngā kawa ā-noho mō ngā uri o te Whare o Wikitōria hei whakanui i ngā tikanga, ngā ture ngā taonga tuku iho o te tangata whenua, hei karo i ngā mahi taurekareka ka whai mai i muri.

Ko tā tēnei pire, he whakariterite i ngā tikanga mō te hunga e tuku kōrero nei mō ngā take kaiheke. Hāngai tonu ana te pire nei ki ngā kaitohutohu i Aotearoa nei, i tāwāhi rānei kia orite ō rātou tikanga whakahaere. He mea nui tērā, arā, kia ōrite ngā tikanga whakahaere, ka mutu, hei te wāhanga komiti nei, ka kōkiri mātou ko tētahi pepa hei whakapiri atu kia pūmau tonu te whakaaro, kia kaha tautoko ngā kaiāwhina i te hunga kaiheke i tō rātou mōhiotanga ki Te Tiriti o Waitangi me tā rātou ako i ngā tikanga me Te Reo Māori. Ki tā mātou o Te tōrangapū Māori, he tīmatanga pai tēnei, pēnei i tā James Chang e kōrero nei, kia hanga i tētahi wānanga ā-noho, ā-tikanga hoki hei āwhina i te hunga kaiheke, arā, ko te hunga kōrero i tētahi reo i tua atu o te reo Pākehā, ki te āhuatanga o te ao Māori. Tērā pea he whakaaro pai tēnei mō ētahi atu o ngā iwi kua noho ki Aotearoa nei mō nga whakatipuranga e whā, e rima rānei.

E te Kaihautū, hāngai tonu ana tō mātou titiro i tēnei pire kia pūmau te wāhanga o Te Tiriti o Waitangi i roto i ngā tohutohu a te tari hekenga ā-iwi. Ehara i te mea ko te tangata whenua anake e hiki nei i te Tiriti ki tōna taumata. E ai ki tā Te Kōmihana Whakatika Tangata rangahau, kei te tipu tonu te māramatanga me te tūturutanga o te Tiriti i te ngākau o Aotearoa whānui.

Engari, kei te rongo anō hoki mātou i ngā nawe, i ngā āwangawanga o te hunga tuku kōrero ki te Komiti Whāiti, arā, ki te Komiti Transport and Industrial Relations. Arā, ngā māharahara nui mō te koretake o ngā tohutohu ki te hunga tono, ko te noho māharahara, rangirua rānei nā ngā mahi huna a nga kaiāwhina, tae atu ki te tono kia whakaritea tonu i ngā taumata ōrite. Ko tōna tūmanako, ka āta titiro Te Rōpū Tohutohu ā-Kaiheke nei ki ēnei nawe, ki ēnei māharahara i a ia e whakahaere ana i ngā tikanga whakaae, ā, ko te hanga me te whakamātau o ngā taumata ōrite, tae atu ki tētahi kawa mō ngā kaiāwhina.

Hei tā te Kaunihera Wāhine ā-Motu i tā rātou tuhinga, me kaha tonu te whakawhitiwhiti kōrero me te wānanga i ēnei taumata. I tāpirihia atu e te komiti whāiti tētahi atu kōrero anō, arā, he tūtohu tonu kia tū he tira whakatau nei i ngā nawe me ngā tikanga whakahau. Nō reira, ka whakatauria e te pire tētahi Taraipiunara Whakatika Nawe, Whakahau Anō Hoki, hei rōpū i tōna ake mana. I te taraipiunara me ngā wānanga mō ngā taumata ōrite, ko tā Te Tōrangapū Māori e kī nei, me rongo i ngā tūmanako me te reo o te tangata whenua.

Nō reira, koia nei kei te pūtake o tētahi Kōrero Tāpiri nei ka whakatakotoria e Te Tōrangapū Māori. Ko tā mātou ko te whakarite i tētahi Kaunihera Māori hōu, ko tāna mahi ko te āta wherawhera i ngā take hāngai tonu ana ki te haerenga mai o ngā manuhiri me tōna pānga ki te Māori.

Ko tētahi wāhanga o ngā mahi o tēnei Kaunihera Māori hōu, ko te āta arotake i te ture hekenga e ai ki tā te Tiriti titiro, ka mutu, nā tōna piringa ki Te Rōpū Kaitohutohu ā-Hekenga Nui, ko tāna mahi, ko te tohutohu i a rātou i roto i te āhuatanga o Te Tiriti me Te Reo. Mā te Kaunihera nei, ka mahea ake ngā māharahara o te ao Māori, arā, ko ērā kua roa e noho tārewa ana. He aha ērā? Ko te aukati i te ao Māori i ngā kōrero tautohetohe, i ngā wānanga mō te noho a ētahi atu i tēnei whenua!

I ngā tekau mā rua tau kua hipa neke atu, i puta te whakatau o te Kaunihera o te Kotahitanga o te Hāhi Weteriana me te Perehipitīriana, e pēnei ana tāna: “ Recognising that Māori Treaty rights have had no place in the development of this country’s immigration policy, conference request the Government to place an embargo on further immigration until te iwi Māori have a partnership say on future immigration policy.

Kia kitea mai ai i ngā painga o te nohotahi, me whai wāhi ngā hoa haere ki te kōrero, kia rongo anō hoki tētahi i tētahi. Ko tēnei piri, he mea pai tonu hei whakatika i ngā uauatanga o ngā 160 tau kua hipa, arā, ko ngā mahi aro kore, mahi aukati i nga whakatau ā-kaiheke nei. Ko tēnei pire, he mea kua roa e tāria ana, kia tau noa ngā māharahara e hia kē nei, arā, ko ērā e aukati nei i te Māori i ngā whakatau ā-hunga manuhiri, kore kōrero ki te Māori, kore paku aro mai.

Hei whakamutu atu, tērā pea, koi nei te whakatinanatanga o tēnei mea o te rangatiratanga, he whakaaturanga o tēnei mea o te manaakitanga, me te wā tika hei whakanui i te wairua o te nohotahi e tūmanakohia ana i roto tonu i Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Nō reira, ka tautoko mātou i tēnei pire, ka mutu, ka akiaki tonu i ētahi wāhanga, i te wānanga ā-komiti nei. Kia ora tātou.

DARIEN FENTON (Labour) Link to this

I am pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill. The first thing I want to say is that although I really respect our colleagues from the Māori Party and their contributions, I strongly refute that this Government designs its immigration policies around endeavouring to defeat the Treaty or, for that matter, enrolment on the Māori roll. It was a pleasure to serve on the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee under the excellent leadership of Mark Gosche, and I congratulate the committee.

I have been an MP for only 18 months, but like all MPs I have come across some pretty awful examples of what has been going on in the community without the regulation of immigration advisers or consultants. We have all dealt with what seems to me to be a disproportionate number of immigration cases involving immigration consultants or advisers where we have been left to clean up the mess. Most MPs will have come across cases of immigration consultants overcharging, and giving inappropriate advice that ends up costing both the taxpayer and the applicants; and in some cases legal documents, including passports, have gone missing or they have been held unlawfully. In some cases there has been outright fraud.

I acknowledge that there are many responsible immigration advisers who provide a professional and very necessary service, but the fact is that some have been exploiting people at a time when they are most vulnerable. One example that came to my attention was of a man who took on an ever-increasing number of cases completely beyond his competence to deal with, and who lied, to those people relying on his advice, about what he was doing. Eventually this caused those people to move into an unlawful immigration status. To cap it all off, large numbers of passports went missing and, for all anyone knows, they have ended up on the black market somewhere in the world.

In some of the worst cases I have heard of, unscrupulous consultants have resorted to threatening the people involved that if they complain they will have them arrested and removed from the country and their families blacklisted or jailed. These victims have handed over their hard-earned savings to these so-called consultants and they lose not only their money and funds from family members, but also their chance to gain residence.

In other cases, migrants are given false hope through misinformation or poor advice for outrageously high fees. Some potential business migrants have been very badly ripped off. All kinds of scams have been uncovered over the years, including dodgy offers of employment. I came across someone who had been charged $35,000 for bad advice, where only three or four letters had been written, and the application never filed.

Immigration consultants or advisers are often the first point of contact for intending migrants, and when they have bad experiences it reflects badly on New Zealand. If the first contact reveals unprofessional or unconscionable behaviour, then we all suffer. Stories of unscrupulous immigration advice can hit the headlines in other countries. This impacts on New Zealand’s reputation overseas and our ability to attract people in a very competitive world market for skilled migrants. These stories also resonate throughout migrant communities that are already settled in New Zealand, and our reputation for fairness is eroded.

The fact is that it has just been too easy for people to set themselves up as immigration experts, to take money from unsuspecting people, to give them inappropriate advice, and in some cases to abscond with people’s money, leaving ruined lives behind them. In other cases, inexperience or incompetence from well-meaning people has led to cases being mishandled and it has caused an overload of a system that actually works very well.

The Labour-led Government has refocused New Zealand’s immigration programme to facilitate the entry of those migrants who are best placed to contribute to the New Zealand economy. While doing this we also need to meet our obligations as a good international citizen, of course without compromising our country’s security. We have also moved to ensure that new migrants have the support they need to settle effectively in New Zealand.

I acknowledge the former Minister of Immigration Lianne Dalziel, and of course the current Minister of Immigration, David Cunliffe. Lianne began the process of this legislation as soon as she became Minister of Immigration. Although some will say this has taken too long, there has been a very robust process to bring us to where we are today, and doing things well does take time.

During the select committee process, the parties worked together to generally improve the bill. It is gratifying that all parties on the select committee now agree on the need for regulation within this industry.

I hate to say it but National did have a chance to fix this in 1999, following years of intensive lobbying from the responsible immigration practitioners and from Labour and immigration officials. But National voted against the legislation in 1999. Bill Birch and Max Bradford—do members remember them—Ministers of Immigration in the former National Government, insisted that the free market was the best mechanism for immigration consultancy. So the problems continued to worsen throughout the 1990s. However, times do move on, and so does the National Party, it seems, or at least in some things. It seems to be adopting more and more of our good ideas.

The select committee process was a very interesting and constructive one, with many concerns expressed by submitters being taken on board and the bill amended accordingly. I will mention some of the amendments that the select committee is recommending. They have been rehearsed by other speakers, but these are ones that particularly resonated with me. The first is around exemptions from licensing. In addition to MPs, it is vitally important that our electorate staff are exempt, because they are the front-line representatives of MPs and deal with a large amount of immigration casework. I take the opportunity here to acknowledge those front-line staff out in the community who work for all of us. They do a huge amount of work and have been dealing with some very difficult issues, in immigration in particular.

The committee also felt that the exemption for other public servants was way too broad, so we are recommending an amendment to limit exemptions to public servants who provide immigration advice within the scope of their employment agreement. As mentioned before, there was a lot of debate about whether lawyers should continue to be exempt, as intended by the original bill. I was one of those in the select committee who was sceptical about this—with all due respect to my lawyer colleagues on the other side of the House. That is because lawyers have been among those who have provided poor immigration service or advice. There was also a view that having a different system of complaints for lawyers could cause a perception that they are subject to a lesser or less accessible standard. However, we were assured that the complaints and disciplinary process under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act will be an improvement on the previous system under the Law Practitioners Act. I guess this is a question of watch this space and see whether it works.

Another area of amendment I want to mention is in regard to the not-for-profit sector, which is not exempt from the original licensing requirements of the bill. I join Mark Gosche in congratulating the Citizens Advice Bureaux and the community law centres that put forward a very strong case to be exempted. I think we all accepted that they have a very high standard of service and properly trained employees and volunteers, and that they are an essential service to the community and therefore should be exempt from the licensing requirements of the bill. The core of this bill is the requirement for people who provide immigration advice —

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) Link to this

The Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill is legislation National has no problem in supporting. The reasoning behind the legislation has not been looked at tonight, though. The immigration advice industry is one that does not have the ability to self-regulate. If one looks at industries such as the legal or accounting professions, one can see they are essentially self-regulated. This industry does not have that ability, so the Government has had to come in and regulate it through this programme. That is why there has been a little bit more bureaucracy than we would want to see; essentially, if we want to have regulation of immigration advisers, then we have to do it through the Government.

Another issue that the Māori Party has brought up has been immigration in New Zealand in a wider context. This bill will not actually deal with that issue. The wider immigration debate that the Minister David Cunliffe will be looking at I am sure will have much more effect on that issue. But there is one thing I think we have to look at in this modern world, which is that immigration is inevitable. We live in a part of the world where there are 4 billion people on our doorstep. If even 1 percent of that group wanted to come to New Zealand, there would be a huge demographic change. If we go to the western seaboard of the US, we see its demographics have changed completely. That is inevitable for New Zealand. It is only a matter of time before we have such change in this country; it is part of our growth as an international country.

There are some other facets of the legislation that I think we need to look at. The lawyers exemption is a good exemption. Lawyers are probably under a stricter regime than immigration consultants because of the Acts they have to go through. Therefore, giving lawyers an exemption is not a problem, because they have a stricter regime to follow anyway.

The community groups exemption originally was not on a non-profit basis. National brought in that profit test. It a very good test because it separates community groups from non-community groups. Non-community groups are those that are advising as a business enterprise.

However, the definition in this bill of community groups that have been given exemption is very narrow. It should have included places like the Waikato Migrant Resource Centre, which is a community group that does probably as much work as the citizens advice bureaus would do in that area of providing immigration advice. Yet it has not been given that exemption. There should be a lot more exemptions through that not-for-profit category.

The students exemption is also an important one. We have to maintain our student base in the international context. We cannot afford to put too many limits on students coming into New Zealand. The exemption for advisers to students is something that is realistic and will do good for our industries in the education sector.

Overall, I think this legislation reflects the industry that we are dealing with. The industry is not able to be self-regulated, so regulation had to be done by the Government. There are a number of exemptions that represent the practical realities of the industry. I think it is inevitable that we will be looking further at immigration in this House, as it is something we have to deal with as a country over time. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

STEVE CHADWICK (Labour—Rotorua) Link to this

This is one of the occasions when one is really pleased to be asked to take a call. It is another example of a Government that when it came into power in 1999, got on with fixing up an industry that, as the previous speaker said, was—frankly—a mess. I became an electorate MP following a previous Minister of Immigration and I was simply appalled that constituents in the town of Rotorua were told to go to Hamilton for all matters of immigration. They were told not to go to the MP’s office. That was the culture of the previous Government, and of a previous Minister of Immigration who worked in our community. So in our community we opened the doors of the constituency office as an outreach for immigration, because we saw the shambles in the service at that time.

Immigration advice was not provided by the Immigration Service but by advisers. These were advisers offshore who had put people wrong in their country of origin, and advisers in New Zealand who had perpetuated a culture of very, very bad service for new migrants. As other speakers have said, it reflected appallingly on New Zealand as the host country, the welcoming country, when people were told: “You are welcome here, we will help you, and these are the steps that you have to go through.” In our community we heard of rorts by advisers from particular countries who were charging an astronomical amount of money for people even to get their services and to start to open the gate, before they came to New Zealand. It was the previous Minister of Immigration, Lianne Dalziel, who asked people to give her the names of some of those immigration consultants who were starting to blacken the immigration advisers’ industry. We did that, and the Minister acted immediately.

I would like to congratulate the current Minister, who put this Immigration Advisers Licensing Bill—a tidying-up bill—into the House in December 2006, and here we are in March 2007 at the second reading stage. I think the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee has done a wonderful job to get the bill back to us. Making prompt work of bills that are needed to fix up an industry is what this Government is all about. This Government identifies the problem, and gets on and fixes it.

One of the things that is very important about this bill is the issue of reciprocity with other countries. This legislation will bring us into line with countries like the UK and Australia, and that is absolutely critical. We also need to be constantly vigilant about monitoring the advice given in other countries to our new migrants attempting to come to New Zealand.

The other aspect of this legislation that I particularly feel is great is the Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal. People have had nowhere to go other than the Minister’s office when they have had knowledge about these sorts of rotten apples in the advisory barrel. That is why Minister Lianne Dalziel realised that we really had to do something. Nothing had been done by the Opposition for 9 years, and the situation was simply appalling. We started to put the case together about the countries where those advisers were giving poor advice. It was only electorate MPs, who saw the stresses of immigration cases in our electorate offices, who could feed back where we needed to put processes in place to get it right. When we had an electorate MP who sent all cases to Hamilton, of course members did not know where the systems were rotten so that they could put in systemic change to put it right. We are hands-on MPs out in our community. We saw the problem, we fed it into the Minister, and the Minister got on and did something about it.

I am pleased that the Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal is there. It is independent of the authority, and I think that that is a very important aspect of the authority, which will have the support of the Ministry of Justice. This legislation will clean up advisers in this industry who have poured disrepute on to immigration, and who have set a very bad example.

This is a fantastic bill. I hope that it will reduce by some 40 percent my electorate office time spent on immigration cases. So if that is the case in a place like Rotorua, what will it be like in Auckland or North Shore? It is outrageous!