Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

This visit to New Zealand by the parliamentary delegation confirmed the great value of these inquiries. If there is one area where New Zealand and Australia have to take cognisance of each other’s policy, it is the area of migration. Obviously Australia, with a higher non-English-speaking-background settler population, tends to be a bit of a magnet for people who have settled in New Zealand. I congratulate the chairman, the member for Canning, and the delegation secretary, Dr Kate Sullivan, for the professional way in which this delegation was led. We were limited in numbers but, as I say, it was a very worthwhile visit—as were the discussions with the foreign affairs and transport and industrial relations committees. Mark Gosche, a former minister, who has close ties with this country on a family basis, was amongst the people at those discussions.

Aspects of the delegation’s visit that I found interesting included the move in New Zealand to try to streamline and amalgamate a number of tribunals. They experience a reality—which is international—of people utilising the tribunal appeal process to prolong their stay in a country. New Zealand has a number of authorities and there are moves there to do something about the appeal process. Another aspect of interest was the refugee and migrant resettlement group—a voluntary organisation that seeks to train people helping migrants and, more particularly, refugees settle in New Zealand. In this country there has been a bit of a withdrawal of volunteers, particularly from church groups, over the last decade as they became frustrated with the red tape in the system, but in New Zealand there has been a massive effort to try to ensure that they retain and encourage people.

In relation to the appeals process, one of the aspects that I think the delegation was surprised about was the separate issues of people being deported and the lack of rights of the department to get information with regard to the deportation of people. Page 18 of the report says:

Officers do not have any powers to require information to assist them to locate a person here lawfully, but who may have obtained that status through fraud or misrepresentation. In order to investigate such cases, the officer must generally first locate the person and give them an opportunity to respond.

Whilst there is something amenable in the way in which New Zealand does not seem to have a proliferation of long-term appeals, the other side of the coin is a real national problem when it comes to locating people who are illegally in the country, have no grounds for being there or have been through the appeals process and failed.

Skilled migration was obviously a great matter of interest. New Zealand is moving from a pool system where people gain 100 points and then await their destiny to a new system whereby people with 140 points get automatic entry. I note that New Zealand requires a higher standard of English for skilled migration entry.

There is an image internationally of New Zealand being a country that is slightly more liberal with regard to refugee settlement processes. We were very interested to find that New Zealand intends, under its UNHCR responsibilities, to curb the intake in order to look at those communities that it perceives as being better able to settle. The main example cited to us was the Burmese. So Australia is not the only country that perhaps at the edges seeks to maintain some government policy control on the entrant groups.

Another matter of interest is the question of New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific islands. It is interesting to note the population trends. In 1991, Pacific islanders accounted for five per cent of the population, and they are now up to 6.2 per cent; and Maoris represented 12.1 per cent and are now up to 14.1 per cent. There was genuine concern expressed to us that what has happened with Niue and some other islands in the Pacific is recurring with respect to Samoa. We all know that the New Zealand’s football team is full of Samoans—and western Samoans more particularly—but there is a genuine concern that the easy access to New Zealand might be leading to a situation of depopulation within Samoa. That is an issue being looked at.

We found the ethnic peak councils in New Zealand extremely appreciative of government policy and interest in their affairs when we met them. As I said, we also had the opportunity to meet government, opposition and Green Party spokespeople to discuss immigration policy. I want to put on record again the value of these exchanges. As I said earlier, in immigration there is a crucial need to mirror policies as much as possible. It is not totally going that way, but we try to aim for that. Thank you very much for the opportunity to endorse this report.

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