Freedom New Zealand

Few Labour voters may realise the full extent of what the Clark government has in mind - or has allowed to get out of hand - with its rewrite of the 1987 Immigration Act. To date, the parties on the centre right (National, Act, United Future) have also shown little interest in the Immigration Bill's sweeping extensions of state power, while the anti-immigrant crew within New Zealand First must be thinking all their Christmasses have come at once.

Under this legislation, it is proposed that immigration officials should be given powers of entry to business premises and private homes and enhanced powers of search, seizure and detention without warrant. The CEOs of any government department or agency will be able to decree information as classified, and thus put it beyond direct access or query by the people most affected by it. Access even to a summary of what is being alleged will be conditional, and at the state's discretion.

Even if allowed, a summary of allegations can be made as skeletal and un-informative as the state decides. Firstly, any such summary will be only of the allegations arising from the information, and need not summarise the information itself. Secondly, clause 216 of the Bill says the summary will not be required to list any of the documents, or detail any of their contents or contain anything that might identify the source of any of the allegations. Good luck with mounting a viable defence - against whatever it is the state thinks you have done - under such conditions.

There's more. The Bill empowers Immigration officials to compel people to provide biometric information without the Bill containing firm guidelines or procedures for the use, retention, security, accuracy, storage and sharing of such data. There is no overt statement about the relation of the new Bill to the Privacy Act, or support for its protections on fair handling of personal information and bodily integity. There is only the kind of vague mention found at clause 92, which opens up more problems than it resolves - by saying ( incorrectly) that the Privacy Act gives immigration officers power to ' further deal' with the personal data they have collected and retained.

Clause 92 of the Bill also says that New Zealand citizens returning home can be compelled to have photographs taken of them - "subject to regulations" made under the Bill - in order to prove they are who their passports say they are. A close reading of the biometric information definition clause (at p 20 of the Bill) indicates these mandatory photographs need not be restricted to facial photographs - a concern that was raised by some of those who made submissions on the Bill. So much for bodily integrity.