Editorial: Curb the power of ministers

Opinion

In most of the discussion of the Field affair one very important element has received too little attention until now: the role of the Minister of Immigration. The service an MP can perform for a prospective migrant can be particularly effective because the final decision in these matters lies with a fellow MP, the Associate Minister of Immigration. This is bizarre.

As a general rule of government, politicians should decide the laws and policy applying to everyone and the individual cases should be decided by dispassionate officials or courts less likely to be swayed by political considerations.

Political considerations might amount to little more than a favour for a fellow MP, particularly a colleague in the same party. We do not know the reason the Associate Minister of Immigration at the time, Damien O'Connor, decided to issue a work permit to a couple whose case was brought to him by Labour MP Taito Phillip Field, when Mr O'Connor had earlier turned down their application made through an immigration consultant. We know only that the applicant tiled Mr Field's house in Samoa in the interim.

There has been no suggestion that Mr O'Connor acted improperly in this case or in any of the 262 discretionary visas he granted on Mr Field's representations between 2002 and 2005. The system entitled the minister to have faith in Mr Field's judgment and to issue permits for no better reason than a fellow MP had made a plea on the applicant's behalf. But that plainly is not a healthy state of affairs for politicians or a fair system for individuals.

The criminal law keeps politicians well removed from decisions of the police to prosecute an individual, and from issues between individuals or companies that are decided by civil courts. There are exceptions; the Minister of Conservation has the power to overturn a considered decision of the Environment Court, as Whitianga marina developers discovered last year. The time and expense they had taken, and the public hearings held, counted for nothing when Minister Chris Carter came to exercise his discretion. This, too, is bizarre.

There is only one reason that politicians reserve a final say for themselves in some applications of the law, and it is not a reason that will bear scrutiny. They fear that independent tribunals might make a decision that, while it accords with general rules, will be deeply unpopular. In that event, the Government wants the power to intervene and opposing parties want to be able to demand the Government intervenes.

Neither side in Parliament is inclined, even now, to surrender ministerial power entirely in immigration matters. The Government is reviewing the procedures and it is concerned that the number of immigration cases ending up on the desk of the associate minister has grown to such a degree that he is becoming the routine arbiter of entry to New Zealand.

But the remedies proposed go no further than to delegate more discretionary power to officials and address the nature and volume of cases going to the minister, requiring applicants to have exhausted all other avenues before approaching the minister and charging a fee for applications to him.

It is time to question the rationale for any ministerial authority over individual cases. If independent tribunals make politically contentious decisions in some cases, so be it. Public opinion is not always fair and consistent. Let all prospective immigrants follow the same procedures and have their cases decided by a disinterested party. No minister should be entrusted with an arbitrary power to indulge his own preferences, or those of his friends, when a person's or family's fate is at stake.