Minister's wife admits role over permit

Pressure is mounting on embattled Associate Justice Minister Taito Phillip Field after Samoan television reported that a Thai overstayer was given a work permit to go to Samoa on condition that he was employed by the Field family.

Mr Field's wife, Maxine, said she arranged the Samoan permit so the overstayer, Sunan Siriwan, could do tiling work on a house being built for the Fields near Apia, and for other clients.

But Mr Field has maintained this week that there was "no employment arrangement" and that Mr Siriwan worked on the Fields' house voluntarily while staying in a garage on the property awaiting a work permit to go back to New Zealand.

Mr Field asked the Associate Minister of Immigration, Damien O'Connor, to direct the Immigration Service to grant Mr Siriwan a permit. Mr O'Connor said this week that he had given the direction but the work permit had not yet been issued and was now under review.

National Party immigration spokesman Tony Ryall said the Fields' arrangements with Mr Siriwan clearly breached a Cabinet rule that "ministers must ensure that no conflict exists or appears to exist between their public duty and their private interests".

"The Samoan visa now confirms more than anything else that Mr Field has acted inappropriately," he said.

"It's now time for the Prime Minister to deal to this. You simply can't have ministers arranging work permits for people who work for them."

On Wednesday night Samoan television broadcast film showing the Samoan work permit granted to Mr Siriwan in March with the words, "conditional on continued employment with Field".

Maxine Field said last night: "I was the one that did the employment so that he can get some work back there. Taito didn't know anything about it. I was the one that tried to get some work for him to get some money for him."

An Auckland builder who went to Samoa with Mr Siriwan, Keith Williams, said tiling the two-storey Field house was a major job, with 200sq m of flooring upstairs and the same area downstairs.

Mr Siriwan has also recently tiled the floor of the family bakery, Maxine's Cake Shop.

"At $30 a square metre, which is the wholesale rate in Samoa, plus about $20 a metre for the preparation of the floor, the job [on the house] is worth about $20,000," Mr Williams said.

"So he's got $20,000 worth of work out of Sunan, and Maxine has got the shop tiled."

Mr Williams said the Fields paid Mr Siriwan only 100 tala ($54) a week. Mr Field said later that they paid 170 to 200 tala - a good wage in Samoa, where the minimum wage is 64 tala.

Mr Siriwan finished work on the house about two months ago and is now working on contracts for other people. But Mrs Field's son and daughter-in-law, David and Sonya, said yesterday that they were also still paying him "out of the kindness of our hearts".

A spokesman for the Association of Migration and Investment, Bill Milnes, said it was surprising that Mr O'Connor had decided to give Mr Siriwan a New Zealand work permit when his application for refugee status had been declined.

"Thailand is not a refugee case," he said. "The general attitude of the service and the minister has been that if you have lodged a false claim for refugee status, you're out of here, sunshine. We don't want to know you, don't come back."

Mr Ryall said he understood that information about the case was given to police some months ago.

The Police Asian crime unit did not return the Herald's calls yesterday.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Helen Clark referred inquiries to Mr O'Connor. Mr O'Connor's office said the minister had probably not had time to review the case yet because he was busy electioneering.