With the unveiling of the new Immigration Bill yesterday, we finally got to see what the Clark government has learned from the Ahmed Zaoui affair : absolutely nothing.
This supposedly centre left government has taken the worst features of its shabby treatment of Zaoui – such as the allegations based on secret information that the appellant has no right to see or challenge, the use of special advocates as camouflage to hide the denial of fundamental human rights, and the invoking of secrecy to hide departmental bungles – and enshrined them as the routine powers to be enjoyed by immigration officials in future. Extreme measures that were invoked only because of the risk Zaoui was alleged to pose to national security will become the norm for how we engage with would-be migrants and refugees.