RNZ: The Panel with Susan Hornsby-Geluk and Mike Rehu (Part 1)

The Panel with Susan Hornsby-Geluk and Mike Rehu (Part 1)
Radio New Zealand
4:03 pm on 1 November 2018

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/thepanel/audio/2018669364/the-panel-with-susan-hornsby-geluk-and-mike-rehu-part-1
https://podcast.radionz.co.nz/panel/panel-20181101-1603-the_panel_with_susan_hornsby-geluk_and_mike_rehu_part_1-128.mp3

Transcript courtesy of
https://riverside.fm/transcription

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00:00
Music

00:12
Good afternoon and welcome to the panel. Very nice to have your company, Susan Hornsby-Gallick from Dundas Street Employment Lawyers in Wellington is with us and Mike Rehu, media consultant and broadcaster. Kia ora, good afternoon to you both. Hey. Kia ora Jim. On the second day of the Defence Expo, it seems to have been quieter than the first day. And to kick us off today, what do you think, both of you, about the vigorous protests in Palmerston North at the Defence Industry Expo? Do you have a view?

00:41
I think it's kind of ironic that an anti-violence campaign results in a couple of people being assaulted, well a couple of people assaulting the police, but I think the point here is it's not a guns expo, it's really important that this is like a defence procurement exercise and if we're going to have an army and we're going to invest millions of dollars in the army we clearly need to understand.

01:07
what the best equipment is. So I support the right of people to engage in peaceful protest, but I do think it might be slightly misguided in this instance. What do you think?

01:21
Yeah, I'm the same actually. I do feel as though, you know, the industry, you know, in every industry they have these conferences, they have these exhibitions. This is, and ironically in some countries you say defence and it's not defence, it's offence. But I think New Zealand has to have a defence and I personally worry that we don't. I mean, I was just looking at some numbers earlier today. We spend $426 a person on our defence

01:51
And the US has 3.1% of their GDP spent on defense, ours is like 1.1%. So we spend a miniscule amount and you can tell in the quality of aircraft, boats and blah blah blah that we have. But in these days of, you know, this, what they're calling the sharp power where we saw, you know, this Saudi Arabian fella get assassinated pretty much allegedly in Turkey. We've seen the North Koreans come down and hit somebody. We've seen the Russian spies come in. Now...

02:20
We're pretty harmless down here, but we've got a lot of things that people want in the world, especially our natural resources like water. And we've played nicely with people. We've almost given away some of our resources. But when, now that we're wising up a little bit, what if people want our resources and things down here? And what are we going to do if somebody comes in? Is that push ever going to come to shove though? Well, I mean, surely we should have some sort of...

02:45
sturdy defence anyway, at least some capability. I mean, otherwise we will have to turn to bigger powers and then we have to obviously sign some compromise deals with people. Which is what we do now, don't we? We lend them a frigate or we lend them a batch of the SAS and we play our part among a group of nations. Yeah, but even with Australia, with the relationship we have with Australia, apparently a lot of our kit is...

03:13
massively inferior and we get by with our good soft skills, our good people skills when we're overseas representing our country in part of these United Nations combination. So again, coming back to your first question about the Expo, it is a worry that there may be some weapons of offence being shown at this exhibition, but I think if it's about defence then we should play our part. Here's Andy Hickman from Peace Action Manawatu talking about Lockheed Martin's presence at

03:43
and its manufacture of a laser guided bomb that destroyed a school bus in Yemen in August. 40 school boys were killed by that particular bomb. Lockheed Martin takes ownership. That was their bomb. But they claim no responsibility because it was fired by the Saudi Arabians. And we say that no, actually they have a moral and ethical responsibility to take ownership for that. And this is a moral dilemma that in living history goes back to the burden of guilt felt by the men who built the atom bomb.

04:11
But we also know that everybody sells weapons to the Saudi regime. In the world of realpolitik, this is a very hard one, isn't it? And are there any easy answers? And does New Zealand need to take the clear-cut stand that people like Andy Hickman would like? Or do we have to...

04:28
sidle our way through the world as you're suggesting. And I know that these exhibitions and expos have been held in different cities over the years but for Palmerston North as well, that is very close to where a lot of our military happens and a lot of the economy is driven by the military as well. So I guess we have to be a bit careful that we kill all industry around that. Yeah, in New Zealand First MP Derek Ball says a lot of the businesses have a presence in Palmerston North actually and they employ thousands of people right across the country and it's as much about apples, toilet paper, spare parts.

04:58
electronic steel and clothing as it is about anything else. But just before we leave the topic, to give the opposite point, Golriz Garamand writing today talks about self-steering bullets.

05:10
tiny killer drones from Israel. I've seen what that looks like on the ground, she says, referring to her childhood in Iran. A sea of amputees poured into Iranian cities from the front lines during the 1980s. Half the world feels like second-class citizens, as we did in Iran. Our lives in misery are not as important as the profit being made from war.

05:31
So she's saying can New Zealand really, with a clear conscience, take part in any of that? There's two different issues in that. One is the equipment itself and two is who's making a profit from it. But in terms of the equipment itself, if we're going to send guys to Afghanistan or wherever it is, they need to have whatever the other people have got, otherwise we're sending them into an unsafe environment. That means they need to have technologically the very best that we can possibly provide for them.

06:01
As to who makes the profit from it, I think that's a different issue and I think she's blending the moral judgement about what war can result in with the issue of who might make a profit and who might not. These are not easy answers to find, are they not?

06:19
pleased to have had your opinions on it. Let's return as we have done every day this week, because this case will now be reinvestigated, we've heard this afternoon. Return to the vexed question of the residency of Karol Szrubik, the Czech kickboxer and drugs importer. We were going to have a clip from Parliament, but it wasn't entirely clear. Question number four, the Hon Michael Woodhouse. Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Immigration.

06:47
Does he believe he has considered all relevant factors in deciding to grant residency to Kel Shrobek, also known as Jan Antillet? Susan, you'll be talking, I think, later on about court protocols. Do you fully understand the way they kind of beat around the bush with questions in Parliament? What I understand is that Michael Woodhouse would have known the answer to the question that he asked, and the whole point of it is to set the opposition up to either.

07:13
be seen to be misleading people or to look bad. And it is unfortunate, it's a consequence of an adversarial parliamentary system as opposed to trying to actually get sensible answers out of the Minister. So yeah, it's a bit of a charade the whole thing, but clearly he knew the answer to the question that he asked, otherwise he wouldn't have asked it. And speaking of the adversarial system, do we need rote calls for resignations of Ministers like Enly's Galloway over the—

07:43
issues like this. I think Simon Bridges has really gone on the front foot in the last week hasn't he after his setback a couple of weeks ago. He's really got Utu on his mind I think. But yeah no it's interesting isn't it because he's calling for blood and I think he's just trying to obviously reposition himself and forget or get the public to forget about the issues that he's had. It's a tough one for him. I think there's a fundamental difference between what Lise Galloway has done in this instance and other.

08:13
ministers where resignation has been discussed. I mean, fundamentally, is there a judgment issue here? I don't think so. He made a decision based on the information that he was presented and now he's received further information and it's appropriate to reassess that decision. But any suggestions that he should resign I just think are over the top and ridiculous. I mean, there's no fundamental judgment issue that we can see at this point.

08:40
And that brings another matter up too, is who in the ministry endorsed or supplied this information and are they compromised in any way? How can you make a decision like that with all the facts? You may never discover that. Judge Roy Wade, who discharged Mr Shrevec without conviction over his use of a false passport, still thinks he was in danger from the corrupt Czech authorities back home and it's just a pity he turned to a life of crime here.

09:10
He did turn to crime, didn't he? And is that enough? Is that enough? That simple fact for him to be deported, in your view? Yeah, I think, you know, it's not a couple of traffic tickets, is it? It's almost $400,000 worth of drugs. So it is a severe crime. And you know, it's a crime that should, was, and was punished severely, but it should be followed through, I think.

09:32
I'm going to get back to your point, in fact we'll do it right now, about who should have known what. Mark Williams is joining us again on the Shrubett case and Mark is a partner with the Lane Neve law firm and an international immigration expert. Good afternoon Mark. Good afternoon. Do you wonder how hard it was to check the details of his life in the Czech Republic, you know, whether he'd been back there or not and we now know he did go back to Europe with the consent of the court. How hard is it for immigration New Zealand officials to investigate these things do you think?

10:00
Well I think Immigration New Zealand have travel movement records for individuals to include these. So I suspect that should be relatively easy for them to track his movements in and out. But obviously what the Minister's done is base the decision on papers of information presented to him. And it now transpires as national that Shrubeck didn't even want residency originally, he just wanted not to be deported. So on the face of it, and we don't know everything do we Mark, the advice given to the Minister

10:29
may have been the issue here from the Department. Well quite possibly, but I think it's a different issue and a mistake because there are other avenues the Minister could have exercised. For example, you could have said, well look, I will allow you to now make an appeal out of time to the Immigration Protector Tribe to state your case to that authority. Those authorities are experienced at working through cases and seeing...

10:53
through factual cases to determine the truth on these matters. So there was another avenue to push him away to a confident, greater experience. Sorry, the line's breaking up a bit. So there was a different modus operandi that you used to think could easily have been followed here? I think it could have been a bit more cautious. If a person has been dishonest in the past using fake ID, then how much sort of credence do you put into what they've advised you? And later on, there are branches.

11:21
Immigration New Zealand who are very used to getting to the truth of matters and it may well have been a bit more of a cautious and better approach to try and get this off to a branch who has better competency in making judgments on these sorts of cases. The other thing, touching wood for the phone line again, but the other thing I wanted to ask you Mark was, and I know comparisons are often invidious, but can you think of someone who came to you but failed to get residency here, who made you wonder about the decision making our officials do?

11:51
Well, in this particular instance we've been flooded with contact from clients or previous clients who've had applications denied by a ministerial indirection and asking why on earth their cases were not allowed when someone of this particular case has been allowed in. So it's a difficult one to try and justify. It is a difficult one. All right, thank you. And grateful for your time again. That's Mark Williams on the panel.

12:18
If we are determined to extend as much compassion as we can in this case, which is one way of looking at it, we do not always do that, obviously, for a number of honest and hardworking people who want to stay in New Zealand but just don't meet criteria. Shyamal Patel got told to go, was denied a post-study work visa, which we mentioned briefly yesterday. She's got a master's in international studies. She's been office manager at Alamere Bakery in Wellington, which supplies 300 supermarkets and restaurants.

12:48
and her job is said to have involved managing overseas imports, negotiating trade pricing and overseeing 22 staff. Immigration New Zealand suggests her role has been played up a bit, it may be more about kebabs and what's on the pizza toppings, and she and her employer are adamant the work she did was much more than that. We're about to have her on. You're familiar with this case or at least the brief broad outline of it I think? Yeah and I really am glad to see that we've got her on because I really admire her chutzpah.

13:16
She's obviously a young lady who's come from overseas and studied hard and she had a plan in mind and she's sort of ticked a lot of boxes and yeah, I'm surprised and I'd love to hear more about why they haven't allowed her to stay. Susan, do you feel similarly? Not entirely. I am sort of more objective in the sense that look, I'm sure she's a lovely person and she's got skills but a lot of people are in that same boat and we have to have rules for a reason.

13:44
and there has to be a linkage between the qualification that she's received and the job that she's undertaking. And if you can't establish that, then you don't meet the criteria. Yes, that's a very good point and one which we're about to address. Shyamal Patel is joining us on the panel. Good afternoon. Hi. What is your status now, by the way? I'm not existing. You don't exist now? To be honest, I at the moment...

14:13
I shouldn't be in this country. To be honest, I'm unlawful. Since I was rejected my visa, I was told to kind of leave the country, you know? But I would have left it because, to be honest, if I would have given a written reason, I wouldn't mind going. And I shouldn't have been staying this long as well, you know? But then the reasons which I was given, I don't, I personally don't agree with it.

14:42
and that's the reason I'm fighting for it till date. Okay, the major areas of the qualification you have have got to be directly applicable to the work you've been doing. So, what exactly have you been doing? Okay, so to be honest, I did my Masters of International Studies from IPU, right? And to be honest, that qualification actually is for two years, okay, which...

15:08
first year is kind of like you do few papers and then second year uh... it prepared you that those papers to prepare you for the next year you know so that is your piece of work which you should be judged on actually so my piece of work was customer behavior at supermarkets and it was evidence from uh... pure supermarkets which i picked on you know um... and which i examined that was the effect of customer satisfaction

15:37
Yes, but what were you doing at the Alamea bakery? So my job was, I was office person, right? They never had jobs like office person. So I was streamlining the processes. I was managing their hiring, HR, all the HR related stuff. They're maintaining their records, accounts, health and safety, food safety, customer complaints, pricing, all the suppliers and sort of things, you know?

16:06
Including internationally, can I just interrupt, sorry for a moment, including internationally because it's a company that has international ties. Yes, so what I would say internationally is not a big company, it's a growing company, so I would say we get our suppliers from overseas, so some of the products we get, chickpeas and all those stuff, was coming from Australia and Lebanon, right? So I think that should be considered internationally I guess.

16:34
Panelists, Shyamal, just hold fire, because I just want to ask the panellists something. The manager of Alamea says the job they advertised was for an office manager, which they hadn't had before. And when he realised the extent of Shyamal's talents, her role expanded. Is there anything wrong with that in your eyes? No, not at all. And, you know, I think, you know, we should look at the future as well of what this young girl can provide, this young woman can provide, because, you know, she obviously has started out as a graduate and she has these skills. She's impressed a boss.

17:04
He's expanded the scope of her role. I mean, where could she end up in the future, and how could she help our economy? I think there's very valid reasons to support her staying. I could, Shuma, can I ask you that? Immigration New Zealand obviously expects you to be in a role with a bigger company with more international ties. I understand, yes. And they want you to be adding value to New Zealand. Are you adding value? Well, to be honest, I am, actually. But then my only question is to immigration that when they expect...

17:33
a master graduate or whoever graduate it is, do you expect them to be like perfectly 100% complete then without any experience out in the industry? No, I don't think so. I have been a student, to be honest, I have got like large amount of experience from like six to eight years, but to be honest, when I want to put myself in international business or international companies out there, I have to prove myself first.

18:00
that this is what I can do and this is how I have done in previous and this is the position I want to look for in future, you know? So that saves me actually. But then they want me to directly join an international company who's going to, and especially being an immigrant, who the hell wants to put me into that position when I don't even have a visa, you know? Yeah, that's a very interesting point. Can I just ask you one more thing? The claim is that they went back and forth with your employer and gave this very...

18:30
serious consideration but your former boss says they seem to have done a Google search of the business and got the wrong idea. How carefully do you think what you did was looked at? To be honest I was being ignored all the time. To be honest, all the application has been ignored. You know I really feel bad for myself because I have to fight this long for just a small thing. I'm just asking that give me a two years post study work visa.

18:57
which I can show what I can do in the future and where I can see myself after a few years, you know? But if you are not ready to give me that opportunity, how I can show what I have actually put into my studies and my work, you know, throughout this year. But then I can't say more about it, to be honest. It has been ignored because if they can't see anything, that sort of experience, that sort of qualification and what I can bring in.

19:27
They know that I cannot help them out. I understand. If you do have to go, what would your memories of New Zealand be, by the way? To be honest, I am actually really proud of what I have done till date. I have no regrets and I don't, I know even if I go back, I know I have a good future down there. I can make something out of myself. I can say that. Very good to talk with you and thank you for joining us on the panel. Thank you.

19:54
Interesting to hear you explain it. Shyamal Patel. There's so much scope for trade to South Asia in the future, and with young people like that with some real motivation, I think we're missing a beat there myself. I think the problem is, if we start making decisions which are sort of emotional decisions like this.

20:15
then you totally open the floodgates. I mean there's a rule here, an immigration rule for a reason, which is clearly that there needs to be a link between the qualification and then the employment obtained, which makes sense of why you would come to New Zealand to get the qualification. And there is a real risk if we open that up and start just looking at people's potential, you do take jobs off New Zealanders who might otherwise be able to do those jobs and it becomes a very sort of subjective thing.

20:45
Yeah, but I disagree with the assessment criteria that seems to have been done because maybe it just needs to be revisited and reassessed. An uproar in Canada, panellists, just want to get to this before the news headlines, tampon gate. Students at the Medical Council of Canada licensing examination a few days ago were asked to declare if they were carrying menstrual products which had to be presented to exam staff beforehand.

21:16
And there's been an uproar and the Medical Council of Canada then decided to provide menstrual products to the students and supplying sanitary products to students is what we are about to discuss. I'm assuming, Susan, for want of more knowledge, it was in case anything was written on a tampon. It's ridiculous. That's just an absolutely ridiculous rule, I think. I mean, if you were going to go to that...

21:40
length would you strip search somebody in case they'd written on their body parts or something? I mean I think you need to draw the line and that's just I think embarrassing people and putting them in an incredibly awkward position. Yeah that's right, if you wanted to cheat you'd have notes in your shoe, you'd do a lot. Up your leg or anywhere I mean. And there was something about them having to give six weeks notice right? Yes. Whether they were maybe carrying sanitary products. Well that would be lucky guess. It was an extraordinary situation.

22:09
A Kids Can survey of New Zealand women and girls has found that more than half have either frequently or occasionally found it difficult to access sanitary items due to cost. Nearly a quarter have missed school or work because of a lack of access to them. What do we do here? Susan, you first again. Would you like to see sanitary items in school toilets, which is one of the principal suggestions? Possibly, but look, I think that it's a human right and I think that if people can't afford it there has to be a way.

22:37
I don't think that they should just be handed out free because the government shouldn't manufacture them, but there should be a way that you can apply for some sort of supply of them if you can't afford it. It should be means tested, I think, through the welfare services. OK, that's an interesting idea. Good point. Yeah, good point. So you concur with it. Yeah, and it was interesting using the condom analogy as well, because they seem to be freely available in secondary schools and education.

23:06
So yeah, and the other issue I guess too is just the whakamāra I guess it is from Māori and Polynesian women too about approaching people as well about these things because obviously it's pretty sensitive. So I think something probably has to be done in terms of pushing out an initiative rather than waiting for young women to come forward. I think that might be a bit tough. Mike Rehū, Susan Hornsby-Gallack are on the panel back with them.

23:34
and tons of topics still to come and their thoughts shortly. But Katrina has the news headlines.