Any idea what Helen's up to? Given the number of illegal immigrants in New Zealand and her leftist base I'm surprised she'd put this through.
Wouldn't be anything to do with Sydney - the Lebanese involved in the gang rapes, riots etc there are legal (and seem to be almost all 2nd gen immigrants).
My money's on it being 1 of 2 things :-
1) It's a favour for Australia (what NZ gets back I'm not sure). This would be a much bigger coup from John howard to plug the whole "boatpeople situation". [For Non-ANZers a major issue in the 2001 Australian election was refugess mainly from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq sailing to Australia in fishing boats from Indonesia - notmally 400 at a time).
2) It could be a setup for something far left to pass through. The last time I saw something like this was when Lange put through the nuclear free zone (far left), followed by user pays, privatisation, GST. This could be the same thing in reverse.
,,, this legislation's been in the pipeline for quite a while. It will have instant backing from Winston Peters and the blue rinse set. It's designed to specifically drag in more votes from the centre and the right. Monopoly board players will have to hit other stops if they're pregnant - I suppose New Zealand can't be "community chest", is what they're saying.