‘Staffer’ deleted petition
National leader Simon Bridges says an ‘‘emotional junior staffer’’ deleted a petition about a United Nations migration pact after the Christchurch terror attack.
The alleged gunman had mentioned the global compact, a flashpoint for many far-Right extremists around the world.
A National spokesperson had told The Spinoff earlier that the pact petition had been deleted ‘‘some weeks ago’’. But the Google cache took a virtual ‘‘snapshot’’ of the petition page at 1.39pm on Friday.
Bridges said it had been his understanding that the pact was deleted as part of a routine clear-out some weeks ago, but yesterday morning, he became aware it was deleted on Friday.
‘‘I had understood that it was deleted some weeks ago as a matter of routine archiving. What in fact happened I’ve learnt this morning was that a junior staffer was incredibly emotional on Friday night and took it upon themselves to delete it. We did archive a lot several weeks ago.’’
He could not point to any other petition that had ever been routinely deleted and one petition on the site dates back to January 2018. A spokeswoman later clarified that these other petitions were ‘‘delisted’’ from the site but not deleted – essentially the links to them were taken away but not deleted, she said.
National campaigned hard against the pact being signed up until late last year.
The party’s now-deleted petition says that the compact ‘‘defers our immigration policy to the UN. It also restricts the ability of future governments to set immigration and foreign policy, and to decide on which migrants are welcome and which aren’t’’. Just under 4000 people signed up to the petition.
Bridges did not think the petition should be reinstated and was not critical of the staffer. ‘‘We are not going to be criti-
cal of it. It was a junior staffer who was very emotional. I think New Zealand is emotional given what we have seen.’’
Bridges did not resile from his views on the pact. ‘‘I think that that was a position around New Zealand making its own laws.
‘‘If you look at our immigration position, I think we have the strongest promigration position across the Parliament,’’ Bridges said.
National MP Gerry Brownlee has said the pact would result in ‘‘pretty much open borders’’.
Legal advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the pact in no way undermined sovereignty.
A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which monitors extremism, found that widespread opposition to it was rooted in far-Right social media.
‘‘We are not going to be critical of it. It was a junior staffer who was very emotional.’’
National leader Simon Bridges