Erica Stanford (left); Priyanca Radhakrishnan (right) Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
A Labour MP of Indian origin has accused the immigration minister of painting migrants in a "negative light" during an answer to a question in Parliament last week.
On 6 May, Labour's Willow-Jean Prime asked Erica Stanford, a National MP, to confirm every single email related to her ministerial portfolios, which had ever been sent to or from her personal email account, had been captured for official record.
The question followed revelations a day earlier that Stanford had used her personal email account for work purposes, including sending herself pre-Budget announcements to print out.
"I have complied with the Official Information Act. I have also made sure that everything is available to be captured and have forwarded everything that I've needed to my parliamentary email address," Stanford said in response to the Labour MP's question.
"I will acknowledge, though, in a very similar case to Kelvin Davis, I receive a lot of unsolicited emails like, for example, things from people in India asking for immigration advice, which I never respond to. I almost regard those as being akin to spam, and so there are those ones. But, similarly, other ministers have had probably very similar issues."
Priyanca Radhakrishnan, a former minister of ethnic communities, made her displeasure with the remark about unsolicited emails from India clear in a social media post on 10 May.
"Earlier this week, in response to a question by @willowjeanprime the Immigration Minister felt the need to single out people from one country/ethnicity in a negative light," Radhakrishnan wrote.
"If you're from India, don't bother emailing her because it's automatically considered spam. So much for the National govt's all-of-government focus on strengthening the relationship between India and NZ and focus on people-to-people links."
Radhakrishnan was referring to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon's recent call for an "all of New Zealand" investment in the country's relationship with India.
Stanford claimed Radhakrishnan's assertion was "incorrect".
"As I advised the House, I receive unsolicited emails from people overseas to my personal email address, often requesting personal immigration advice," Stanford said.
"In this instance, I recalled a recent email I'd received of this nature when answering in Question Time. I did not say it is automatically considered as spam, I said 'I almost regard those as being akin to spam'.
"While these people are attempting to contact me as the minister of immigration, I have no ministerial responsibility for providing non-citizens with immigration advice, nor do my officials at Immigration NZ have any responsibility.
"Therefore, these emails to my personal email address are not responded to. Emails sent to my official email addresses are managed appropriately by my office."
