Gender-political corruption accompanies the favouritism, financial and employment corruption recently uncovered in the Immigration Service. On National Radio today Immigration lawyer Ms Olinda Woodroffe exposed a case in which the NZ Immigration Service in Samoa assisted a woman to remove her two young children to NZ without the father’s agreement. (Hear it here or if the link has expired request it from me.) This apparently was based on the woman’s claims of domestic violence for which no evidence existed such as previous police complaints, medical evidence or corroborative accounts. Once in NZ the Immigration Service here assisted the woman in applying for residency for herself and the two children, and obstructed the lawyer’s efforts to obtain information needed to represent the father in legal action to have his children returned.

The Immigration Service joins the many other government departments and indeed most political parties in parliament that operate as extensions of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.