Migration pact petition removal from National website a 'genuine mistake', says Simon Bridges

March 19, 2019

“We thought it had been archived weeks ago,” the National Party leader told media today.

The removal of a petition to stop New Zealand signing the UN migration pact from the National Party website on the day of the Christchurch terror attacks was a "genuine mistake", said leader Simon Bridges. 

The National Party had repeatedly denied the petition was taken down on Friday. 

The migration pact was referenced by the man accused of carrying out the killings of at 50 people at two Christchurch mosques.

"We thought it had been archived weeks ago, I've told you straight up that a junior staffer, was very emotional, and did this on their own volition, if you like, and I'm not going to criticise them for doing that... it was not a lie," Mr Bridges told media today. 

The National Party previously had a page on its website asking signers to "add your voice and stop NZ signing the UN Global Compact on Migration".

"This 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," it says. 

The pact aims to  increase global cooperation over migration issues and to improve the management of migration  at all levels. 

"We want a situation where New Zealanders can determine our own migration foreign policy settings from here, not some UN body,"  Mr Bridges said on TVNZ1's Q+A last December .

"It is making a case where legal and illegal migration effectively mean the same thing," he said.

Yesterday, a National spokesperson told 1 NEWS the petition was started in December last year and was archived "some weeks ago, well before any of the recent tragic events in Christchurch". 

"As part of our normal web maintenance, pages on our website are routinely archived after the completion of a petition."

However, the petition was in fact taken down last Friday. 

"I had understood that some weeks ago it was deleted as a matter of routine archiving, what in fact happened I've learned this morning was that a junior staffer was incredibly emotional on Friday night and took it upon themselves to delete it. We didn't know that until this morning," Mr Bridges said today. 

When asked if that was the right decision, Mr Bridges said, "I don't know".

"I think the reality is we're not going to be critical of it because it's a junior staff member, very emotional. I think New Zealand's emotional given what we're seen.

He said the petition would not be going back up onto the National Party website.

"Fifty people died on Friday and this hasn't, with the greatest respect, got a blind bit to do with it."

Mr Bridges said the petition was about "New Zealand making its own laws".

"If you look at our immigration position I think we've got the strongest pro-migration position across the Parliament". 

Mr Bridges rejected any notion that National Party may have mainstreamed extremist views on the migration pact.

"That is wrong, that if offensive, there is only one person who is responsible for what happened on Friday. That's an evil perpetrator who slaughter 50 people."

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