The shocking situation revealed this week about the continuation of Dawn Raids on Pasifika and other alleged overstayers is as appalling as it is unsurprising.

It is appalling because as far as most people were concerned such raids stopped some time ago, and certainly should not have been continuing since the government’s formal apology in 2021.

It is unsurprising because it is one more example of this government’s failure to be able to manage policy change effectively. This had all the elements of the way this Labour government does such things, focusing on the appearance rather than reality. There was the carefully choreographed and highly emotional apology from the Prime Minister at the time, pushing all the right buttons with the carefully selected audience. But as with so many things, going back to the launch of Kiwibuild in 2018, there was no substantive follow-up, meaning that nothing really changed at all.

As the report of Michael Heron KC notes, the government assumed that following the apology Immigration New Zealand would get the message and cease Dawn Raids. For its part, in the absence of a formal directive to that effect from then Immigration Minister Michael Wood, Immigration New Zealand, somewhat obtusely, assumed that, following the theatre of the apology, it was still business as usual.

Wood’s apparent failure to properly advise Immigration New Zealand of the government’s expectations was another major failure of judgement on his part. Alongside the other errors of judgement he made regarding his personal interests disclosure, which led to his recent resignation from Cabinet, the immigration fiasco further dents his credibility as a competent Minister and a safe pair of hands. Twice now in the space of a few weeks, his inactions have caused the government major political embarrassment.

But Immigration New Zealand is far from blameless in this issue. Its wilful obduracy in ignoring the government’s apology – an extraordinarily myopic feat if ever there was one, given the publicity the apology received – and carrying on as before because it had received no specific Ministerial direction to do otherwise is unconscionable. It reinforces all the worst views about how bureaucracies behave when they think know better than their political masters. Those officials responsible for continuing to carry out Dawn Raids now need to be held accountable for their actions.

However, Immigration New Zealand’s stubbornness goes far beyond this issue and what they may or may not have thought about their Minister and the apology. During the thirty-three years I was an MP, immigration cases consistently topped by a considerable margin the list of issues that constituents came to see me about. Based on those experiences, I reached the conclusion that no matter what government was in power, Immigration New Zealand’s approach was always essentially racist. It was consistently more difficult to win cases for people from India, the Pacific, Asia, and Africa than it was for people from Europe, America, or South Africa.

Immigration New Zealand always seemed willing to help where it could people from “white” countries, whereas those from the “brown” countries were seen as potential overstayers (if they were seeking a short-term visa) or trying to beat the system through marriages of convenience, falsified qualifications, family reunification issues and the like. I dealt with many cases of people who had been through the most harrowing of circumstances and were seeking a new life in New Zealand, being dealt with in the most cavalier and dismissive way by Immigration New Zealand. These attitudes appeared ingrained, and it mattered not what government was in office, and whether it wanted to increase migration levels or reduce them. Immigration New Zealand just continued doing things the way it always had done.

That approach, which does not appear to have changed, explains, but certainly does not justify, why Immigration New Zealand has continued with selective Dawn Raids since the government’s 2021 apology. As one Pasifika community leader observed this week, Dawn Raids only seem to apply to people from the Pacific and Asia.

But, despite the clarity of the Heron report and its recommendations, and the government’s professed high dudgeon that Dawn Raids are continuing, the response has been prevarication. Both the Acting Prime Minister and the present Immigration Minister have decried Immigration New Zealand’s defiance of the 2021 apology but have stopped short of saying Dawn Raids should be made completely illegal.

Bluntly, they cannot have it both ways. They either endorse the principle of Dawn Raids, or they rule them out and legislate accordingly. The idea they can strike some middle ground which upholds Dawn Jacinda Ardern’s apology but gives room for Dawn Raids to continue in certain circumstances lacks credibility and smacks of the old “little bit pregnant” argument.

This whole saga is further evidence that as far as this government is concerned how things look and are presented is more important than what their actual impact might be. For them, it is far more important to empathise about a problem than to do something about it.