Two ministers of Internal Affairs have approved nearly 400 citizenship applications against the explicit advice of officials, over the past three years.

Figures released under the Official Information Act to TGIF Edition this morning disclose Labour’s George Hawkins, Rick Barker and Shane Jones between them approved 378 applicants for New Zealand citizenship, despite being warned by Internal Affairs officials that the migrants did not meet citizenship criteria and should not be approved.

In contrast, the ministers exercised the benefit of the doubt in the opposite direction – declining applicants despite official approval – in only nine cases.

The interferences show one in six individual submissions to the Minister of Internal Affairs were decided in defiance of departmental advice.

Staggeringly, 66 of those approved by the ministers had been declined by the Internal Affairs Department because they failed to meet the good character test. That means the applicants may have had serious criminal convictions or the department had other evidence that their applications or pasts were dodgy.