Wagner NickyHon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I am delighted to be speaking on this Customs and Excise Bill. I'm particularly pleased because back in 2014 when I first became the Minister of Customs we started work on this bill and it's taken all this time to get here. I'm not surprised that it's taken all this time because it is an extremely large and extremely complex bill and the New Zealand Customs Service has done an enormous amount of work working with stakeholders working with the public and really coming up with practical sensible ways to reform the legislation. It is easy to forget that New Zealand customs is 178 years old. This bill that we are debating today updates the 1996 Act but also it amends Acts that have been previous. Some parts of it are 50 years old and some of it is even 100 years old. But the really interesting thing about this job is that although the new bill modernises and it streamlines process it doesn't change the principles the values and the duties of the New Zealand Customs Department and it doesn't change the powers and obligations. It does simplify update and modernise and it tries to provide flexibility for future changes in technology and business practices and to also find tools to combat illegal activity and that's the key issue. Willie Jackson the speaker before me was talking about balance. This is a balance about how we protect New Zealand and New Zealanders while preserving the privacy of travellers and businesses. So the whole key to this is to make the border processes as simple easy and cost-effective as possible for legal goods and passengers while making it as difficult as complex and as expensive as possible for illegal operators and the trick of course—and this is the hard thing for customs—is to identify the difference between the two of them. As I've said New Zealand customs worked very closely with stakeholders and businesses. Really this is about making the whole process of managing our borders more efficient and more effective because we know that that's important in terms of economic growth and in terms of trade. But one of the issues that we've been discussing tonight which I'd just like to traverse is the issue of e-devices. The vast majority of this bill is uncontroversial but we did have a significant discussion about e-devices. Now the interesting thing about e-devices is that these are the things that we carry as passengers—or they could actually be in cargo—across the border. Customs powers in the past were that they could look at any bit of documentation and anything that you had in the baggage coming across the border so theoretically they have the right as of right to look at an e-device. But this is why we had to look at this Act because what people keep on their e-device is much more than what they might have carried in their suitcase. They could have carried documentation in their suitcase or they could have carried information in their suitcase and in the past the Customs Department would have rifled through that documentation but an e-device has personal things as well as the information that might be relevant to customs. So although under the past Act—the 1996 Act—New Zealand customs had the right to look at an e-device in this bill we have actually put in two thresholds and these thresholds are to protect the privacy of people for their own information that might be on their e-device. So the first threshold is that a customs officer must have reasonable cause to suspect"—reasonable cause to suspect—that the passenger who's carrying the e-device has committed a relevant offence. It can't be any old offence. It has to be a relevant offence to what customs is looking for so it will be export import child pornography—some of the relevant offences that customs is responsible for. So the first level to make an initial look at an e-device is they must have a reasonable cause to suspect offending. If when they go through that first look at the e-device they find information that leads them to have "reasonable cause to believe"—reasonable cause to believe—that the passenger is actually offending then they can do a full search. So what's actually happened in this stage—[Bell rung] Mr Chair just to finish this—just to make it clear. So what's actually happened in this clause of the bill and it's clause 207 of the bill is that customs has actually given up some of its powers—powers that it's had for 178 years—and to look at new technology has put in a threshold to protect the legal traveller through our borders. So I think this a good compromise. Customs has had to take a step back and put that threshold in but I think it's a good compromise and I support the option."