Ardern Shane: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Shane: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18504. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 Madam Assistant Speaker given your opening comments at the beginning of Parliament today that you wanted both humorous and erudite speeches I respect your call! I start off by saying that the National Party supports this Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) for a range of reasons that I am sure will be covered in the speeches following. First of all as the Minister just said the bill does three things. Forfeiture and seizure regulations will be amended as per the recommendations by the Law Commission and others and there will be an ability to appeal to the High Court and to the appeal authority within the Customs Service if something is seen to be less than acceptable by someone who may be before that authority.  
The second thing which I guess is probably the most important but which I am sure will not get the most debate is the ad hoc arrivals and departures. I think most people accept that something needed to be done in this regard because the Customs Service was left in a bit of a legislative vacuum with regard to the situation prior to the proposal today. Obviously with increasing air travel large airliners and sometimes an inability for customs to cater for three or four planes—747s—arriving all in one go the ability ad hoc as it were to shift them in adverse weather conditions to somewhere like Ohakea or Palmerston North for example if the jet is of a size that can land in those places is clearly sensible. The concern I have about that of course is whether the resourcing for biosecurity as well as for customs will ever be big enough in those destinations in that ad hoc circumstance to be able to cope with the volume that will suddenly be placed on facilities that are not normally required to carry out that efficient service.  
So that is yet to be tested. I know that the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee put some time into that. I was not a member of the select committee but I know that my National colleagues on the committee certainly scrutinised these things closely. So that is yet to be tested; I am not very anxious about it at this stage but it is an area that needs to be signalled as potentially of concern.  
The third area of amendment that the Minister touched on was the tighter control of exemptions for tobacco growing for personal use. I notice that the select committee members clearly did not entirely agree on this. In fact there was quite an unusual circumstance whereby on one of the Government’s select committees—a committee chaired by a Government member—the Labour members put in a minority report. That is not the norm as I understand it in a committee where the Government has a majority. For Government members to be putting in a minority report is quite an unusual circumstance. The only thing I can draw from that—and I am sure my colleagues who will follow will enlighten us as to how it came about—is that the agreed figure of 15 kilograms of tobacco per person that is allowed to be cultivated is about the consumption of some of the members on the committee in a week. 
So they clearly were not happy with that and the Labour members felt strongly about it and wanted that amount to be much higher— otherwise there would not have been a minority report from the Government on that. It is interesting and I will be interested to hear the debate from the Government members of course who will take a call and explain how they ended up with the Labour Party members having a minority report on that matter.  
I noticed that the Green Party also had a minority review about the exemption of 15 kilograms for personal use. I would probably guess that they were not keen on that quantity. I would give the Green Party the benefit of the doubt and suggest that it was probably trying to get the amount down rather than up. Clearly the Government was not—it was trying to get it higher. I am sure the National members brought some sensible sort of consideration to that.  
My colleague John Hayes points out to me that the committee is chaired by the very capable Martin Gallagher from Hamilton. Dr Wayne Mapp is the deputy chair and Taito Philip Field I am sure was rational at all times. Tim Groser of course would have been completely against tobacco growth and would have opposed it at every opportunity. John Hayes my good colleague from the Wairarapa is another person whom I know is an ardent protester against the use of tobacco. The only person whom I could see who buckled must have been the Hon Murray McCully and that would have brought about the exemption of the quantity of 15 kilograms.  
Going back to the original bill the weakness that was uncovered I guess in the forfeiture and seizure regulations by the Law Commission is one that has been around for some time. I understand based on some of the research I did prior to the debate that there have been some substantial examples of people who have felt that they have not been given a fair deal. But on the whole the Customs Service—and we must remember that the Customs Service in New Zealand is the oldest Government department—has a very proud record. It does not often feature in the media. It does not have a high profile which in itself says it is doing a good job.  
It is the oldest department. It was the first Government department set up more or less as a gatherer of taxes that was handed over to the Inland Revenue Department. The Customs Service is one of our most important departments in terms of maintaining the integrity of our sovereign nation. Some of the new technologies that are being developed for this department are very exciting particularly in the wake of the 9/11 event in the USA around terrorist activity. They are developed not only in the US I hasten to add but also in Europe and other places. They show some exciting opportunity not only for customs but also for biosecurity. I hope that going forward the Government will have the wisdom to adopt that latest technology and I also sincerely hope that there is an opportunity to explore further synergy between the Customs Service and Biosecurity New Zealand at our borders so we can accommodate particularly the ad hoc arrivals but not just the ad hoc arrivals but also the increasing volume of passenger flow with tourism and trade that we as a nation are experiencing.  
I want to give the Customs Service a bit of a bouquet because I have met with a number of its people. In fact I recently attended a ceremony here in Parliament where the Prime Minister presented a number of people with 50-year service medals which is not very common I have to say in most Government departments. Its staff turnover is one of the lower percentages in Government departments but there has been a concern around that—there has been a bit of a flight of institutional knowledge in recent times. Attracting and maintaining the institutional knowledge and also the expertise that is needed to run a department such as the Customs Service is absolutely essential not only for the safety of our revenue but also for our integrity and safety.  
So I close by saying that the Customs Service in general does a very good job. It is more or less apolitical. I doubt that we would ever get much debate in Parliament between parties as to whether the approach being taken is the right one. I wish I could say that with Biosecurity New Zealand; we cannot but maybe we will achieve that one day. At this point in time the Customs Service is one of those departments that does a very good job.