Wagner NickyHon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs): The New Zealand Customs Service is the oldest ministry but it is one of the most innovative tech-savvy and forward-looking. Our job is to actively protect the border to manage and process passengers and goods across the border and to collect Her Majesty's revenue. We are planning to collect over $13 billion this year and that is in GST tariffs and excise. As the volumes of passengers and goods have increased across our borders over the last few years and look to continue to increase we are embracing new technologies like SmartGate which is particularly well known that is helping us to process those passengers—up to 5 million this year—and to process the low-risk passengers so that we can focus our officers on to higher-risk work. We have also got the Joint Border Management System and we use that to manage and process imports and exports. That has been particularly successful for the industry with 3.5 million transactions having gone through that process. It speeds up the registration of information from a 24-hour turnover to just minutes and it is available 24/7. Overall I think it is the embracing of this sort of technology that has allowed the Customs Service to be ranked by the World Economic Forum in its latest ranking as fourth in the world of 138 countries for enabling trade and sixth overall for the efficiency of the border clearance. We are aiming high. All border agencies—we work together and because we are a small exporting country at the bottom of the world we want and we need to have world-class border processing. Budget 2016 focused on managing risk at the border with about $18.5 million for export security initiatives and particularly to establish a secure trade lane between Australia and New Zealand. This of course will help clearance times and speed for exporters and importers from Australia and New Zealand. We have also mentioned that we have more funding for detector dogs. Detector dogs have been particularly successful in New Zealand. They are successful in detecting drugs but also money. Just recently we announced that they found $10 million worth of money coming across the border. So we are having another five teams which will take it to 19 teams and that will mean that we have good coverage right across the country. They are particularly useful for mail and fast freight which is increasing. We have also allocated $4.7 million to our modernisation and transformation of Customs Service operations at the border. This is all about increasing responsiveness and operational efficiency. One of the other areas that I think is really important which we are funding is outreach to small businesses. As a small exporting country we want to make the most of every opportunity for these businesses. Sometimes they need a bit of help to negotiate the documentation and the processes at the border so that they can make the most of our free-trade agreements. We are also signing a mutual recognition agreement with Australia. Again this is about working with the Australian importers and exporters so that we can have a faster process and a more efficient and cheaper process as well. The last bit of technology that I think is going to make a really big difference for us is our Joint Electronic Verification System. That is work we are doing with China's customs service. It is all about matching documentation as it goes across the border. Because we have preferential entry into China it is always very conscious that we say what we are and we are doing what we are doing. So this Joint Electronic Verification System will be able to match our documentation electronically and that will make sure that we get a speedier clearance and our exporters get their goods to market much more quickly and efficiently.At the end of this year I am planning to introduce a new customs and excise bill. The reason we are doing this is that the present Act is at best 20 years old but some of it is 50 years old and some of it is 100 years old. We are not making any major changes to the powers but it is all about modernising simplifying streamlining and making sure that our bill can accommodate new technologies and new business practices. We have worked very hard with stakeholders with importers and with exporters. The whole idea of this new Act is to make—