Macindoe TimHon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you Madam Chair. One of the problems with this debate of course is that five minutes goes all too quickly and we have a number of different entities that we had the privilege of hearing from during the course of our estimates considerations.I'd like to start at the end just so that I can give a bit of an acknowledgement to the New Zealand Antarctic Institute because they do fine work and quite often they get overlooked in this particular debate. They're a Crown entity established under the Act of 1996 to ensure that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are protected valued and understood. I do want to acknowledge while the Minister of Defence is in the chair that they couldn't do their work without the huge support that they get from the New Zealand Defence Force. They are two entities that work very well together and do an extraordinarily good job.Antarctica New Zealand receives 97 percent of its funding from the Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade budget hence the fact that it's a very important entity for us to consider. And they are doing great work particularly with the modernisation of Scott Base which is vital to ensure that we have the very best facilities and equipment and accommodation down there. It's a pretty unforgiving climate particularly in the middle of winter and I am delighted that great work is being done there.Can I jump back while the Minister of Defence is in the chair to just say how much I appreciated the privilege of joining him earlier this year in going on a trip with himself; Commander Joint Forces New Zealand from New Zealand Defence Force; and some other personnel to visit New Zealanders who are deployed in the Middle East and South Sudan. And of course in South Sudan we were meeting with the United Nations mission there which was headed by the former Labour leader David Shearer. What a superb job he is doing and what a pleasure it was to hear how highly regarded David Shearer and his team are. Again it's just not possible to do justice to everything in this short call but I was really struck on that trip by how proud we may all be of the fine service of the New Zealand men and women in the New Zealand Defence Force. Their contribution punches well above the weight that you might expect of a small country and in every respect they are extraordinarily highly regarded. I know the Minister is very proud of them and with very good reason. I was too and I think that New Zealand is doing a tremendous job in international peacekeeping missions in the Sinai and so many other theatres of huge conflict over the years.Let me now jump in the remaining time to talk about the New Zealand Customs Service because I had the privilege of being the Minister of Customs back in the dying days of the previous National Government and I am a huge supporter of New Zealand customs. They are doing tremendous work.Let me put on the record for those who may be listening. They have three core functions: protecting New Zealand by reducing the risks associated with international trade and travel—and most of us have the opportunity to interact with customs as we go through customs at airports in particular—they promote and facilitate trade and travel by efficiently processing imports and travellers arriving into New Zealand—not so many people are aware of those but certainly those who are in business as importers and exporters are and I know that they are vitally dependent on the efficiency which is at a very high standard in the New Zealand Customs Service—and also the collection of revenue including duties excise levies GST on imports and fees. Most recently the Government has moved to I think balance the ledger by bringing tax on to low level goods from offshore because I know that many retailers in New Zealand had felt that they were at a competitive disadvantage and this was an issue that was certainly on my table when I was Minister and I acknowledge the fact that that has made some progress.I do want to acknowledge the leadership that was provided by the Acting Comptroller of Customs Christine Stevenson who took over in my time and was a very fine chief executive of customs. Particularly I want to acknowledge the work that customs does in a collaborative way with other agencies such as the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). They have the Joint Border Management System which is a joint initiative of customs and MPI focused on modernising and aligning their computerised border systems and producing data to identify risks and future trends. This is just so important because the threats to New Zealand's borders are becoming more and more sophisticated and it's so vital that those agencies are working together. Several work streams have come out of that initiative including the establishment of a joint border analytics team and the vitally important Trade Single Window system. And I had the opportunity to celebrate that advance during my time as the Minister.Two years ago a joint border analytics team was set up between customs MPI and Immigration New Zealand with the purpose to collect joint intelligence to support the work of the various agencies. I particularly want to acknowledge a great passion of mine: the tremendous work they do in intercepting drugs. There is a huge volume of drugs that are coming to our shores all the time. Customs does a fine job in intercepting much of it. Of course they can never stop all of it.