Tirikatene Rino: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15908. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Kei te pai.RINO TIRIKATENE: I am very pleased to add my contribution to the third reading of this bill the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill. We on this side of the House support this bill. We have supported this bill throughout. Like my colleagues I believe I spoke at the Committee stage of this bill which must have been over 2 years ago now. So I had to really reach back and think about what this bill was all about. But here we are nearly 4 years after it was introduced and we are on the home stretch. We are actually going to get it passed. It is a very reasonable piece of legislation and we do support it.We want to make sure that the Crown does not have to foot the bill for the processing costs of all international travellers and for all of the interactions that take place at our borders. It is fair for our airport operators to. Our main international airports are substantial operations. They are multinational listed companies. Some have substantial public ownership or local authority ownership. They are effectively public companies and I think it is fair that—given the investment that is required in terms of aviation security the New Zealand Customs Service and most important biosecurity—those big airport operators do contribute to non-routine processing in this case. We know that they are well-established operators and have been since they have been in operation so it is fair that they contribute their fair share towards those processing costs.I am very proud. I have heard contributions from around the House this evening about international airports in certain electorates and I am pleased to say that my electorate has the most international airports here in New Zealand. We have got Wellington Christchurch Dunedin and Queenstown so there are plenty there. Unfortunately I do not get Palmerston North which is Mr Lees-Galloway’s. I understand that it cut out a few years ago but hopefully it will come back.Iain Lees-Galloway: They’ll be back.RINO TIRIKATENE: It will be back. It will be back. There are plenty of international airports in my rohe. I am very proud of that. I have been around most of them. I have not actually done international travel through them but I know that it is very important especially to the South Island economy that we get our international travellers travelling to and from those international airports.I would also say that this legislation also encompasses new or re-established international airports. We have mentioned Palmerston North which will hopefully come back online very soon but we could also arguably—Iain Lees-Galloway: It still works; it just hasn’t got international flights.RINO TIRIKATENE: It does work and I understand that it does take the overflow and that when flights are diverted it still takes those international flights. So in a way you could say that it is still a type of international airport. It helps Wellington out every now and then.We could say that we are looking at the future and hopefully at the growth of our passenger numbers in our regions especially. But arguably there is another international airport depending on whom you talk to. I am talking about another amazing place in my great electorate and that is the Chatham Islands. The Chatham Islands is a very small community but they do regard the mainland as New Zealand and they are very much staunchly proud of the fact that they are Chatham Islanders. I thought that I would give that great community a little shout-out this evening. They do have big aspirations over there and hopefully—you never know—one day they might have an international airport there themselves.Getting back to this bill we do support it. We have seen a lot of innovations I guess in recent years in terms of processing. SmartGate is one of them as well as the advanced profiling of passengers who are coming through our borders. But we must not overlook the fact that you cannot beat having people on our borders having well-resourced border security especially our biosecurity system.Darien Fenton: Beagles too.RINO TIRIKATENE: Yes absolutely. I do not see many of them these days but we need to have those cute little but very very highly trained beagles that do the sniff test for illicit drugs or whatever other illegal items that certain passengers may be carrying.I do want to give a special acknowledgment to those fine men and women in our New Zealand Customs Service and the biosecurity service for the work they do. I say this in many of my speeches but they do defend our pā. They defend Aotearoa. They defend it from biosecurity incursions and those nasty bugs or whatever nasties they might be that might come in that could potentially decimate—decimate—our primary sector especially our export sector which we are so highly reliant on.So it is important that we do make sure that there is a well-resourced biosecurity service. We can benefit from technology but you cannot lose sight of the fact that we also do need well-trained and well-resourced people on the front line who do their job to protect our borders.I would also just like to pick up on Mr Prosser’s comment because I know he was talking about how my colleagues over here in New Zealand First are opposing the bill. That is regrettable but I do acknowledge Mr Prosser’s entertaining speech.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: It was another incursion.RINO TIRIKATENE: Indeed it was another incursion. I think Mr Prosser maybe needs to look back in history to the time when Auckland International Airport was sold and to the Minister—or one of the Ministers—at the time who actually signed off on that prospectus. That Minister was the Rt Hon Winston Peters. So that party has played a key part in terms of the privatisation of our international airports.Denis O’Rourke: That’s nonsense.RINO TIRIKATENE: It is a fact. I will table the prospectus of that international airport of which Mr Peters was the Treasurer at the time if I can get my hands on it. I recall these things because I was part of an army of lawyers at the time that was doing a lot of the legal work behind the scenes in that initial public offering.Denis O’Rourke: You need to give that a bit more thought. You need to research just a little bit more so you get your facts right.RINO TIRIKATENE: I am just saying that the Auckland International Airport float was actually during the time when the Rt Hon Winston Peters was the Minister who signed the prospectus.He was one of two Ministers who actually did that.But I digress—I digress. I want to get back to this bill. This is a very reasonable bill. It is a reasonable bill because we do not want these largely overseas-owned floated international airport operators to be getting a free ride off the taxpayer. I think it is fair—and I think that every Kiwi has a sense of fairness—that the operators should pay their fair share. We know that a lot of the operators are very profitable and a lot of those profits are going straight back to wherever their institutional shareholders come from whether it is the US whether it is Australia or whether it is anywhere around the world. So with the fact that they can generate their profits through the benefit of having to operate their airport and process all the travellers it is certainly fair that those airport operators have to pay their fair share.I would just like to make a final comment. I think that what could actually benefit our processing of international travellers would be to have a 10-year passport. I know that that was raised in front of a select committee today. I think Kiwis do deserve it. We need to revert back to the 10-year passport. It is a lot fairer on everybody. If you take 5 years really that 5 years is condensed to only 4½ years of actual use of that passport. It is an ever-increasing cost. I think that our good hard-working citizens out there who do want to travel should get a fair go and revert to the good old 10-year passport whereby they can get good passage around the world under our highly respected passports. That would be a great gesture. I know that it is something that this side of the House will definitely be looking into. That concludes my speech. Kia ora tātou.