O'Connor Damien: Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
O'Connor Damien: Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:669;Page:16234] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 That was a full and comprehensive speech from the Minister for Courts and I think she summarised well the main points of the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill after its report back to the House. I also thank the Justice and Electoral Committee because in my reading of it it has made a couple of changes here— 
Grant Robertson 
: Pretty fundamental. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: —fundamental changes which have made a huge difference to the bill.  
The bill which I made a brief speech on as it came through the House in its first reading had not been properly scrutinised. I think we underestimated what it was possible to do in the bill. In the end it was kind of a classic Tory piece of legislation really. On one hand the Government had omitted the legal obligation for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in collecting information to transfer it back to the Customs Service but on the other hand it said that the objective of the whole bill was coordination collaboration and more effective border management. Well if one leaves out something as basic as that it raises the question as to how good the bill was when it was originally drafted or what the intention was.  
The other thing that was included in the bill—and the select committee has astutely changed this—was the provisions on information and information sharing. What Auckland International Airport did was to expose itself completely at the select committee because if there is one organisation that is an absolute monopoly and that has abused that monopoly position time and time again—and quite frankly there does not seem to be any hope of anyone pulling it under control—then it is Auckland International Airport. Almost 80 percent of the people coming into this country—[ 
Interruption 
] That is right; ask Air New Zealand what they think of Auckland International Airport. That is right. Well Auckland International Airport said that it wanted the information from people coming in on the planes because it wanted to share that with the retailers. 
Hon Nanaia Mahuta 
: With the who? 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: The retailers. The retailers at the Auckland International Airport are a tightly controlled bunch because with the way it is set up it is the biggest rort in the country. Good luck to them but most would say that under the Commerce Act and under the current arrangements in New Zealand it is a bit of a rort. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: You have to walk through them to get to the customs. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: In fact it is almost impossible to get in and out of customs in New Zealand now without knocking over at least 10 bottles of gin a carton of cigarettes and all the perfume because one is forced to go through the retail area. To be fair it is a model used around the rest of the world but we seem to be copying all the worst things. Anyway the point is that this information rather than being gathered for biosecurity reasons—[ 
Interruption 
]; thank God I am deaf and I cannot hear Paul Quinn—and for true border security reasons the priority was that it would be passed back to the retailers at Auckland International Airport so that they could make more bucks from people. The select committee—and I do not know whether that member was on it; probably not because it made a good decision here—astutely said that that was going beyond the pale. That was going too far. 
The objective of this legislation is to gather information so that we can improve the border management system in this country. The objective is not to improve the retail sales of Auckland International Airport. It is still possible for that to happen if the Minister undertakes an extensive consultation process. At least the safeguards are there and it is not the quick-fix solution that could have been possible had the bill passed through the system without amendment.  
There are a couple of good things in the bill and one of them concerns biofuels. The definition of biofuels was unclear for some people such as fuel manufacturers and the fact is that now people if they are as innovative as we hope they will be in the future are producing their own biofuels for their own use and they will not get caught up in paying the excise on that. That is a very good incentive. As I was not a member of the committee I would like someone to answer this question: did consideration of that exemption go to individual farmers who in my view in the very near future through bio-digesters will be producing their own biofuel to run their farming operations? There is a pig farmer in the country doing it now but there will be dairy farmers doing it in the very near future. The question is: should the Government consider or did the select committee consider whether they too should have an exemption from the excise? I personally would support it. I think Labour would support that because it really does start to make smart use of methane which otherwise would be expelled into the atmosphere— 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Bio-diesel. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: Bio-diesel—you name it.  
I say there will be smart farmers who within 5 years will be completely self-sufficient in energy production and utilisation. Farmers have the ability to do that if they are given the right incentives. The select committee in its wisdom saw that incentives should be in place for domestic users and producers. The committee should perhaps have gone one step further although perhaps its members had a directive from the Minister. The bringing in of some coordination at the border is something that the next Labour speaker the Hon Nanaia Mahuta initiated while she was Minister. I am privileged to be able to speak before her. She will give a far more interesting and informative speech than mine but there are a couple of key points that I thought I should make.  
She was the Minister when these things were initiated and I am sure she will be pleased to speak on the bill. Coordination and collaboration is a must in terms of joint border systems. I suspect that one of the things that might emerge from this in the not too distant future is payment by the tourism industry for some of the joint border management systems. Indeed it should not be forgotten that the previous National Government attempted to implement a border charge and failed because it did not conduct a proper consultation. I put on record my assertion that the National Government will put up the proposal in the very near future that the tourism industry should indeed pay part of the joint management outcomes. I am not going to get into the debate here but it should be ready for that coming down the track.  
I will not say too much more other than that Labour supports the bill coming back to the House. It is progress. It allows for better technology and better coordination of the joint border agencies. We should not forget that there are a number of them such as the Ministry of Agriculture of Forestry which of course runs Biosecurity New Zealand the Aviation Security Service which runs the security side of it and the Customs Service the Police and the Immigration Service. The coordination has not always been what it should be. This bill will ensure that information is passed between those agencies and the amendment that the select committee brought into place ensures that the information that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry gets goes back to the Customs Service. It was a more than minor omission I would say in the original drafting of the bill. I congratulate the select committee on doing that. I cannot help but applaud the committee for providing better incentives for biofuel production.  
There is a whole list of little things that the bill also does but I will not run through them all other than to say that Labour welcomes this bill back to the House.