Wagner Nicky: Biosecurity Amendment Bill (No 2) Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWagner Nicky: Biosecurity Amendment Bill (No 2) Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Readings[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3924. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs):It is with enormous pleasure that I rise to support these bills that will establish the border processing levy. I want to start by acknowledging the questions from the member Rino Tirikatene and say yes I am very happy take you to see the Joint Border Management System to see how successful it is and how well it is working. At the same time I am very happy to offer you a free complimentary full body search if you would like to take that up.New Zealanders have told us that they want a safe border. This levy will cover the costs of managing our border efficiently and well. It will cover the costs and only the costs of managing our borders. It is to protect us against illegal travellers and the illegal goods that they carry with them—drugs firearms or objectionable material. It is to protect us against biosecurity risks—things like fruit fly and didymo and of course the biggest threat of all to our economy foot-and-mouth disease. I think it is really interesting and I would like to point out to Mr Prosser that yes good biosecurity will protect our agricultural industries but it also protects our tourism industry. As we have heard when they had the foot-and-mouth outbreak in the UK it cost nearly £8 billion—which is about NZ$15 million—in terms of travel and tourism costs.I do want to add to the Hon Nathan Guy’s discussion in terms of the regions. The regions are the places that provide our agricultural exports. The regions are often where the people who operate our tourism industry live. So if we want to look after our regions we need to impose this levy at the border. I just want to say: let us forget about the semantics—tax or levy levy or tax. Forget about the semantics—this payment is all about cost recovery and only cost recovery at the border. And it is about choice remembering that only 42 percent of the people who go across our borders are New Zealanders. Every traveller will have to pay to go across the border. Everybody will have to pay the levy but they will pay it only if they choose to use our border services—only if they choose to use the services.Another question that Mr Prosser was asking me was how we are going to collect this money. The key issue here and it does reflect on what the member Jacinda Ardern was talking about is to make the collection of this border clearance levy as simple and as easy as possible. To do that we are proposing to use existing payment systems. The airlines would pay a monthly lump-sum payment to the Civil Aviation Authority and the cruise ship operators would pay the Customs Service. These funds would then be allocated to the Customs Service and the Ministry of Primary Industries. For other customers such as the people who travel on private yachts or aircraft the levy will be collected directly from them as they enter and depart New Zealand. Again the member Steffan Browning was concerned about the cost of managing the border for these private yachts. We do that now. We make sure that every yacht is processed correctly at the border.Finally for Mr Shaw I do not think he needs to be concerned about how we manage the intelligence at the border. There will be no changes to our normal customs procedures. We have to have a face-to-face check against their documentation and that also reflects why there is a cost going in and going out whereas only arrivals have to do biosecurity. Whether people are going in or out we have to have a face-to-face check at the border.So finally just to recap on why this levy is good for New Zealand and New Zealanders it is flexible and it is futureproofed. As traveller numbers increase so will the levy increase and interestingly enough that is not just about numbers. As these numbers are increasing there is a greater diversity of types of travellers who come across our borders; there is greater complexity at the border and those funds will gather so that we have the resources to manage that.We certainly want to make sure that our borders are efficient and effective. We do not want to see the sort of congestion that you might see in Los Angeles or Miami. It is fairer. This levy is fairer because it applies to the people who use the services and it applies to the people who provide the risk to us. Just like the system that we have for goods travellers will pay their way to get through the border.Finally it is fit for purpose. It is international best practice to have a levy at the border. The same principle is used right around the world. The only difference is that our levy will be more cost-effective at about $20 whereas Australia is at least double that the UK is over five times that and also Canada and the US. At the moment New Zealanders are in a lose-lose situation. They pay all the costs at our border for international visitors and then have to go and pay the costs at other people’s borders—lose-lose. So basically I really support this bill. It is good for New Zealand and good for New Zealanders. Thank you.