Catchpole Brent: Border Security Bill — First Reading 
Catchpole Brent: Border Security Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6829] 
BRENT CATCHPOLE (NZ First) 
: The intent of this bill has merits and New Zealand First will support this legislation going to the select committee. Our border security is very important and any effort to strengthen that security will gain our support. The purpose of this bill is to amend the Customs and Excise Act and the Immigration Act in order to enhance border security and improve the information processes of the New Zealand Customs Service and the New Zealand Immigration Service. The improvement of information available for tracking the movement of people prior to their arrival using advanced electronic information about arrival and departure passengers craft and crew—provided that it is used correctly—will surely provide an additional screen against those posing a threat to our people. 
New Zealand First’s major concern is that there is no record of many of the people who have already arrived in New Zealand. The Minister of Immigration has no idea how many people have arrived in the last 12 months. I refer to the previous bill just debated in this House—the Immigration Amendment Bill (No 2) and its big sister the Immigration Amendment Bill. The immigration figures used by the Minister Lianne Dalziel in support of those bills bear no resemblance to the figures she has used previously to deflect New Zealand First’s argument for a reduction in the number of immigrants coming into this country. The select committee must examine the contents of all three of these bills to ensure that they are completely compatible and to take into account the continued failure of the Minister of Immigration to account for current immigration and the real purpose of a number of the people coming into this country. New Zealand First has serious concerns with regard to the immigration aspect of this bill and asks that the select committee examine it very carefully. 
Enabling Customs to access databases held by travel operators in order to search for information about travel additional to that provided under advanced passenger information might well contravene the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act but it might also result in members of the public refusing to provide operators with travel information. I refer particularly to the information provided to the travel industry and travel agents. The select committee should also look at those processes to make sure they are compatible with existing law. 
I would now like to look at the amendments relating to the Customs and Excise Act—in particular at those dealing with the security-of-supply chain. The Government’s briefing paper indicated that a key driver to this section is the ability of New Zealand to respond effectively to the United States container-security initiatives. Exporters may consent to the application of a Customs seal to export packages including containers or enter a Secure Exports Partnership scheme with Customs. Both of these mechanisms are voluntary on the part of the exporter with benefits accruing such as improved protection from pillaging. 
This information is in the papers we received from the Government just prior to this reading of the bill. 
The system and this bill as it stands do not take into account the new bioterrorism import rules of the United States. Under that country’s Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires the owner the operator or the agent in charge of foreign facilities to submit a registration with the FDA including the name and address of each facility at which and the trading name under which the registrant conducts business and the categories of foods handled by those facilities. This means that each New Zealand packer will have to register separately for each exporter and supplier obtaining a unique registration number for each individually. In other words all packing houses will have to register with the Food and Drug Administration all the growers and suppliers they receive goods from and they will be required to provide this information prior to shipping to the USA. They will have to have a separate registration for every exporter they use. All trucking operators carrying export goods will have to register. Customers clearing product in the USA will incur extra costs and this can only affect growers’ returns. 
The preamble to this bill already acknowledges that it will increase compliance costs for businesses but I am certain that the Government has not considered the additional compliance cost overall and the ultimate effect it will have on our exports as a whole. The select committee must consider the additional requirements of our trading partners ensure that we minimise the overall effect on our exports and work with the industries to ensure that New Zealand exports are not adversely disadvantaged. To allow our exports to be disadvantaged will result in us being uncompetitive in the marketplace and if we are not very careful and if this bill does not get it right New Zealand may find itself shut out of many markets. Earlier this year we were shut out of markets because of our actions. Let us not add to that by adding problems within this bill. I ask whoever is going to handle it in the select committee to make sure they examine these aspects and the aspects of all our trading partners to make sure we do have it right.