Hayes John: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hayes John: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 27 February 2007. Volume:637;Page:7712. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I rise to support this bill because it will provide more effective and integrated border management for our country. In rising I commend the head of the Customs Service Martyn Dunne for his leadership in this exercise and generally for the outstanding results he delivers from his department. It is a particularly important department and it has direct relevance to the people in my electorate in the Wairarapa. 
The work of the department impacts on trade flows and the movement of people. Having been associated with issues around the illegal movement of people I would just like to comment on a couple of elements of the bill. One of the changes introduced through the bill will require that people arriving in or departing from New Zealand are not allowed to use any sort of electronic communication equipment in a customs area. That means that people will not be able to get on the phone or use computers BlackBerries or other things to coordinate excuses for activities that customs people might want to ask about. 
The other issue is that under this bill people will now be able to be detained by customs officers for up to 4 hours when either departing from or arriving in New Zealand. That is particularly important. People may come in and the person at the border may say: “I think you have got an infectious disease.” and that provision gives time for a doctor to be brought in to check people out. It also gives the border control people an opportunity to check police records to determine whether warrants are out on a person who is at the border. It also enables checks to be made on whether people have been endangering or threatening to endanger the life health or safety of a person or group of persons. We can think about the relevance of this when we think of some French travellers who may have been detained for rather longer at our border in relation to the  
Rainbow Warrior 
 affair. Giving this extra power to customs officers is I think a very good lesson that has come from that process. 
Just to comment quickly on other elements of this new bill I think it is really important that we have clarified the opportunity for the Customs Service to interdict vessels that are between 12 and 24 miles offshore. At the moment the law is unclear. I think it is particularly important that we do clarify that. If a boatload of illegal immigrants is coming into this country the further from our border we can deal with them the better. I wholly support that provision being included under section 32C inserted by clause 6. 
Search warrants may now be exercised by a customs officer to immediately detain and search a person for dangerous items. That is particularly important in cases where people have things hidden from view. I also think it is important too for the Customs Service to be able to retain or seize unlawful travel documents and goods. People test our borders every day and it is in the interests of the whole community that we keep people under decent control and at a distance—so that in the case of some people we can recover documents that may have been flushed down toilets on aeroplanes when people arrive at our border and demand to be treated as refugees. 
I come back to another issue. The department is engaged in the collection of a tax which is a quite normal thing on the part of a Labour Government. In this case it is an excise tax. Although I personally would like us to be rid of this arrangement which handicaps people like winegrowers in my electorate it is inevitable that we at least have to do the best we can by the department. From the point of view of this bill we are now going to shift the collection date from March to July. That means the Customs Service has a bit more time to get its paperwork in place. When this tax is levied on hard-working people in this country it is levied automatically on the basis of inflation-rate adjustments so we are giving the department more time to process cost of living orders and exchange rates in relation to the excise tax that is collected upfront from our winegrowers. I think that is a useful development even if we are unable to get rid of the tax completely. 
I now come back to the issue of export regulations which my colleague Mr Locke has raised this evening. A balance has to be drawn. Mr Locke’s comments take me back to a period when I recall having to write to one Maire Leadbetter on behalf of our Ministers. She assailed the Government and wound up its process over many years trying to prohibit the export of a New Zealand - made product called the Mere Mortar Calculator. This was an entire exercise in trying to be obstructive from the point of view of a company earning foreign exchange. More important the calculator enabled one to lob a mortar shell far more precisely than by any other mechanism. If one was trying to protect human life in a difficult situation one could use the Mere Mortar Calculator to target buildings or other pieces of capital infrastructure and avoid hitting populations indiscriminately. I personally felt that this was a very good product that needed to be protected and I can assure Mr Locke that the product was marketed and that New Zealand earned foreign exchange as a result of it. 
Finally I confirm that National fully supports this bill. I think that the Customs Service amongst most of those agencies that report to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee gives better value per dollar of taxpayer money spent than any of the other agencies with which we engage. It is a $100 million department; it sticks within its budget; it does not ask for outrageous increases; and it is constantly innovative. It works very closely with the World Customs Organization which has 169 or 170 members. The department is really well led good legislation is promoted and it is a pleasure to deal with. I reiterate our support on that basis. 
The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 90 in the name of the Hon Nanaia Mahuta to Part 1 be agreed to. 
Amendments agreed to. 
Part 1 as amended agreed to.