Browning Steffan: Customs and Excise (Border Processing—Trade Single Window and Duties) Amendment Bill Biosecurity (Border Processing—Trade Single Window) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingsText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Customs and Excise (Border Processing—Trade Single Window and Duties) Amendment Bill Biosecurity (Border Processing—Trade Single Window) Amendment Bill — Third Readings[Sitting date: 20 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16937. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green):I rise to speak on the third readings of the Customs and Excise (Border Processing—Trade Single Window and Duties) Amendment Bill and the Biosecurity (Border Processing—Trade Single Window) Amendment Bill.Just following what has been said by Labour we have done a fair bit of research on this because we were alerted to the problems with IBM and the Customs Service in this new process. If you go back to 2010 when it was first mooted and when I have the first information from the Customs Service’s answers to the select committee were that prime vendors may not provide the entire solution as requested in the Joint Border Management System request for proposal and/or the price may not fall within budget expectations. Very early on they were seeing that there were some problems. It did say that full implementation of the system was expected to take 4 years with the first parts of the system becoming operational in 2012. So full implementation should be here with us right now and it clearly is not.The Customs Service moved on to say on another date 14 June 2011 that its resources are under pressure as it delivers the Joint Border Management System digitally enhanced systems and SmartGate technologies. It just kept going on with one thing after another. One was that industry stakeholders may not contribute to the development costs to the level expected. Of course they could not. They would not and should not be expected to pay for a muck up by the Customs Service agency itself. It says IBM has borne the costs of remedying defects but it has nothing definitive on the cost of changes and the modified functionality. So it was a little bit at sea on where it was headed to.Then I note the public relations part comes in—“How are we going to manage? How are we going to do damage control over this?”. So it contracted a senior communications adviser to manage communications for the development and implementation of the Joint Border Management System. That happened it said around June last year. It had always had five staff before then and now has seven. The new adviser’s role is one of the seven. So was that to manage communications to the customers to the people who need an efficient service or was it part of the smoothing over of a problem like the one the Government effectively had with Novopay—although maybe it did not understand that then—a Novopay in the waiting?There was certainly stuff that it wanted to smooth over as this ongoing process was completed. “Tranche 1 of the JBMS capital project will be completed during 2013/14. The ongoing annual operating expenditure requirements to maintain and support the JBMS are still to be finalised.” That—I am just going slowly towards the present—has faced delays delays delays and we still have them. February 2013—it announced a delay until July. Early June—the release was delayed further until August. Existing systems were to be kept functional until 2015. Then of course we heard that that was a useful means to make sure that all of the system was working and it was all intentional and the like but it is clear there has been some major problem with it.We come into more recent times. Further the Auditor-General’s office says CusMod is ageing and becoming more difficult to maintain. So it is costing more because it is ageing and it is not working like it was originally intended to. The Customs Service assesses the risk of a 48-hour failure of CusMod at 15 percent with a 5 percent risk of a failure for up to 10 working days.By the way we just heard that it takes only a few seconds to get this process the information that a customer might want done. And hey the intention of this legislation is very very good and thus taking those few seconds once you have loaded up everything is fantastic apart from waiting days and more sometimes to get things approved and through. So that is all very good but this system is clearly not working. When it is working it is working for those big companies that it has been trialled on. The trials have worked and it seems to be fine but the rest of the players have not caught up with it.So those are parts of the problem with the system. Novopay has been mentioned and I think when we see the case that no doubt will come up against IBM maybe some more truths will come out as to how much of a muck-up this really has been. Then we may also find out when this system will actually be implemented at its fullest.So as I have said before the Green Party is supporting this legislation because we know that the intent is very very good. It would be remiss of me not to mention the biosecurity aspects of it. That is what we are really hoping will get some marked improvements because even in the last 2 or 3 weeks we have had more incursions noted that are breaking through into different parts of the country because something has got through our border. The Green Party is looking to improvements in this system and through the Ministry for Primary Industries and biosecurity and we note that there are some. There are some more staff being brought back on and some more dogs being trained.We need massive improvements to biosecurity. We hope this system can be implemented in a way that is totally effective and will make sure there is a significant reduction in incursions through good information smart systems a smart approach at the border and biosecurity. They are costing this country millions and millions. I see even today in Fairfax another story about theileria and the cost to a farmer in conversion. It is a huge cost even to individual farmers let alone the economy of this country.This system needs to be very functional very soon and we need to have very effective results from it. The Green Party will be supporting this legislation. Thank you.