Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. Look this legislation is a good example of how a select committee process can improve legislation. I hope everyone tuning in can see the good honest constructive work done by all parties in this Parliament to improve this legislation.When it was first entered we understood and agreed with the case that we had to modernise our 1996 customs legislation. Just think of the vast volumes of imports we have—you know fuel for example; the vast volumes of exports milk for example and the costs and burdens that apply on businesses. We want to make it easier simpler and more common sense. But there were some tricky problems with the legislation. One was the powers of customs agents to open someone's phone or laptop at the airport demand passwords and access it or threatening to. Now the problem of course was that under a previous legislation customs agents were doing it without any clear legal basis. In fact there were some quite serious legal questions raised over the legality of that practice. We know through the media that 1300 people were subject to what's popularly been known as digital strip-searches at the airport. Now this is something the Green Party was incredibly concerned about. We want to protect our privacy in society.Look I can quite plausibly imagine a situation where someone is honeymooning overseas. You do not want the customs agent demanding access to your phone and your pics. What we also know as was pointed out in the select committee process is if you're a hardened serious criminal you're not going to be carrying this stuff on your device and the threats the custom agents were offering of penalties—of course if you were a hardened serious criminal with damaging information on your phone you'd take the slap-on-the-wrists charges and keep your information confidential.So look we really want to acknowledge the members of the committee in particular the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for improving it. We think it has been significantly improved. The idea of a two-threshold test in clause 207 gives more clarity to those customs officers and more clarity and protection to those people who may face this at the border.When you go through the airport of course there is a significant amount of power that customs agents and other border enforcement agents have in that environment. So it's important that those rights and protections and protections to access that criminal information are further clarified in the legislation. We think the two-threshold test is a much better one. The idea of having proper evidential requirements for what they're suspecting is an important one. Basically we're giving some powers to the courts to make sure that we're not seeing it subject to abuse.The other big controversial issue was the information provided to other Government departments. By virtue of the fact that most people entering New Zealand come in via the airport particularly Auckland Airport a huge amount of information is captured. We've seen in other cases—such as the potential cannabis-growing operation the Switched on Gardener case from 2010—these powers to access information can be used by other enforcement agencies. So the role of the Privacy Commissioner here has been incredibly important. I note the improvements contained in this legislation.I want to thank everyone involved for their constructive substantive contributions because ultimately the select committee has delivered a much better product. Kia ora koutou.