Ardern Shane: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Shane: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15900. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to rise and speak in favour of the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill. This bill has had a reasonably long gestation period but there are fairlygood reasons for that. I should perhaps highlight some of those but not go over all of the issues that the Minister for Primary Industries has already canvassed and perhaps give a little bit of background as to why the bill came about.The airports of both Hamilton which is in my electorate and Palmerston North which is nearby Mr McKelvie’s electorate my colleague to the left here were international airports in New Zealand. They had international carriers that were flying in and out of there and those carriers decided for commercial reasons I presume that they no longer wanted to visit those airports. Of course to be international airports they had to maintain all of the biosecurity civil aviation security and customs services. Of course that carried with it I guess an enormous cost to the State and obviously it was a waste of money if those airports were not going to become international airports again or were not going to become international airports for some time into the future.At the same time that that was happening because of the very work of the National Government—Hon Member: Ha!SHANE ARDERN: —because of the excellent work of the National Government substantial investment was going into new technology for both biosecurity and customs—in fact for the merging of some of that technology. Of course what that would have meant was that those airports would then need to upgrade to the new systems—new X-ray equipment new types of surveillance equipment etc.—and there was a lot of potential expense in that as well.So the motive if you like for a cost recovery programme was that if an airport decided it might like to become an international airport regardless of where it may be—and there are others that have suggested they might like to become international airports—Colin King: Invercargill.SHANE ARDERN: —Rotorua for example and Invercargill is another one that my colleague mentions—then obviously the airport itself in the commercial decision as to whether or not to do that would need to be involved in some of those substantial potential costs to the Crown. Further every time that does happen if that investment is not made to a level that it should be then obviously we expose ourselves to further biosecurity risk and as the Minister quite rightly pointed out and other speakers have touched on it biosecurity risk is a major threat to the New Zealand economy.I heard the previous speaker Darien Fenton say that the Auditor-General identified $30 million. Well I think it may have been $30 billion. It is more like $30 million a day—the likely cost of a foot-and-mouth outbreak for example. So it is something that would actually devastate the New Zealand economy. It reinforces as the Minister for Primary Industries and biosecurity said the importance of our primary sector to the New Zealand economy but it also reinforces the vulnerability of the sector to something getting across the border that could have that type of devastating effect.So the main provisions of the bill as the Minister pointed out are to recover costs in the areas of aviation security biosecurity and customs. On the basis that these issues have to be addressed using the best technologies the best systems and the best surveillance I think that this is a very sound measure brought forward obviously by a very competent Minister and a very sound Government in this fight against biosecurity and other airport or border-type issues. So I totally support the passage of this bill. Thank you.