Ardern Shane: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
Ardern Shane: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) — Third Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:7800] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 I know that when we are totally in support of a bill—as the National Party is in this case—and when we have to do the work of the Queen’s honourable Opposition and we are able to do it to the extent that the Minister Nanaia Mahuta feels the need to respond to it in her address then clearly we have been successful particularly when it is damn difficult to find something to pick holes in. 
I say at the outset that National does totally support the moves within this bill. I thank the Minister for the explanation she gave earlier on. But I ask the Minister whether during the process when the bill was brought to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee on 1 August last year and when officials were giving advice to the committee proper consideration was given to the fact that there has been massive growth in this country not only in trade in the conventional sense but also in tourism by a whole range of different vehicles. 
I can do no better than to hold up an article in the  
New Zealand Herald 
 on 12 February headlined “Cruise ships to bring in $9 million in a week” which stated that the number of cruise ships arriving in New Zealand in one go will put enormous pressure on our customs staff at the borders. I hasten to add that customs staff do a brilliant job. I congratulate all of those who may be listening tonight on the work they do. But this will put enormous pressure on them. One cannot help but wonder whether under this Government customs staff will be adequately resourced to carry out that work. Certainly there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that at both the Auckland port and Auckland airport those resources are severely under pressure. One only needs to look at the statistics to see that 239 new incursions in biosecurity have come into this country over the last 5 years. One can soon understand that those resources are being severely stretched. 
So I say to the Minister of Customs: yes this is a whole of Parliament issue; no it is not a political football. Certainly it represents “New Zealand Incorporated” and a whole-of-border approach should be widely supported by the Parliament. But have the Minister and the Labour Government taken full advantage of the opportunity that was presented to them? I suspect not. I say to my colleagues I am sure that is not the case. 
I welcome the opportunity to discuss the fact that cellphones and text messages and such like will no longer be allowed at the borders—particularly as they have been used in drug trafficking which we know has been a growth area for our border control in recent years. I also welcome the fact that those who are suspected can be detained for a longer period of time. If it is a potential medical issue that length of time will hopefully be long enough to establish how big a threat they are to the country. If they are deemed to be a threat then they can be detained for a longer period of time. I thank the officials for the work they have done on that. 
The amendment in clause 8 in regard to prohibited goods is clearly a sound move. There is a lot of activity now in tradable goods that are hard to identify amongst normal trading goods as potential ingredients for weapons of mass destruction or drug manufacture. So that is a good move. 
The Queen’s honourable Opposition can find no more to criticise the Government on in this bill so on that I will finish my speech. I congratulate those involved in the select committee process and welcome the bill to the House.