Hipkins Chris: Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:677;Page:476] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a brief call on the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. This is one of a number of bills. It seems to have been a bit of a theme for the last week or two that we are dealing with a number of bills that relate to better information-sharing between Government agencies and departments.  
I think that generally speaking that is something to be encouraged although one of the concerns I have had in the House this past week in dealing with a number of bills that relate to this topic is that I have not really got a sense from the Minister of Customs’ contributions that the Government has an overall plan and approach to information sharing. It seems to be being dealt with on very much an ad hoc basis rather than with a wider whole-of-Government approach to better information-sharing which was something that the Prime Minister talked about just a few days ago.  
I think that if we are going to be dealing with this issue of better information-sharing between Government departments—and it is coming up and recurring in a number of different areas—we need to get a sense of what the Government’s overall objective is here. There are a whole range of considerations: there are privacy considerations and there are considerations around whether Government departments should be using information that they have collected for one purpose for another purpose. I think the Parliament as a whole should be considering the wider principles behind these sorts of information-sharing arrangements rather than just dealing with them on an ad hoc one-by-one basis.  
I do have a few questions with regard to the specific bill itself. I was not on the Justice and Electoral Committee but primarily the first point that I want to talk about is around the cost of these measures. I understand that industry sources estimate that it could cost up to $200 million and that some of this cost will be recovered through the use of an import transaction fee which would apply to goods over $400 but may apply to packages valued at less than $400 and I wonder how that will be enforced and how that will be tracked. This is an issue that has been raised with me by people in my own electorate around monetary values of imported goods particularly where they are imported using the postal system and how we actually keep track of that. People can import goods above a threshold by dividing them up into smaller packages and importing them in a series of smaller packages. How is that traced? And will this information sharing that this bill is intending to put in place stop that from happening? There are wider implications from that than simply those of a customs nature.  
There are taxation implications. To give an example I have got a model crafts and hobbies retailer in my electorate who imports models—model aeroplanes for example—which the retailer is taxed on. Yet if somebody goes online and buys parts of these models one bit at a time and imports them they may get them all arriving at the same time but if they get them all in different packages they avoid paying tax. So the retailer who provides the comprehensive service and imports the whole lot all at once gets taxed on it whereas somebody who uses online technology to import it—[ 
Interruption 
] I am getting to the point—does not. My question is: will the information sharing that is proposed in this bill have any impact on that? As I say the implications are much wider than merely what would seem to be suggested by this bill. The import transaction fee that I referred to I understand will apply to items such as jewellery clothing and electrical appliances so potentially would it apply in the instance that I have just mentioned of somebody importing models and those types of craft items? That is something that it would be useful to get clarification from the Minister on.  
Overall the bill is a good one and I understand from colleagues who have been on the select committee that it was well examined by the select committee. The chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee is Chester Borrows and this is the first opportunity I have had to congratulate him in the Chamber on his elevation—a well-deserved promotion and long overdue in fact. It would be fair to say that in the short time that I have been in the House Chester Borrows is probably the best select committee chairperson that I have encountered notwithstanding the excellent chairmanship of David Parker of the Government Administration Committee— 
Charles Chauvel 
: How did you find your experience on Regulations Review? 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Oh and the Regulations Review Committee as well. It is very easy to forget.