Customs and Excise Amendment Bill Tariff Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Customs and Excise Amendment Bill Tariff Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8232. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Customs and Excise Amendment Bill 
Tariff Amendment Bill 
Third Readings 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister of Customs) 
: 
 I move  
That the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill and the Tariff Amendment Bill be now read a third time 
. Given that it is only a few minutes since I gave my second reading speech on this legislation I have decided to bail out of my prepared third reading speech save the House a lot of pain and misery and just cover again what I think are two or three key points. 
The biggest part of this legislation is the implementation of the SmartGate technology which I am proud to announce. I have seen the kiosks at Auckland Airport. They are in we have been testing them and they are done in lovely black and grey with the silver fern on them. New Zealand and Australian e-passport holders will be able to come through the gates from 3 December when we launch this stuff at Auckland Airport and early in the new year we will be implementing them at the airports in Christchurch and Wellington. It means that ordinary citizens—good-quality people; New Zealanders and Australians with nothing to worry about—who are travelling across the Tasman Sea with their families and so on will be able to walk up to these machines bang their passport on and get their facial recognitions confirmed. The gates will open through they will go and they are down straight to the customs hall that much quicker. The reason for that is these machines can work quicker than humans. As I said in the Committee of the whole House they have a lesser error rate. But more important we want to free up the very very good customs officers who I am terribly proud to be the Minister of to go about and do their job that they do so well; that is to find where the really serious offenders are where stuff is being hidden and go after it. 
I never cease to be amazed at just how under attack we are at our border. I was at the mail centre the other day with customs and I saw something that literally took my breath away. It was a beautiful little pack for a baby. It had beautiful baby toys some baby oil some baby powder bottles and it was all decked out beautifully. It was sealed and had a lovely card from a grandmother to her loving granddaughter wishing her well. I looked at it and said: “So what?”. The customs officer said that one bottle was talcum powder and the one beside it which was absolutely exactly the same was pseudoephedrine. Somebody had completely replaced the entire contents and resealed it. If one looked at it one just could not tell. But we had a particularly vigilant customs officer who after having looked at scans and X-rays and so on thought the powder densities were slightly different. After some checking was done he or she got it. That war goes on every day. We just finished a big operation that they were dealing with. That is what I want customs officers to be freed up to do and that is what this legislation will do by allowing electronic machinery to process people. 
There are quite a lot of minor amendments to provisions that were really quite silly. One example is that a person could not be arrested if he or she were not still on the aircraft or the ship. It is quite silly; if a person makes a jump customs officers have to get the police to do the arresting. The amendments tidy up some quite silly stuff such as giving customs a 7-day period to track and trace somebody. It is a good bill. I again thank all members of the Government Administration Committee for being as cooperative as they were and for doing a very good job of tidying it up. I think we clarified earlier on the reason for one of my Supplementary Order Papers. It was to make sure that some technology did not have to have a human equivalent for example back-office processing but a passenger coming through will always have that alternative if he or she chooses. I commend the bill to the House. 
SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Mangere) 
: 
 As I did not spend very much time in my second reading speech on the Border (Customs Excise and Tariff) Processing Bill I will spend a bit of time highlighting the importance of our border. I will illuminate the community concerns around drugs that have gone through our borders share some concerns with the Minister of Customs and issue some challenges to him. 
It is no secret that over the past several decades our borders have changed significantly with increasing demands on border control agencies due to a number of factors. Travel passenger numbers have increased significantly. In 1993-94 there were I think 2 million passengers and now we are looking at 9 million people coming in and out during the past year. Our trade volumes all continue to rise as with each free-trade agreement New Zealand signs up to there are increases in the volume of imports and exports and increases in the number of transactions required to meet our international obligations. 
Another factor that threatens our borders arose from the disaster of 9/11 in New York. This and the subsequent Bush war on the Arabian region has meant that every country has been forced to stand in a heightened sense of alertness as the world comes to grips with the recognition that our borders are vulnerable to the rising tide of international terrorism which has become both frequent and more intense. Then in May of this year every New Zealander was shocked to hear that one of our own senior police constables had been shot dead in Napier and several other police officers and members of the public had been fired upon. I think that tragedy highlighted that illegal firearms are crossing our borders and are sold and exchanged here in Aotearoa. Most of us thought that that kind of stuff belongs in the movies out there in the USA or in Africa. Sadly that experience and other similar tragedies involving firearms show that our borders are not immune to illegal weapons passing through undetected. Our borders are also not immune to the ongoing criminal activities of counterfeit goods and products being smuggled through. We are also vulnerable to breaches in our biosecurity and to human trafficking. 
Perhaps the most significant factor for me is the very real threat that organised crime groups pose to our families and our communities from the illegal drug trade involving P or its precursor. These crime syndicates are becoming increasingly diverse and sophisticated in their methods of smuggling. In recent months the Customs Service working with the other border agency succeeded at intercepting significant drug hauls at our border. Earlier this month the Customs Service intercepted a drug haul with an estimated street value of up to $6 million and six people were arrested. In September the Customs Service seized 80 kilos of a precursor that would produce 24 kilos of P with a street value of around $20 million. I understand that this was the third-largest haul of its kind seen in New Zealand. An Auckland man was charged with this offence. In March a drug haul of about $4.8 million was intercepted and three people were arrested. 
I use these examples to illuminate the reality of the drug problem that is moving through our borders. It involves millions of dollars and people will kill to protect their money. For whatever reasons people in our community buy the drug. It is being sold all over New Zealand. It is a huge challenge to our law enforcement agencies and they face real dangers when dealing with this illegal trade. However it may be more alarming to many New Zealanders that despite the best efforts of the Customs Service and our border control agencies we are able to intercept only some illegal drugs crossing our borders. There is a strong indication that a significant volume passes through our borders undetected. The MP for Hunua raised the point in the post-Budget select committee meeting that he had a seen report that stated that only 20 percent of illegal drugs coming over our borders are intercepted. At that same meeting the Minister of Customs himself said he did not know how many drugs go through our borders unnoticed. He said further that he was resigned to the Customs Service not being able to inspect every package container boat or person that enters New Zealand’s borders. 
Communities throughout New Zealand that are aware of the misery that P and other related drugs cause on our streets and in our homes want to know that this Government will do all it can to make sure our borders are safe and secure from illegal drug-trafficking. We want to know that organised crime syndicates will be caught and that those responsible for this scourge on our society will be prosecuted. The public wants to know that the Minister of Customs is on the job doing something about protecting our borders. We want to know that the Minister is supporting our border control officials and that he himself has committed to stopping drug trafficking across our borders because when the drugs cross our borders they reach our communities. 
Labour is concerned that $2 million was cut from the Customs Service in a line-by-line review. We were concerned also when it was highlighted by Paul Holmes in his  
Q+A 
 interview of the Prime Minister on 11 October that the Government cut some $3.57 million from the border control budget. The New Zealand public wants to be assured that our borders are not under strain from lack of resourcing from this Government. That is the challenge that we are issuing to the Minister of Customs. 
JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) 
: 
 I rise to speak in the third reading debate on the Border (Customs Excise and Tariff) Processing Bill which has been divided. In his speech in the second reading Green member Keith Locke raised his concern with regard to free-trade agreements and the amendments contained in this bill. The Government Administration Committee looked very carefully at those issues and clause 23 of the original bill inserts a couple of new sections into the Customs and Excise Act to allow provisions contained in or prepared under international trade agreements to be incorporated by reference into regulations under the Act. This means that instead of repeating the provisions in the Act the regulations can simply refer to them. The provisions would be given legal force by the regulation but would not be set out in the regulations themselves. 
The objectives of the legislation are: to ensure the orderly administration of the law to modernise legislation to meet new technologies such as SmartGate to rectify legislative gaps and inconsistencies identified within border legislation and to fully meet our international obligations including very importantly those relating to cross-border crime. This legislation achieves those objectives. 
I thank the members who sat on the select committee for their good work. I also thank the officials who assisted the committee. I commend this legislation to the House. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 I am pleased to rise on the third reading of this legislation to assure the Minister that the Labour Opposition will support it for many of the reasons outlined by my esteemed and honourable colleague Su’a William Sio who is the Labour member for the seat of Mangere. 
We have touched on the importance of keeping our borders secure. The Minister who is responsible for the Customs Service works in close dialogue we hope with the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry which is responsible for biosecurity issues and the Immigration Service which of course is responsible for the flow and regulation of visitors as well as returning New Zealand citizens and residents. Working together in that partnership is critical not just for the security of our border but also for the economic growth of our country and the sense that everybody passing through the airport is a respected and valued member of our community. During the second reading I spoke about my experiences as Minister of Conservation and the importance of keeping our unique and natural environment as well as our agricultural industry safe from pests which is the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. 
I wanted to talk to the Minister a little bit today and to say that customs officials have a great responsibility put on them. They have to deal with a huge range of issues from drugs and other illegally imported substances to check that illegal goods are not being brought into the country to ensure that New Zealanders are obeying the law around those issues to keep our border safe and to make sure that commerce flows freely as well. 
I mentioned briefly in the Committee stage that I was privileged to be the Minister for Ethnic Affairs for 6 years and during that time concerns were raised with us not just about immigration but also about customs and the profiling of different groups of New Zealanders who were deemed to be more of a security risk whether that be through terrorism which is the issue that Mr Su’a William Sio touched upon or whether they were more likely to be at risk of being importers of drugs illegal firearms or other illegal substances. 
For an efficient use of any service there has to be profiling: who would be most at risk. In respect of drugs for example it may be young people who may have a very limited income and who may be coming from at-risk places—places where illegal substances are produced—and we would expect there to be greater scrutiny. Who could challenge that? But the issue I had to deal with as Minister for Ethnic Affairs was members of the Muslim community—some 50000 New Zealanders— 
Dr Ashraf Choudhary 
: 56000. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Our Muslim MP and my good friend and colleague Dr Ashraf Choudhary has just reminded me that 56000 Muslims live in New Zealand. They are New Zealanders who are respected members of our community. They are law-abiding honest Kiwis who like all the rest of us are just trying to get ahead in life. They actually come from over 80 different nationalities—from Bosnians to Somalis from Indonesians to Fijian Indians. Some of these people have felt as they have moved through customs and immigration that they have been profiled. I am sure that my good friend Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi who is an MP from the Punjabi community here would be able to attest to that in relation to Sikhs who of course are not Muslims. In fact the history of Sikhism has been to struggle against the Mogul Muslim rulers of India. It has been a long tradition and I guess that in the past Dr Choudhary’s ancestors fought against Mr Singh’s but they are good friends now as we would expect Kiwis to be. But because the Sikh community wears turbans they felt they had been profiled following the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers the London bombings and the so-called shoe bomber who attempted to blow up a trans-Atlantic plane. The Sikh community felt doubly outraged about this because it felt it had been labelled into a particular set of terrorists and that because they wore turbans there was a simplistic view that they somehow might be terrorists. 
I met with the Sikh community several times in South Auckland along with the Minister of Customs and the Minister of Immigration to see how we could address this issue. We heard many anecdotal stories of people who felt they had been profiled. We thought we had put the whole issue to bed then at Queenstown Airport a cabin crew member refused to admit a Sikh man wearing a turban on to the plane. That was some 2½ years ago. We hope that the Customs Service has now learnt from that experience and that all New Zealanders whatever their religion or ethnic origin are deserving of respect and that people should be challenged only where they pose a genuine and real risk to the security of our country. 
I want to use this opportunity to say to the Minister and to the House and to anybody who is listening or watching Parliament today that we in the Labour Party are totally committed to respecting all New Zealanders regardless of their ethnic or religious background. We urge the Minister of Customs as well as the Minister of Immigration and the Minister responsible for biosecurity and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry not to racially or religiously profile any New Zealander coming through our airports or any New Zealand resident because only people who pose a genuine risk to New Zealand should be intercepted. 
I also heard my colleague Su’a William Sio talk about the danger of drugs. I was in Tonga 2 weeks ago with Phil Goff the leader of the Labour Party. We went to see how Tonga and Samoa were dealing with the after-effects of the tsunami. At the meeting Chris Kelley the New Zealand police officer who is now in charge of the Tongan police force talked about the real issue of the network in the Pacific where illegal drug substances are being funnelled around the Pacific and into New Zealand and Australia. The challenge for our customs immigration and agriculture people grows ever greater. I am pleased to see that new technology is being introduced here. There will be an enhanced ability to search intercept and prosecute. These are all good measures. I am pleased to see the technology to facilitate more effective and efficient passenger flows because as well as these safety measures it is good for our country. 
I say to the National-led Government that these are good ideas. They have their genesis in much of the work we were doing when Labour was in power. We should not short-change these services by cutting their budgets. The Customs Service the Immigration Service and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry must not have their budgets cut. These new technologies—these good measures—will not work if the people are not there. Thank you very much. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill and the Tariff Amendment Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 112 
New Zealand National 58; New Zealand Labour 43; ACT New Zealand 5; Maori Party 4; Progressive 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 9 
Green Party 9. 
Bills read a third time.