Fenton Darien: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFenton Darien: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15899. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARIEN FENTON (Labour): I rise to support the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill in its third reading. As the Minister for Primary Industries has said the aim of the bill is to enable the Crown to recover the costs of aviation security biosecurity and customs traveller processing from the operators of new or re-established international airports or international airports that sometimes request that travellers be processed in a non-routine manner. The Minister said in his third reading speech that this bill has had support from parties across the House and that is true. It is also true to say that Labour was involved in developing a similar cost recovery policy back in 2004. There has been a long process of working through these issues. What I found interesting though were the Minister’s comments about how biosecurity is a high priority for this Government given that this bill was introduced in September 2010 had its first reading on 16 September 2011 was referred to the Primary Production Committee and people were given just 1 month to make submissions. In fact in reading the submissions I saw that that was one of the complaints from submitters—that it was a truncated process. I know that there has been a lot of discussion but that was one of the complaints that were made.Again it gives rise to the question which we have traversed before of why this had to happen given that we are now finally reaching the third reading of this bill something like 4 years later. I do question the Government about that. But having said that we all know that biosecurity and customs services come at a huge cost to the Crown and any new international airport should have to pay some of those costs. We already have a high number of international airports per capita. Every one of those international airports requires a replication of biosecurity and customs services at an additional cost to the Government. Our international airports are in Auckland Hamilton Rotorua Wellington Christchurch Dunedin and Queenstown. That is a large number of international airports for a small country like our own.As I said we went through a process of proposing a similar cost recovery process in 2004. We were concerned about the time period and there was a big discussion about that. We do approve the move to lower the cost recovery period to just 2 years as happens under this bill. Although this bill is right to make new international airports pay their fair share of the costs of customs and biosecurity it is about time that the Government started paying fair attention to the issue of biosecurity. There has been an Auditor-General’s report quite recently and it had some pretty damning evidence in it that New Zealand is at risk of a major biosecurity threat because of the Government’s obsession with cutting costs and restructuring. We have seen under this Government a merging of departments and a shuffling of agencies. We have got mega-agencies—super-agencies—under the auspices of Steven Joyce and other Ministers who seem to think that shuffling deckchairs is a good way to look like they are doing something—like that old adage you know that when you do not know what to do you restructure and then it looks like you are actually taking some action.As part of that too of course under this Government there was a restructure in 2010 a restructure in 2011 and a restructure in 2012. I want to just pause here for a minute and pay tribute to the staff on the front line working in biosecurity the Customs Service and the Aviation Security Service who have been trying to do their jobs through all of these restructurings. They are now part of one ministry called the Ministry for Primary Industries. But what we saw during that period between 2008 and 2012 was a cut of 91 biosecurity officers and those dogs—those lovely little dogs that we see when we come through customs—Carol Beaumont: Beagles.DARIEN FENTON: The beagles—the beagles. They cut the number of beagles. I am sure that the member John Banks would have been unhappy about that because he talked about beagles too did he not? He liked beagles.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Was it one of those in the brown bag?DARIEN FENTON: Yes well that is true. I know that since then Nathan Guy was kind of forced to increase the number of biosecurity staff and has actually had some nice photo opportunities with little beagle puppies.Hon Nathan Guy: Clara. Clara was her name.DARIEN FENTON: Yes I saw that in the newsletter. But he was kind of forced to do that because of the risks to our biosecurity—the risks that we are seeing. But the truth is that during that period—Budget 2009—the Government cut $3.5 million from biosecurity over 4 years. Again in 2010 it cut a further $9.5 million over 4 years. So on average this is about $3 million a year from a vote that has around $180 million or $190 million to spend. Indeed the Auditor-General pointed out that there have been cuts in capacity in the appropriations from the years 2007-08 through to 2011-12. So we are looking forward to the forthcoming Budget Minister and we hope we will see some remedies around this issue. Of course in biosecurity almost every week now there is an incursion—Hon Nathan Guy: That was under Labour.DARIEN FENTON: Pardon?Colin King: That was under Labour.DARIEN FENTON: Almost every week under this Government there has been an incursion in our biosecurity. What the Auditor-General was warning about is that a foot-and-mouth outbreak could cost the country something like $13 billion but we are not ready for that. We are not prepared for that. So I hope again that the Minister took that report seriously and that we can look forward to some money in the Budget being put back into those restructured departments back into the staff. That would follow the recommendations of the Auditor-General again who was saying that there needs to be a lot more work done on supporting those staff on training on preparing for a major outbreak that could come any day—we just do not know.Of course what we do know is that Psa disease has had a terrible terrible impact on the kiwifruit industry. The researchers from Lincoln University estimate that by 2015 it will have cost the industry $410 million and approximately 1400 jobs. So the costs to the country are tremendous.Going back to what I said at the beginning we are supporting this bill. There has been a lot of work done on it over many years. We cannot afford to take risks with our biosecurity with customs or with aviation security. They are very very important parts of protecting our border and the cost recovery proposals in this bill along with the grace period that is proposed are supported. I know that the Primary Production Committee did a good job looking at that and I do want to give respects to the member Shane Ardern who I know is a very good committee chair from my experience of working with him.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Not a bad bloke.DARIEN FENTON: Not a bad bloke. In fact I think that it will be a shame when he leaves Parliament. He is one of the decent blokes around this place one of the good people around this place. So I know that he led the select committee through this in a very professional way even though most of the committee members have now left and he will be following them. I am pleased to support this bill.