McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Speaker thank you. National will be supporting this bill but only so far as first reading and we reserve the right to consider further our support once the select committee has looked at it. And there are a number of reasons for this. We're in favour of making things easier streamlining procedures and digitisation. However I wonder whether this is not a missed opportunity with this legislation because largely what it does is give power to an official to make a lot of decisions that actually a Government should be making and doesn't really give the Government the oversight or control that I think it should have in as far as exactly what we're asking arriving passengers or returning citizens to do. It creates offences but in effect doesn't balance that out with the requirement for any request to arriving visitors to be reasonable or sensible.Many countries of the world have gone much further than digitising the processes for when people arrive in their countries. They've got rid of the requirement to provide information and I want to give the example of one in a moment. But in essence what this legislation is doing is saying we are still going to collect a lot of information from people when they arrive. There will be no assessment by the Government or anybody else as to the usefulness reasonableness or whether it should be and needs to be collected but it gives us the ability in New Zealand to go and digitise that. And in some cases that may well make sense but I did hear the Minister of Customs in her introductory comments saying she does recognise some people won't be able to and might not want to and they'll still be able to fill out the paper system and so it just doesn't make any sense at all.The missed opportunity here is to decide how much information needs to be collected and whether any needs to be collected at all. And I'm of the understanding that when the arrival form is filled out by a visitor to New Zealand or by a citizen returning to New Zealand the vast majority of the information collected on that arrival form is not analysed—is not used at all. And so the Government has no use for that information or if it does have a use it just doesn't get around to considering it and therefore we're asking people to fill out forms and provide information when there is no reason to.You know many years ago anybody that visited the US knew just how arduous how difficult it was. The forms were long they were in triplicate there were so many of them. In fact the hoops to jump through to get into America were extremely excessive and challenging and most people who visited there often would say Had a nice visit but I had to fill out a lot of forms and I just don't understand why." Well maybe our Government could take from the US not what they used to be like in asking people to fill out forms online or otherwise and try to provide information that's not useful and is not used. But the US earlier this year made a decision—and I'm reading from their website the arrival/departure form in the US: "Foreign visitors to the U.S. arriving via air or sea no longer need to complete paper Customs and Border Protection [forms]." They don't need to do it online either; the US is not collecting information.So one of the things we will be asking in the committee is exactly what information is needed and why it is needed—why do we need to collect this information?—and if there isn't a good reason perhaps we should not be. I do note that one of the things the Minister said in the introduction to the bill is that it gives Customs the ability to find people who are bringing in prohibited goods or who are not paying the revenue that they should. That I guess is by way of somebody saying "I'm bringing in a prohibited good." But generally if somebody is smuggling something into the country or bringing something in wilfully or deciding to evade the payment of customs duties or taxation they are not fooled by the form that says "Please tell us that you're doing this." And so actually Customs do their job through enforcement through knowing about risk before it arrives in the country. They exchange information with other countries the world with the US Customs Service with the Chinese customs service with most customs services in the US. They know enough about people before they arrive to decide whether or not they are likely to be a risk or not without them you know filling out a form and hopefully they make a mistake and they catch them.And so I wonder whether in the Government's desire to make this easier and to simplify it by going online they are missing the opportunity to decide whether or not they are creating burden bureaucracy and I suppose more paperwork. And is this really helping Customs at all? I think we would be much better putting effort into customs services that identify risk without somebody telling on themselves and keeping our borders safe and citizens safe for those that visit here and those who return and these are some of the things we will want to explore at the committee.The other thing we have is a concern around the Privacy Commissioner saying a similar thing—that actually there is likely to be creep here and that people's privacy may be impinged upon as a result of information being required to be presented that we might otherwise not have a right to or don't need. And if somebody says "I decide you don't need this you shouldn't know it about me" or the Government has no real need for the information and the person doesn't provide it they can be fined up to $1000. That feels quite excessive I think and so we'll want to work through all of that. But first and foremost I would hope the committee will have an opportunity to exhaustively look at whether or not there still remains a requirement to collect information when people come to New Zealand or whether we can be more like the US who protect their border arduously more than most countries of the world and no longer say there is a requirement to provide information. They have found other ways to do it and at a much lower cost—less cost to them the Government and to those who visit.So we are supporting this bill in its first reading and to select committee. We hope that we can work through some of these issues and land in a place where we can continue to support it. Digitisation is a good thing. It helps it is efficient it is streamlined. But the requirement to have to go online on your phone or your computer or whatever it is on the other side of the world and tick a few boxes to fill out a form before you climb on a plane in itself doesn't relieve a burden from the visitor; it just makes it a bit easier for the Government or Customs and we should be looking to make it easier for the visitor much more welcoming for them to come to New Zealand and get rid of as much bureaucracy as we can.I think there is one final point to this. It is legislation to give Customs the ability to require information. They have that ability already so I think all it's doing is saying they have the ability to require it digitally. But then it says there will be a suite of rules or regulations put in place decided upon by the head of Customs as to what is required and when and how. And I think the Minister actually should be in front of this Parliament saying "This is the type of information we will collect" not leaving it to an official. Look officials will do their job judiciously. They will go to great great lengths to make sure that they do their job and they collect all the information that they need. But it's this Parliament that is accountable—the members of Parliament here who are accountable—to the public and the Government not the officials. And so to merely say "We want to pass a law with some urgency"—quickly for next year the Minister said—"so that we can require people to provide information to us that we may not use and may not need and if they decide not to do so they will be fined up to $1000. But we're not going to tell you what information it is we require what we might want. In fact we the Government say that's not going to be our responsibility. We're going to leave it to a civil servant." I don't think that is responsible or right.And so the committee will have an opportunity to question Customs at length about how they believe this will work and why they just want regulation-setting powers rather than codifying much of this a law in a bill or giving us the opportunity to have some guarantees that the poor old visitors in New Zealand or the returning citizen is not going to be encumbered with providing a lot of information that on the surface may seem reasonable but the Government is not currently using may not use in the future and that they may find harder to provide to Customs than we would otherwise like. Thank you."