Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Sorry about my hoarse voice everyone. It's that hay fever phenomenon and I can't get rid of it but I'm sure you bear with me. Firstly congratulations to you Te Māngai. I know one of our Assistant Speakers being Māori is something that we should be proud of. I'm incredibly proud of it and so I want to acknowledge your appointment. I'd also like to acknowledge Minister Whaitiri. This is her first bill before this House.Actually what I would like to say to Todd Muller who was the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee in the 51st Parliament is that to some degree this shows how much of a priority this piece of legislation is. I have to say when you read the purpose of the bill which is to manage the movement of people and goods into and out of New Zealand to provide us with the tools needed to protect New Zealand from people or goods that may cause harm—and my colleague Angie Warren-Clark has just highlighted what one of those harms is—and also to empower customs to collect duty on imports and excise on locally manufactured fuel alcohol and tobacco this piece of legislation is a priority for is and we will not apologise for prioritising it on our work programme.I specifically want to highlight one of the objects of the bill which is to balance the protection of the nation with individuals' rights and so I have taken the time as a current member of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee to look at the report by the previous select committee on this bill. I actually want to highlight and reiterate what colleague Gareth Hughes said: there are a number of amendments to this piece of legislation and those amendments happened through the select committee process. So for the Opposition to say that we haven't all contributed to what is a piece of legislation that has consensus across the House actually undermines the role of select committees. So I'd like to highlight some of those amendments and congratulate the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee on making them because they've made these amendments for very good reasons.On page 5 of the select committee report Restricting the power to examine electronic devices"—the reason that intervention was required and amendments to this legislation were required was to protect privacy. All the way through I think there's been a balancing of the need to look at the harm of goods that are moved in and out of our country with individual rights. So what we have done is amend clause 180(6) "to provide that the relevant threshold in clause 207 must be met before a device could be retained or a power exercised under clause 207."Then later on in that particular section it looks at compatibility with the Search and Surveillance Act of 2012 Part 4 subpart 5. I'd actually like to highlight what that says. It's titled "Privilege and confidentiality" and what it says in section 136 "Recognition of privilege"—the reason that there needs to be a threshold—is that we must protect for example legal professionals who on their devices have communications with legal advisers. There could be preparatory materials settlement information mediation information and it's that information that must be kept private in a situation where an officer of the New Zealand Customs Service in undertaking their duties suspects or has reasonable cause to suspect and determines that there needs to be an initial search of the device. So it can't just be a random process. There has to be something that triggers that reasonable cause to suspect.If they then do that there's a second ability for the device and the material contained on that device to be viewed. So this amendment is incredibly important because what also says is that there are types of communications that always must be protected. In the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 Part 4 subpart 5 it also talks about communications with ministers of religion. The types of information that they may have on devices relate to their parishes or the members of the congregation. It also talks about communications in criminal proceedings and by medical practitioners and clinical psychologists. These are really important pieces of information that could actually affect trials in court cases. So there are and always have to be limitations from individual rights on this need to protect the public good. They also mentioned can I just say that journalists also have the right to protect their sources. So that's another specific issue that's highlighted.If we turn over to page 6 of the select committee report I'd like to talk about the oversight of and the safeguards around information disclosure. There was some quite interesting commentary around that and the Privacy Commissioner's advice was sought with regard to this specific addition. That is a recommendation of a new clause clause 298A to require customs to publish on a website maintained by or on behalf of customs any written agreement and any variation of an agreement made under clauses 293 294 296 and 297. Just looking at those clauses clause 293 is about direct access to information for other purposes and it's actually about sharing information between Government agencies. How do you facilitate that safe transfer of information between Government agencies and access to the information which is stored in a database for assisting the agency to carry out its functions?Clause 294 is about disclosure of information other than under matching agreements or direct access agreements from CEO to CEO. Government departments actually do have memorandums of understanding or they do have agreements about how they will work together and share information. Section 296 is the disclosure of information֫—I found this really interesting—to a private sector organisation. So there is scope for the CEO of customs to enter into a written agreement with a private sector organisation for regular disclosure. I think that's really important but what this insertion of this new clause 298A says is that any variation must be published on the customs website. That's about transparency. It's also about ensuring that everyone's fully informed.Section 297 is about disclosure of information to overseas authorities. How are they relevant? Well they're relevant in terms of international passengers. So it's about border security it's about public health and safety. So those amendments before the select committee were really important. It must be emphasised because the work of the select committee was really really important. Again I want to highlight that. That is the beauty of select committees. Governments propose pieces of legislation but it's the select committee process that actually makes that legislation the best legislation that it can be on behalf the public.I just wanted to highlight one other issue and it was information matching and the whole issue about the $1000 threshold. This is about students or other people who owe money over $1000. There seems to have been quite a bit of discussion about Orders in Council and Order in Council amendments. For those who don't know an Order in Council is a legislative instrument made by the Executive Council but it's actually presided over by the Governor-General. All Ministers of the Crown are members of that Executive Council. So what this particular clause does—this is clause 288(6)—is they said they didn't actually want Orders in Council for this particular issue. They didn't want to vary it from $1000 to whatever it might be and they set an upper limit of $5000. I found it quite curious that the select committee itself decided that; rather than arbitrate or I guess futureproof this particular clause in this bill rather than say they are made by Order in Council they've actually selected another threshold for the amount that then kind of instigates a whole lot of other agencies who are looking at a people who have come—students who are returning for example—and all the implications from that.So I do commend the bill to the House. I think it's a great piece of legislation and this Parliament should be proud of it. Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker."