Shearer David: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):I just want to start off by saying that I appreciate the Minister of Customs answering the questions that we have raised on the Joint Border Management System and particularly on the IT component because as my colleagues have said the IT component is actually at the guts of what we are trying to talk about here in relation to the Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill. So if we do not talk about the IT component there is no other component in large effect. So I appreciate the Minister making an attempt to answer those questions but I do take real exception to his accusing us of being sneaky. I say that for two reasons. One is that I did not get this information from anybody within the New Zealand Customs Service; I got it out there in the wider IT industry where it is well known—Hon Maurice Williamson: Name them.DAVID SHEARER: —well I am not going to come on—that there are serious problems with this IT system. It is well known there that there are serious problems with this IT system. That is the first thing.The second thing is that we have just heard today—just here in this Chamber today—that there has been a 17 percent increase in the budget for this system. I have put it in written questions to you Minister. We have asked during the expenditure session of the select committee and not once did we get any information that there was going to be a 17 percent increase in the budget for the Trade Single Window system which you have been talking about. There was absolutely nothing. So do not come to us with this sneaky stuff. It is our job as the Opposition to understand what is going on.My question is whether—and it comes out in the questions that have not been answered today in the Chamber—there are going to be further delays from IBM into the future. What else is not going to happen as a result of the dispute that I understand is happening between IBM and the New Zealand Customs Service? Are further tranches going to be delayed? Are the expectations for this system going to be reduced as a result of the fact that IBM is not going to be able to meet that without extra cost and what other extra costs in addition to what has already been expended are going to be required? What you told us about Minister is what was needed in order to get the Trade Single Window through its legislative stages. That is only one part of the entire roll-out of the entire IT system within the Customs Service.I congratulate you on not closing down CusMod before the IT system has been established. But that is something that in a sense any brain-dead person frankly would be able to work out after the eventuality of Novopay. They closed down Datacom and then threw it over to Novopay and Novopay fell on its face.Keeping CusMod in place is fine but CusMod was always meant to be retired some time ago. It was meant to be retired. In fact what we have got now is a system that was started 2 years ago and is now 17 percent more expensive in just the area of the Trade Single Window. What we are looking at now is as I understand it a great deal more than that in order to be able to implement the system that was initially foreseen at the beginning of this project. What I want to know is whether there are any variations on the contract that was begun 2 years ago whether there are any changes in the parameters of what success might be—not just for the Trade Single Window but beyond that—whether there are any other little bits of creep that might be coming into the project and what additional costs beyond the Trade Single Window there are likely to be in order to roll out the system.I am afraid that what I am hearing both from obviously my colleagues but well beyond them is that there is a serious problem looming. It has been pushed under the carpet swept under the carpet so that it will not emerge before an election but we know how the public feels and how taxpayers feel about their money their taxes being wasted on IT systems that fall over. We might want to get all the bells and whistles and everything that we need to get and we all might want it to succeed perfectly well and it is obviously in all our own interests but this smells like there is something wrong. The Minister’s answers to questions and his selective answers to questions about one component of a much bigger system do not leave me with a great deal of confidence about the future of it.