Groser Tim: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
Groser Tim: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading 
[Volume:637;Page:7652] 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 As members already know National supports the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) which basically does two or three different things. One is highly technical and I suppose not very large in the scheme of things but the other is quite fundamental. When I was having lunch with somebody today and he asked me what I was doing in the House I said that I was to speak on the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) and he asked what on earth I would talk about in that context. I said that I would talk about two of the biggest issues facing this country: global terrorism and the issue of weapons of mass destruction because those issues are actually the bigger purpose of this bill. 
On the technical issue of the adjustment I feel even more passionately than Mr Ardern does about the retired railway worker in Taumarunui having his non-inflationary dram. But having participated in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee let me assure Mr Ardern that if we are to make an inflation adjustment that is an issue for retailers. It is a compliance cost issue and I think that the committee members have worked quite productively to find a fair and reasonable way of doing the adjustment in a way that minimises the compliance cost for the retailer. I would wish only that the Labour Government would show the same degree of common sense when it comes to rather more important compliance issues. 
Before getting on to the bigger purpose of this bill I will just say in public what I have said privately many times—that is a huge thankyou to the women and the men who work in and over the years have worked for our Customs Service. I have had a lot to do with them professionally usually on the policy side of the interface with trade issues. I have found officials’ advice on deeply technical administrative issues such as rules of origin and customs classification issues hugely helpful and just vital to a “New Zealand Inc.” approach on that. I acknowledge the sterling work in my opinion that those people do across a broad set of issues and not just at the border or at the coalface as it were. 
When we consider what this bill tries to do which is to give customs officials the tools to do that job properly at the coalface we have to reflect on the fact that they have quite a difficult job. They measure their success largely by how little we hear of them. Sometimes people notice things only in their absence and it is the number of things that go wrong at the border that brings the Customs Service’s work to people’s attention. It is a difficult environment to work in what with the number of narcotic drugs that escape the officials’ best efforts. So I think that it is very important for the legislator to give those people the tools that they need. By and large I think that this bill does that. The one area that National is concerned about in terms of border management issues is of course biosecurity where we do not think that the Government has given the officials the tools to do a job of absolutely crucial significance. But at least this bill in dealing with other areas of border security enforcement moves absolutely in the right direction. I want to commend the Customs Service for its work. 
The issue of terrorism is right at the top of the Customs Service’s responsibilities—and it is an awesome responsibility—which it discharges on our behalf and on behalf of every New Zealander. We have learnt with the spread of global terrorism that a group of deeply dangerous people who rail against globalisation because they have a warped vision—we are more familiar with that vision from other contexts too—of trying to return us to some myth of a golden past actually utilise the tools of globalisation in an extremely efficient way. It is a rich and troubling contradiction. We are involved in the struggle against the global menace of terrorism which knows no frontiers. Personally I prefer to use the words “struggle against terrorism”; I do not like the term “war” partly because I think that it misses the central point. 
I would put the central point as being this. Terrorism has been committed by every major religion that I can think of. We have had Sikh terrorists; I could give examples of them off the top of my head. We have had Hindu terrorists. We have had Jewish terrorists. And of course we have had many forms of different Christian terrorists including some in recent times. I do not think that any of the people who belong to those major religions would want their entire religion to be categorised by the deranged behaviour of fanatics who as they maim torture kill and destroy consider that they are doing so in the name of their interpretation of their belief system. I say that because I think with respect to the modern problem of terrorism it is a statement of fact that it is overwhelmingly an Islamic terrorist problem. It is committed by a certain warped version of a tiny proportion of some 2 billion Muslims around the world. 
Now when terrorism is practised against as it sometime is societies such as ours predominantly—not solely but predominantly Western societies—I defend our right to respond with lethal force. This bill in part is about giving the State—a small State but we are in control of events here—the power to respond with lethal force and with the full coercive powers of the State and I think that is appropriate. But I have always held the view that finally although we have to do what we have to do in order to try to minimise the threat of Islamic terrorism fundamentally the only long-term solution will come from Muslims and predominantly Muslim countries themselves. I do think that people need to reflect carefully on that reality. 
Having lived in a Muslim country for a number of years I have talked about this issue with probably hundreds I would think of Muslims. All the people I have talked to—and this would be the experience I am sure of anyone else who has lived in a Muslim country— realise of course that the ultimate threat is directed against them. They hate those people and they are deeply frightened as any rational person should be by where the next bomb is going to go off in Jakarta. They are deeply frightened by that prospect of course. But they are Muslims and when people insult anyone’s core set of beliefs and values which is what the debate in Western countries on terrorism sometimes veers into that person naturally has difficulty in cooperating with them. That is just human nature. So I think we have to understand basically that we are going to depend finally more than anything else on predominantly Muslim people themselves and their Governments and security forces to get on top of the problem. Although I like many other people have become enormously frustrated at the indecisiveness of the Indonesian authorities—they are not the only people involved of course—in their approaches to dealing with terrorism on occasions I think we have to recognise that we are in a joint struggle with them against a common foe. 
So this bill is partly about the interdiction of terrorism. It is also partly about the interdiction of prohibited exports that could be used for weapons of mass destruction. It does not take a great deal of imagination to see that finally in some ghastly sense those two issues could be linked. I think we have a very flexible system in place that gives the Government better tools to deal with those issues. Thank you.