Tirikatene Rino: Food Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Food Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17861. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): We are now moving on to Part 3 of this very finely drafted bill the Food Bill which has had many years of input from officials from Governments both on this side of the Chamber and the other side of the Chamber—some 10 years in the making—and with some very good contributions made at the Primary Production Committee to where we are today. We are on to Part 3 which concerns food imported for the purpose of sale and as we have mentioned in other parts it is not only the food that we produce from the bounty of our land and our sea but also the imported food ingredients that form a vital part of our food industry and our food production.I am just scanning my eye over Part 3 and I see here that at the end of Part 3 there are provisions relating to the Joint Border Management System something that is very dear to the Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries at the moment. It is a very comprehensive computer system which will ultimately make ease of reporting and recording and facilitating the import and export of goods across the border. It is a major IT system roll-out and means that the businesses concerned have a single registration point whereby they can register and have a lot more ease of processing. Reporting paperwork is all eliminated through a computer-based system. Businesses can work through this Joint Border Management System and the key element to that is the Trade Single Window.Clauses 122A and 122B feed into the Joint Border Management System. Clause 122A states: “Border information supplied using JBMS must be supplied in an approved form and manner”. Clause 122B states: “Duty to use JBMS to supply border information”. So it is good that this legislation aligns with that significant piece of information technology system which is critical. We can have all the food production in this country that we want—and importation is really important—but it has to cross our borders whether inbound or outbound and we need to have ease of transacting of business for those companies that are involved so it ultimately reduces the red tape.The Joint Border Management System is a key part of that as mentioned in this Part 3. We know that there are issues around the implementation of that system. We are unsure as to whether an evaluation has taken place. The system has cost in excess of $90 million and we are still unsure about the effectiveness of that system and whether all aspects around the functionality of that system have been delivered by the IT contractor concerned. I do not mean to be straying off from this bill but the Joint Border Management System is a central piece of the joint system between the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service. It is contained within this Part 3 and therefore I did feel obliged that I should make those few remarks around that system. But this bill does align with the IT systems.It is good that there is now a coordination between food businesses and the importers that they will be dealing with and the facilitation of the products that they will be using in their production of their end goods which will ultimately be ending up in the pukusof us Kiwi consumers and also our customers in international markets around the world. As I mentioned our food sector is the most important economic sector in terms of the value that it creates for our country.