Clark David: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClark David: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16533. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North):I feel that the questions that Phil Goff has raised must surely need to be addressed by the Minister in the chair the Minister of Customs. Mr Goff has raised some serious issues in pointing out a 17 percent blowout in costs. The Minister has not addressed the question I raised about the regulatory impact statement and the fact that a 15-year-old system that is needing replacement and upgrading appears to be a year behind schedule. The Minister says that it is only a couple of months but the regulatory impact statement—and I am not clear as to when it was released because I cannot see that on the paper—indicates that the whole thing would have been live a year ago. That is not just a few months and if that is not sneaky nothing is. Twelve months is stretching “a few months” a long way.Mr Goff has raised a very serious issue about the blowout in costs and the fact that this was not raised in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. He has raised the issue about add-ons—adding on one part here one part there—and he points out quite rightly that that is how INCIS started. That is how INCIS started. We have seen it in the Inland Revenue Department. I have related the story of the $50 million that was spent last year on international consultants getting to a point where there was in principle agreement to proceed but the thing that I did not cover in my previous contribution was that there was another $23 million spent previously trying to get a student loan add-on off the ground that was cancelled and probably rightly so in that instance. The department realised that it was not going anywhere.But here again we have something that does seem to be on the roll and that does seem to be moving. The word that we are getting back is that it is not working properly and the Minister is trying to talk it down. He is fanning—he is fanning—but he is actually fanning the flames as he tries to blow things out of his way left right and centre. With a 17 percent increase in spending two new requirements sound like a growing problem not one that he is going to put out with a few kind words. I believe that to have any credibility the Minister must address the issue as to why this slippage has happened—this is significant slippage—and why the Government is not holding the contractors to account. If he says that a few months’ slippage is quite understandable I think that that is a pretty lax standard. The kinds of contracts that would be signed that said that a year’s slippage is acceptable would probably not be ones that the taxpayer would regard as sound or in their interests.This is a Government that is responsible for spending taxpayer money on systems that are put in place to serve the taxpayer and yet we hear story after story after story of the ACC spillages of private information. We had Ms Collins of “Ovida”—how do you say it—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Hon Member: Oravida.Dr DAVID CLARK: —Oravida fame and you know the leaks out of her office—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!Dr DAVID CLARK: Well this is to the point Mr Chair—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No it is not.Dr DAVID CLARK: —because it is about privacy breaches which comes back to IT systems that are not up to the task which is a repeating issue under this Government and is the precise thing that we are dealing with in this bill. The Inland Revenue Department example is by no means an isolated one. The ACC ones and—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Look I have mentioned to the member that this is not in the bill. You must confine your comments to the subject matter of the bill.Dr DAVID CLARK: Well I come back to the bill which talks about implementing a new computer system. That is important to the front-line border security of New Zealand. Novopay might not be the name of it. It might not bear a name like those other ones that I have previously mentioned whose names have become taboo words in this Chamber but it is a system that needs to work for taxpayers to have confidence in the Government’s ability to manage IT projects and the Government’s ability to implement this initiative. We on this side of the Chamber support the principle; we are just concerned that this Government has no track record on delivering it.We are also worried—certainly in the other areas that I dealt with but also here—about the job of the House. It is expensive to pass legislation through this House. All of the officials who sit here are paid reasonable salaries. All of the members of Parliament are paid reasonable salaries to get on and represent the people in the electorates who put them here. But it is not a good use of taxpayer money to have legislation returning to the House to be corrected because it has not been able to implement the things that the Government has sought to put through and that is a pattern again. Certainly in the student loan area which I mentioned earlier that has happened already—The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not part of the bill.Dr DAVID CLARK: —and if that were to happen here with border security it would become something that I think would be unacceptable to taxpayers.