Tirikatene RinoRINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to speak at the first reading of the Customs and Excise Bill. I would like to say at the outset that Labour will be supporting this bill to select committee and I am sure that our members on the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee will be listening closely to what will no doubt be a number of submitters because this is such a broad piece of legislation. As the Minister of Customs has said this is a complete rewrite basically of our customs and excise legislation. It is a hefty bill—some 370-odd pages—and it is all about hauling our customs and excise laws into the 21st century. As we know Customs is the oldest Government department of Aotearoa New Zealand so it has played a crucial role—and it does play a crucial role—daily in our economy. As the Minister has stated the wording of the existing Act—the 1996 Act—dates back some hundred years so it is definitely in need of updating and I commend the good work that has been carried out to bring this bill to the House. The work started on this little review I believe back in 2013 and there was quite a significant period of consultation with affected industry people and all other individual citizens and businesses that interact with customer service and that took place last year. So there has been a lot of preparatory work preceding this bill. I just want to focus on a couple of aspects. When we are thinking of Customs as the Minister has said it is about supporting the legitimate movement of travellers of trade and of goods across our borders. So it is a vital service that we have but it also collects revenue and it also plays a role in protecting our communities from harmful or prohibitive goods that may enter our country illegally. Customs has quite a broad-ranging function and all of those functions are expressed in this bill modernising the way that Customs carries out its work at the border.Just to provide a bit of background. It is not just international travellers—members of the public—who will be affected by this bill but also potentially online shoppers and a whole range of businesses that interact with Customs that basically move goods and travellers and products across our borders. I am talking about airports and seaports airlines cargo operators freight forwarders commercial importers customs brokers exporters shipping lines storage operators and even yacht and small-craft operators. So there is a broad range of Kiwi businesses that daily have to interact with our customs laws and they have found it increasingly difficult in recent years to deal with the ever-changing technology to be able to adequately comply with the law while also being able to get on with their business. There has been a lot of work go into this bill.I would like to equate the Customs Service with a process that is going on at the moment in the National caucus. If we think of what Customs does at the border that is exactly what the National caucus is doing at the moment. There is a parade of passengers who are lined up and only one of them can make it through to that esteemed position of leader of the National Party and that is exactly what Customs does through its monitoring its assessment and its processing of folks at the border.We have Mr English obviously—Dipton's favourite son—who is there at the border hoping to be processed hoping to get that passage through to that lofty position. We understand—we have had word today—that Crusher" Collins Judith Collins is also throwing her hat into the ring. She is lined up in the passenger queue hoping to get processed through. We have also got Jonathan Coleman. He is lined up there too. He will be processed. I am sure the National Party caucus will be looking intently and scrutinising each of these aspiring passengers—Dr Megan Woods: Will they be reading their emails?RINO TIRIKATENE: That too. There will be a lot of work going on I am sure and a lot of conversations happening over the next week much akin to the work that is going on at our borders daily carried out by the good folks of the New Zealand Customs Service. But I digress. I want to return to the bill but I thought that was a very good analogy of the intense work that is undertaken by the good folk of the New Zealand Customs Service at our border.Of course we have heard throughout the Minister's kōrero about the use of cutting-edge technology and innovation to keep our border safe and transformational programmes to do all this flash technology which is obviously part and parcel of our fast-moving lives in this modern world. I would just take the House's time to draw attention to some of those projects that the Customs Service has embarked on in recent years. It is no secret that there have been epic failures and I refer to the Joint Border Management System (JBMS). We are still waiting for Customs to deliver that system 5 years after it was due with a price tag that is at least $50 million greater than the actual original budget that was approved by Cabinet. That is one example of supposed cutting-edge technology that is to be rolled out by the Customs Service.In all the great rush to make things quicker faster and more flexible we need to ensure that Customs is delivering on producing what it says it is going to do because we know as a fact that the risk and intelligence tools which were the central part of the Joint Border Management System have not been delivered. They will not be delivered we understand until sometime towards the end of 2017. They will not even be delivered by the IT contractor that got paid over $100 million to do that job. IBM failed to deliver the risk and intelligence tools that were a critical component of the Joint Border Management System.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: INCIS Mark II.RINO TIRIKATENE: Absolutely INCIS Mark II Novopay and every other IT debacle that has been undertaken by this Government. I do want to stress this point because if someone was to do a case study on how not to roll out and how not to deliver on a major IT-build project it would be JBMS. We understand that the eventual delivery of the so-called risk and intelligence tools which IBM gave up on—or should it be Customs gave up on IBM to deliver—is now being moved in-house within Customs. Customs is going to come up with and deliver some type of risk and intelligence tool. The critical word around this whole IT project is the first word "Joint". This was supposed to be a joint IT system between the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the Customs Service and unfortunately MPI is not benefiting at all from this system because there is nothing there to help MPI. I am not talking about the Trade Single Window. I am talking only about the risk and intelligence tools in protecting our borders and biosecurity and keeping those nasties out so we can protect our very important primary industries across our country.I just wanted to make the point that this is an important piece of legislation but we have seen all too often the failure of Customs to deliver on this. But apart from that this is a worthy piece of legislation and we will be supporting it at its first reading. Kia ora."