McCully Murray: Border Security Bill — First Reading 
McCully Murray: Border Security Bill — First Reading 
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Hon MURRAY McCULLY (NZ National—East Coast Bays) 
: I signal at the outset the intention of National members to vote for this bill so that it is read a first time and referred to a select committee for further consideration. I also thank the Minister for providing me with some detailed briefing material and also for giving me a personal briefing this morning. 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: That’s the way it should be. 
Hon MURRAY McCULLY 
: I think as Mr Ryall observes that perhaps the Minister’s colleague the Minister of Immigration would benefit from some tutoring by the Minister of Customs Mr Barker who does understand that Opposition parties here on matters of national importance are happy to provide their cooperation and support. I appreciated the written briefing and the courteous personal briefing the Minister provided to me about the contents of the legislation. 
The Border Security Bill makes significant amendments to the Customs and Excise Act. That is legislation that I have had some passing association with. I was for 5 years the Minister of Customs and indeed the Minister when a major revamp of that bill was passed. I can say from my own background understanding of this matter that this bill will benefit from some select committee study. The amendments to the Customs Act contained in the bill are indeed in parts quite complex and I would be surprised if on close scrutiny there were not some improvements made. That is not a criticism of the bill it is simply an observation about the huge complexity of the parent Act and the great difficulty and sensitivity of dealing with some of the matters that this bill purports to address. 
I want to turn to the various component parts of the legislation before making some more general observations. The travel security provisions of the bill are indeed significant because they put in place a mandatory provision of advanced electronic information. Some members of the public who are listening in and certainly some members of the House will be asking themselves just what the “API”—the advanced passenger information system—is all about. It is in fact not a new feature of the Customs Service at all. This is a regime that has operated on a voluntary basis now for some years. It involves the airlines cooperating fully with the Customs Service giving the ability for pre-clearance and giving the ability to identify areas of risk and in that way ensuring that there is minimal disruption to the travel plans of law-abiding members of the public. It is a very important tool for avoiding major queues at airport gateways like Auckland. 
The New Zealand Customs Service to my knowledge has been a very efficient promoter of this type of facility in the past and will be well placed to deal with the mandatory regime that is proposed in this bill. I say to members here that I personally can see no reason that the requirement for a mandatory advanced passenger information system would cause offence to anyone. I am sure the airlines are well equipped to deal with it and have as much to gain as the members of the travelling public and the agencies of the New Zealand Government. 
There will be some provisions that relate to accessing the databases of travel operators and airlines that will no doubt raise important issues of privacy and sensitivity. I sense from some of the briefing material that there have been some New Zealand Bill of Rights Act discussions potentially some of the fairly vigorous kind around the preparation of this bill and I particularly draw the attention of the select committee to those areas. Again it is a consequence of dealing with legislation of this sort that those kinds of issues arise—initially in the officials interaction and then in the Cabinet committee process. It is important that the Parliament separately in the select committee and then in the Committee of the whole House tests that sort of area because there are conflicting rights at issue and at play in that regard. Although we might benefit from the view of the Ministry of Justice and Crown Law Office officials it is important that Parliament makes its own call about the extent to which the rights of individuals or organisations to privacy need to be balanced against the greater need for security purposes for agencies of the Crown to have access to certain information. 
I offer no steer to the House or to the select committee on that matter today. I simply say that this smells to me very much of there having been some interaction between officials on New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues and I simply hope that parliamentarians will separately give their attention to this important area of scrutiny. 
The supply chain security provisions which the Minister referred to are critical. I would go so far as to say that if these provisions were not to be passed with some expedition then New Zealand exporters to the United States market would pay a heavy price indeed. Again the select committee I am sure will want to give some thought to the detail contained in the bill. But here we are driven by the expectations and indeed requirements of the American authorities that in the post - September 11 environment which the Minister referred to require those who want to do business with the United States to jump a pretty high security hurdle. I for one do not blame them for that. It will no doubt cause New Zealand exporters and others who trade or deal with the United States some ongoing inconvenience. But the United States has good reason for making these requirements of us and I think that the initiative contained in this part of the bill is a good attempt to put in place something that the United States authorities should find very reassuring indeed. 
I observe in passing at this point that members of the New Zealand public would probably have little understanding to the extent to which the Customs Service has over the years invested massively in the construction of close working relationships with its partner organisations in other jurisdictions. I venture to suggest that at a time like this in a climate of suspicion and in a climate of high security fear the New Zealand Customs Service relationships with many of those services in other jurisdictions will leave New Zealand significantly better placed to deal with those challenges than most other nations. So I suggest that the provisions in that part of the bill are very important to New Zealand as a trading nation and I suspect that it will benefit from the close working relationships that the Customs Service has built up over the years. 
I turn finally to enforcement provisions. These do give some new powers to customs officers. Again I hope that the select committee will look carefully at these areas. They are areas in which Parliament should extend the powers made available to Crown agencies only with great care and after very serious consideration. I am bound to say in principle that I think these extensions are required. I guess as a simple example I look at the programme run around the New Zealand coastline by the New Zealand Customs vessel  
The Hawk 
 which ventures very far from the shore and very far from other law enforcement authorities. There will increasingly be times when encountering terrorists contraband smugglers or others who are seeking to breach the law customs officers will find themselves having to deal with this threat alone. The current law simply makes no provision for them to be able to deal with some of the threat in this area by detaining individuals. They can merely deal with goods. The proposals that the Minister has put before this House in this bill should be looked at carefully and considered carefully but on balance I think they are needed. It is unrealistic to see customs officers doing the job that we ask of them in this environment without providing some additional legal support for them in carrying out that work. So we will be supporting this bill to the select committee. I think there are important features of it and I hope that much good will come from it.