O'Connor Damien: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
O'Connor Damien: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:678;Page:1346] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I rise with some concern and certainly with a lot of commitment to speak on this legislation. The legislation is basically the mechanism by which the Joint Border Management System can be implemented. On the face of it it is a very sensible piece of work—that is that the Customs Service MAF Biosecurity and the Immigration Service can share information on people or on goods coming into this country. That is a very worthwhile move we would think. Given the computer technology and the sharing of information on everything else around the world that is the first thing we should be able to do. That is great except that what we have got is a National Government that has cut funding in core parts of border safety and security to pay for this computer system. 
Hon Member 
: Really? 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: Absolutely. So what they are going to do is have this wonderful Rolls-Royce information-sharing process and people will be there plugging in the information. Meanwhile goods will be slipping past their very noses and coming into this country with the potential to cause billions—yes literally billions—of dollars of harm to our economy.  
I have to go back to the 2009 Budget when the National Government came into office. One of the many things it did in its first Budget was cut 54 front-line staff from biosecurity. It cut $2 million from the biosecurity budget and then it proceeded to announce that there would be this wonderful new system. Well to be fair it had been talked about while Labour was in Government; it has been around as a concept for a while. The National Government proceeded down this path assisted of course by the Minister of Tourism the Rt Hon John Key. He was very keen to sit down with his Aussie mates and say “You can come to our country”—as quick as a flash—“and we’ll cut 8 minutes off the processing time from when you get off the plane until when you get out with your bags—8 minutes. That’s why you should come to New Zealand.” 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: I am sorry Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. You are in New Zealand; it is not why you should come. I apologise for that. For the saving of 8 minutes we introduced SmartGate. 
Simon Bridges 
: A lot can be done in 8 minutes Damien. 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: It can be—probably two or three times for the member over there. 
Simon Bridges 
: Shame on you! 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR 
: Can I say to the young member over there I am sure it would be two or three times. That 8 minutes is a very expensive 8 minutes.  
The new Joint Border Management System where the sharing of information along with SmartGate will allow the Australians to waltz into New Zealand without any checks or balances is a very high-risk situation. We have many many visitors from around the world coming through Australia coming across the Tasman and coming through the system. Many to be fair will not be able to use SmartGate but this system and the change that we are addressing here is to allow the implementation of swift efficient border processing of both people and goods. I say that that is really dumb. This is one country that more than anywhere else in the world relies on biosecurity. We have biological systems in this country that produce the vast majority of our export wealth and will do for some time in spite of our attempts to move into other areas of exporting.  
Biosecurity is a thin line and it is even thinner now that the National Government has been in power for 3 and a bit years. It has cut funding and what funding has been there between biosecurity the Customs Service and immigration has been put into this new Joint Border Management System. I have a letter forwarded to the Minister for Biosecurity from an ex-employee. He has moved on to another job because he lost faith in what he was trying to do. This is not a fly-by-nighter; this is someone who worked for MAF Biosecurity New Zealand for years and sent a letter in despair to the then Minister for Biosecurity the Hon David Carter. He said in his letter that there has been one dog in use in Auckland for quite some time shared between the airport and the ports to sniff out possible biosecurity breaches or Customs Service breaches because they have not trained enough dogs.  
Well I have asked questions of the Minister and he has not been able to give me answers on that. How many dogs are actually available? Do they provide 24/7 cover? Planes come into this country on a 24/7 basis and so do ships. Are we checking the border as we should as a country entirely dependent on the biosecurity systems that we have around this country? It is a sham. The effort has gone into firstly the SmartGate system which is distracting front-line biosecurity people from their work. They are trying to help the Customs Service and the immigration people to make sure that SmartGate works because they want to please the Prime Minister. Well that is all well and good but they should not forget their front-line objectives.  
The Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill as it was when introduced and referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee—it was divided into the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill and the Biosecurity Amendment Bill the ones we are debating here tonight—had as an objective from the National Government that it was keen that retailers at Auckland International Airport could get access to border information so they could customise their business decisions based on the nationality of passengers on specific flights. Well did that mean that if there were a number of Japanese on the flight they would get out their sheepskins? Or did it mean if there were a whole lot of people from the US that they would open up McDonald’s? And if they were from the UK did it mean they would open up Kitty O’Shea’s and they could all have a Guinness or a warm beer? The point is that this was the kind of dumb objective from the National Government to assist their mates at the key airports to make more money from visitors who were flying in and out.  
That kind of shallow objective identifies the risks that we are dealing with here. If a Government can put those objectives into a bill then what about biosecurity? What about the compromises that have been made in both resources and front-line efforts to ensure that we keep out fruit fly or foot-and-mouth or the whole range of organisms unwanted pests and diseases that can be brought into this country by people who fly around the world in 24 hours? They could within 36 hours have been on any farm or in any park anywhere in the world and they could turn up on our border here and be assisted through to keep the Prime Minister—the Minister of Tourism—happy that no one has been offended at the front line. That is shallow. It is dangerous and it is not something that we should tolerate. I am sure that the select committee has given fair consideration to the bill but I am concerned that what we have here is a shallow objective around computerisation and resource efficiency—which in themselves are not bad objectives—at the expense of front-line biosecurity in this country. 
 The Minister cannot answer and has not answered the claims made in the letter to me from a front-line biosecurity officer and which have been identified in the papers today. There has been no clear explanation and I will certainly call for a thorough investigation and inquiry into whether those allegations are true because if they are we are at serious risk and this economy is at serious risk. The bill we are passing now will only exacerbate the risks that we are facing 24 hours a day 7 days a week because the resources that we need are not in the biosecurity systems. The Labour Party has concerns about what is happening here. I challenge the Minister to get up and address all the claims made in the letter—claims that are now in the public arena—and reassure us if he can that we are not dumbing down front-line biosecurity systems just to appease the people who want to come into this country for a holiday or the people who want to import goods from anywhere in the world. We have open borders. We have said that you are welcome to sell anything into our country but we cannot afford to do that at the expense of some major incursion. Biosecurity is paramount and this Government has compromised that biosecurity protection.