Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBorder Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3878. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy BillFirst ReadingHon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries):I move That the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill be now read a first time. I move that the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill be introduced to amend the Biosecurity Act 1993 and the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to create an obligation on arriving and departing air and sea passengers plus crew to pay a border clearance levy. The levy will fund the costs of border processing incurred by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the New Zealand Customs Service and ensure that border services are sustainable going forward.Our border staff work incredibly hard to prevent and stop threats at our border. The success of New Zealand as a trading nation depends on making sure these risks are controlled and managed so our economy can grow and prosper. As our trade and travel links have expanded over recent years not only have the numbers of travellers entering New Zealand increased but also the diversity of those travellers has grown. Today we have more travellers arriving and departing from more locations than ever before and commercial air and cruise operators are continuing to look at opening up new routes to New Zealand. This is good news for New Zealand but it also brings with it an increased risk at our border. Border clearance activities are driven directly by the volumes of travellers arriving at and departing our shores. This has been steadily increasing with international passenger numbers rising by 3.5 percent a year and this trend is set to continue and may even expand.The border clearance levy will help the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service futureproof border services as it allows the agencies to meet the demand of increasing traveller and also crew numbers. It is obvious that both agencies must be able to manage the growing risk of biosecurity incursions and harm from prohibited goods or persons and be able to put New Zealand on a sustainable platform for the future. We only have to look at recent incursions like the southern saltmarsh mosquito which cost $77 million to deal with over 12 years or didymo which cost $10 million in 2004 and the ongoing costs associated with didymo of around a million dollars a year and the Queensland fruit fly in Grey Lynn this year which is likely to cost around $17 million. This is why we have a multilayered biosecurity system that has continued to be strengthened.The Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill makes important amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996 and the Biosecurity Act 1993. Amending these Acts means there will be a consistent approach to consultation implementation and administration of the levy. The Customs and Excise Act did not include a suitable provision to authorise a levy and the Biosecurity Act provides the ability for only a general levy-making provision. The overall effect of the bill is to impose the obligations to pay the levy and to provide that the detailed levy design be set out in levy orders after consultation.The detailed design will include for example when and how the levy is to be paid who is responsible for collecting the levy and the rate of the levy. It is likely that the cost for passengers arriving and departing New Zealand will be around $22 inclusive of GST—around $16 on arrival and up to $6 on departure—but further modelling and consultation with stakeholders and the wider public needs to be completed before the final amount is decided upon. Officials are preparing a discussion document outlining the proposed options which will be released for public feedback in June this year. It is proposed that the levy will take effect from 1 January 2016 and I expect it will be added to the price of tickets purchased on or after this date.The border clearance levy is just that—a levy. It is a payment by a specific group for a specific purpose—in this case border clearance functions and activities carried out in relation to the payers of the levy. Levy funds will go into a memorandum account and will be used only to pay for Ministry for Primary Industries and Customs Service border clearance functions. The fundamental principle behind the introduction of the border clearance levy is that it is fairer that the travellers who generate the need for these border clearance services and who benefit from them contribute to the cost of these activities.Many other countries have a passenger levy in place to cover these costs. At $22 the proposed border clearance levy will be set lower than in most other countries. Australia currently charges around NZ$58 and the UK’s long-haul passenger charge is almost around NZ$150. An additional charge of around $22 is unlikely to stop travellers coming to New Zealand. It is less than 1 percent of a long-haul international airfare which is a very small component of people’s overseas travel costs. Some biosecurity events could have a significant impact on tourism. In the UK during the foot and mouth disease events in 2001 the total tourism revenue dropped by almost £8 billion which if you equate that to today’s Kiwi dollars is around $15 billion.I am proud to bring this bill into the House because I have always said that biosecurity is my No. 1 priority as Minister. The primary industries are the backbone of the New Zealand economy and we must protect them from unwanted pests and diseases. The primary sector makes up around three-quarters of our merchandise exports. It is worth around $35 billion a year. It is the hard work of our farmers growers and fishers that helps us as a Government pay for things like schools roads and hospitals. We are fortunate that our isolation has helped protect us but we must always be vigilant and prepared for new and emerging risks. The introduction of this levy and the injection of almost $27 million from Budget 2015 into biosecurity will further strengthen the overall biosecurity system. It will go towards improving import health standards more detector dogs and more X-ray machines.Also in April this year I announced Biosecurity 2025 a project to refine our biosecurity strategy out for the next 10 years. This will be looking at how we can strengthen the overall biosecurity system to make it resilient in the future from the growing pressures of trade and the increase in tourism numbers as I have already mentioned. This bill is another important step in protecting our borders and I commend it to the House.Rino Tirikatene: Thank you Mr Speaker. [Interruption] I am pleased to be able to—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I have not even called the member yet mainly because I am getting some noise from Mr Bennett yet again. He is on a bit of a warning.RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):I am pleased to be speaking in the first reading of the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill. Let me state at the outset that Labour is opposing this bill so be prepared for a long night ahead. We are opposing this bill because border processing is adequately funded from the Crown and there is no need to be imposing a travel tax on the good folks of New Zealand.Let us look at this. This is a travel tax that is going to be levied on every traveller every passenger families going on their trips and our important tourists whom we rely on coming into our country. It is a tax that will be put on everybody. For the privilege of leaving our shores folks will be paying an extra $22 for the round trip. The same applies to international visitors whom we want to welcome into our country. An extra tax is going to be put on them. This is one more tax that is being put on Kiwis and it is another broken promise—another broken promise from this Government.We have seen time and time again in this Budget the broken promises in terms of the imposition of taxes and this is yet another one. The Government is taxing Kiwis ordinary Kiwis who want to go on their trip overseas. It is taxing them when they go to see their loved ones. It is a broken promise. We may want to argue around the terminology. It is very clear—you might want to call it a border clearance levy but it is still a tax. It is a tax and even John Key cannot explain the difference. When John Key was asked he said: “Oh google it.” He did not even want to front up. But I tell you what—we did not need to google it. We just went to the Oxford Dictionary. And what does the Oxford Dictionary say? The definition of “levy” is a tax raised by levying. So whether it is a levy or a tax—“potayto” “potahto”; “tomayto” “tomahto”—they are all the same. They are all the same. Soccer football—they are both the same. This is yet another broken promise from this Government. The imposition of a tax is a broken promise.Let us spare a thought for the people in the New Zealand tourism industry because they are the ones who have been let down by this Government with this measure. They have had a casual Minister of Tourism who has just flip-flopped along trying to say: “Yes this is what I’m going to do for our wonderful tourism industry.” And what has he done here? He blindsided it. He blindsided the tourism industry. It had no idea this was coming. The Prime Minister was talking to the industry just a few days ago and it was completely blindsided by this.The irony is that the Prime Minister the casual Minister of Tourism has been advocating for and working with the industry to try to encourage major markets for our international visitors to bring down or eliminate their travel taxes. Yet now he is going against the work that has been going on in the New Zealand tourism industry in Australia and in the UK. He has done a complete about-face and he did not even have the courtesy to give a heads-up to the New Zealand tourism industry.Let us not forget that the tourism industry is the second-largest generator of foreign exchange earnings for our country—in excess of $10.4 billion. It brings in a lot and it knows that when the Prime Minister was asked about this he said that it will not make a blind bit of difference—not a blind bit of difference. How does he know that? Because just a few years ago he was trying to advocate on behalf of our industry to try to make sure that we can have a freer passage to bring down those travel tax costs for our visitors. So there you go—a flip-flopping casual Prime Minister. You know there is a Twitter handle going now. The Prime Minister flip-flops so much he has been called “Jandal John”—more flip-flops than Number One Shoes. That is what John Key is: “Jandal John”. If you look up that hashtag you can see all the flip-flops that this Prime Minister has done and there are plenty of them in this Budget. The tourism industry has been let down. The tourism industry has been incredibly let down.I want to move on and look at what this tax is going to be paying for. Of course we do want increased border protection bolstering our biosecurity systems. Everyone wants that. We like to see the little beagles at our airports and increased X-ray machinery. We like that.Hon Member: Who should pay for them?RINO TIRIKATENE: They are already paid for by the Crown. Crown funding has paid for that. And now the Government is passing that on to everyday Kiwis and everyone who wants to go on a flight overseas. If we look behind that what else will the tax be paying for? I want to mention four letters that you rarely hear about these days out of the Ministry for Primary Industries and the New Zealand Customs Service—JBMS the Joint Border Management System. Remember that? That was the great merging of the IT platforms between the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service.Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: What does it stand for?RINO TIRIKATENE: Joint Border Management System—the JBMS. What we have seen is a failure of the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service to deliver on that system. It is 3 years too late and $30 million over budget and we still probably will not have it by the end of this year which is the due date. It has been put off it has been delayed it has been costly and it has been shrouded in secrecy. That is right. This Government has been trying to put a veil of secrecy over it because there is a major dispute. There is a major dispute going on with IBM the contractor. The Government has had crisis talks after crisis talks trying to work with IBM. A hundred million dollars has been tipped into this project and we still have not seen the delivery of a first tranche or anything. Risk and intelligence—what has been delivered under the Joint Border Management System for risk and intelligence? Nothing. Risk and intelligence are totally lacking.So what will this levy be paying for? What will people be paying this tax for? We need to know what the true cost will be because what we do not want to see is that this levy is just subsidising the Budget blowout of the Joint Border Management System. That is what this tax will be doing—subsidising the cost blowouts. We know that it is not just a cost recovery. It is not a simple cost recovery exercise because there is very broad discretion given to the Minister. Sure there is consultation that has to take place but at the end of the day it is at the very broad discretion of the Minister to set these levies.Once the taxes have been set there will be no end to what the greed of a Government and a Minister will show in terms of collecting revenue. It is a cash cow. Picking from travellers is an easy cash cow. Rest assured the Government will be using this to subsidise the big black hole—the $30 million black hole—we already have at the moment with the Joint Border Management System. That is the real scandal of this Government—that the people of New Zealand have invested $100 million into that system.Sure we have got a trade single window and people can import cargoes in terms of the freight industry but what about the core of that system? The core of that system was to modernise and have sophisticated new tools of risk and intelligence. What happens in that regard? What does the Ministry for Primary Industries and MAF Biosecurity New Zealand pull out of the Joint Border Management System? You never hear about it. It has been taken off the agenda because it is a disaster. It is an absolute disaster and this is just a cynical attempt by this Government to raise revenue to try to fill the huge black hole that has been created by that failed system. We are not going to be getting out of it. It is going to be getting worse and worse.This is a poor piece of legislation. It is another tax. We oppose it and we will oppose it all the way to midnight. Thank you.Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs):I support this first reading of the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill simply because it will amend the Biosecurity Act 1993 and the Customs and Excise Act 1996 and will put in place a border clearance levy for arriving and departing passengers. I would just like to assure the member Rino Tirikatene that this money is only for cost recovery for border services and the money will be paid into a trust account ring-fenced only for border services.I would also like to point out to the member Rino Tirikatene that the Joint Border Management System is actually progressing very well that increasing numbers of exporters are using it that it has been well and truly supported by the industry and that we have just recently renewed—[Interruption]The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I apologise for interrupting the member but the member—[Interruption] Who was that?Hon Nathan Guy: Me.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Stand up and withdraw and apologise.Hon Nathan Guy: I withdraw and apologise.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I will now indicate to Rino Tirikatene that he must not wander around the Chamber interjecting. He can interject from his seat.Hon NICKY WAGNER: I just wanted to draw to the attention of the member Rino Tirikatene that the Joint Border Management System is doing very well that it is well supported by the export industries and that we have recently signed a renewed contract with IBM because it is doing an excellent job for us.Let me get back to the levy though. It is what this bill is all about. The levy will fund the costs of border processing—only border processing—incurred by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the New Zealand Customs Service. It will ensure that border services are sustainable. I think if we reflect that over recent months many of the Opposition members have been talking about increased security at our border and have been talking about increased biosecurity at our border I expect that members of the Opposition will be supporting this bill because this will make our border safer. As the Minister for Primary Industries has just said our success as a trading nation is about making sure that the risks at our borders are controlled and managed so that our economy can grow and prosper. As our travel and trade links expand and travellers entering New Zealand become more numerous and more diverse with them they bring increased risks. More passengers arriving and departing New Zealand from more locations means more risk—more risk to our security and to our biosecurity. The interesting thing here of course is that higher-risk passengers require higher levels of intervention which increases passenger clearing costs. If we cannot manage that growing risk the frequency of biosecurity incursions and harm from prohibited goods and persons will increase. New Zealanders do not want that.Demand for the Ministry for Primary Industries and customs border clearance activities has been steadily increasing over recent years. International passenger numbers have been rising at about 3.5 percent every year and forecasts are for even more than that. It is an increasing upward trend. What is more the numbers of people who are coming through our borders are increasingly international people. Whereas in the past large numbers of people coming through were New Zealanders now just over 40 percent of people coming through our borders are New Zealanders. The vast majority are international passengers. About 95 percent of the travellers cleared at the border are crew and passengers from commercial airlines. About 4 percent are crew and passengers from passenger ships—cruise liners and they are increasing—and the remaining 1 percent are from private aircrafts yachts cargo ships or the military.Up until now the New Zealand taxpayer has been covering the costs of all these services even though many of those travellers are not New Zealanders. In fact as I have just said significantly more are international travellers and many of them are coming on luxury cruises and on pleasure trips. It does not seem right to me that every New Zealander—man woman and child—is paying $23 whether they cross the border or not. That is a tax whereas this is a levy that the people requiring the use of the services and the people bringing the risk will be paying. The levy will be funded to maintain existing service levels and the current high level of risk management. Many other countries have a passenger levy. They have got it; it is international best practice now to do that. In our case ours will be about $20 give or take and it is really on the low side. What we are seeing is that overseas countries have much more. Australia has A$55 or NZ$58. The UK’s long-haul fee is £71 or about NZ$150 and Canada and the US are similar.This Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill makes important amendments as we have said to the Customs and Excise Act 1996 and the Biosecurity Act 1993. The reason we have to do that is that the Customs and Excise Act does not currently have a suitable provision to authorise a levy and the Biosecurity Act provides for only general levy-making provision. Amending these Acts will make sure that we get a consistent approach to consultation implementation and administration of the levy.Carmel Sepuloni: Consultation?Hon NICKY WAGNER: Implementation and administration of the levy.The Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill also includes provisions that allow Orders in Council to be made for the levy’s administration including the rate of the levy the basis on which it is set and how the levy is to be paid. The levy will take effect on 1 January 2016 and it will be applied to tickets purchased on or after that date. It is proposed that the border clearance levy will be set at different rates for arriving and departing passengers. That reflects the differences in clearance costs because I remind you this recovers only the clearing costs and what happens at the border. So this will reflect the differences in clearing costs between people arriving and people departing. The total costs for passengers arriving and departing will be about $20 inclusive of GST—about $16 on arrival and up to about $6 on departure—but this will be teased out during the consultation phase. The cost of processing arriving passengers is higher because there is no biosecurity screening at departure and the level of customs resources and intervention at departure is less.Stakeholders and the general public will get a chance to have their say about this levy about its design and about its implementation and the details will be consulted on. Officials are already preparing a discussion document that will outline proposed options and that will be released for public feedback in June.The intention is to make the border clearance levy simple and easy to collect. It is proposed that the existing payment systems are used to collect the levy. The airlines will make a monthly lump-sum payment to the Civil Aviation Authority and cruise ship operators will pay the Customs Service. The funds will then be allocated to the Customs Service by the Ministry for Primary Industries. For other travellers such as people on private yachts and airlines the levy will be collected from them directly as they enter and depart New Zealand. The border clearance levy is less than 1 percent of the international airfare so it is a very small component of people’s overall travel costs. The additional charge of about $20 is very unlikely to have any bearing on the traveller’s choice of destination.The people of New Zealand told us that they want a safe and secure border. This bill will protect New Zealanders and will protect our environment. I commend the bill to the House.Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour):This debate is about the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill. The first question I would ask this House is: when is a levy a tax? When is a tax a levy? And when is a tax not a tax? Well we found out today that we know when it is and when it is not: it is when the Prime Minister says so. That is when it is a tax and when it is a levy. [Interruption] For the member opposite sitting at the back who immediately interjected a tax is raised by a levy. This is a levy and it goes to a tax.This is a tax. Make no bones about it—this is a tax. For the listening public and the people in the gallery tonight here late in the day on this Saturday afternoon this Government is forcing through under urgency a new tax on New Zealanders. This debate is all about a brand new tax—never mentioned never canvassed. I have to say the old saying of “No taxation without some representation”—no representations were made to the Government to bring in this new tax. It is just a very sneaky little manoeuvre passed under urgency. That is why we will oppose it. We will oppose it because it was not a tax that was ever canvassed with the public of New Zealand. Did the National Party go to the electorate and say: “We are going to raise a new tax. We are going to put it on travellers arriving and departing—on New Zealanders and on foreigners.”? No it did not. This is a very sneaky sneaky little tax.I have to say I am particularly disappointed in the Minister of Tourism who happens to be the Prime Minister because he was at a tourism conference 2 or 3 days ago. Did he mention that he was going to bring in a tax on their industry? Their Minister—their own Minister—goes and speaks at a conference. “Jokey John” was there.Kelvin Davis: “Jandal John”.Hon ANNETTE KING: It was “Jandal John”. He was there. He was there with the jokes and the smiles and the laugh. Did he tell them that he was going to bring in a sneaky little tax and pass it under urgency on a Saturday afternoon? No he did not. He did not raise it and he never gave any—any—indication at all to a very very important constituency.The Nats want this debate out of the way as fast as possible because they know—they know. They came to us and they wanted us to agree with it and to get it out of the way as fast as possible for one reason: they are embarrassed. They are embarrassed because they are bringing in a new tax and it is being brought in by a Prime Minister who can perform gymnastics with the truth. He can do the double backflips on anything he likes and we have got plenty of examples. “No new taxes.” he said so he raised GST. “No new taxes.” so here tonight at 10 past 5 he sneaks in a border tax on New Zealanders and on foreigners. He breaks his promises like he breaks his eggs into the pan in the morning. He could not even deliver on the promise to give New Zealand a panda. That is how many promises he breaks.Yesterday Mr Key was asked what the difference was between a tax and a levy. When asked the difference between a tax and a levy the Prime Minister’s answer was: “Many”. When he was asked again he said: “Google it.” Then when asked a third time he said that he could answer it: “… but I’m not going to bother.” “I’m not going to bother.” and that is a quote. The Prime Minister could not bother to tell New Zealanders what this was all about whether it was a tax or a levy or why we were having it. He just could not be bothered. I have to say that having claimed that many times—like one of those biblical characters who did it three times—he said it was for biosecurity. He finally said it was for—[Interruption] That was Judas if you wanted to know. The Prime Minister said it was for biosecurity.Well let us look at the Government’s record on biosecurity and at the hopeless hapless Minister it has got who is the Minister for biosecurity. He has been hopeless in this position. He has let more insects and bugs into this country and put more things under threat than any other Minister in the history of this country. He cut the staff and he cut the funding and now he wants to replace it by putting a levy on New Zealanders. What a sham. If it were really about biosecurity Mr Minister why not increase the levy on the ports and on containers? That is where you find most of your biosecurity risk not the odd person who might inadvertently have an apple in their bag—in fact most of them are caught because they go past one of the sniffer dogs. It is in your containers and over your ports so why not increase that levy? Oh no there is no answer to that.This bill is a sneaky attempt to grab money from hard-working Kiwis who want a holiday. In its own documents the Government says the most hard hit will be those going on short-term trips across the Tasman. For New Zealanders probably the only trip that they can really afford is going across to Australia and so they are the ones who are going to be mainly hit. What has been the reaction once they found out that this sneaky little tax was going to be introduced into this House? Air New Zealand said it was very surprised. It said that it will add to the cost of the ticket. Then it asked a very good question and I hope that the Minister can answer this question. If it is really about biosecurity it asked what biosecurity or customs risk do New Zealanders who are leaving New Zealand pose? What is the biosecurity or customs risk that New Zealanders who are leaving pose?Hon Nathan Guy: That’s the immigration process.Hon ANNETTE KING: No. The big argument Minister is that it is for biosecurity. Your Minister Nicky Wagner who just sat down—she talked all about biosecurity. So tell me what is the risk in someone taking their bag and going to another country? What is the cost of a departure because this is imposed not only on people coming into New Zealand but also on departure? The airline industry which probably knows a little bit about people coming and going actually asked that question Minister. I hope tonight when you get into that chair—Hon Nathan Guy: I’ve answered it.Hon ANNETTE KING: Well you can sit in the chair and answer it properly instead of just yelling across the House. The airline industry wants to know why it is going to be charged on people leaving New Zealand.Let us see what the Board of Airline Representatives of New Zealand said. It said that the tax was “in breach of an understanding reached between the Government airlines and the tourism industry in 2003”. Did the members opposite know that there was such an understanding—that there was an understanding that has been in place since 2003? It was honoured for all the 5 years of a Labour Government but broken like its promises by this Government. It breached an understanding which means that its word is worth nothing—it is worth nothing—when an understanding is made. The Government announced this; it did not consult on it. It did not say: “We’re going to do this.” National has brought it in and it has breached an understanding between the Government the airlines and the tourism industry. You cannot trust those members.The airline representatives also said they were “disappointed that the Government itself would harm the tourism industry.” That is what they said. They are surprised that the Government itself would harm their industry—a $10.4 billion industry. Tourism New Zealand—what did it say? It said that taxes imposed in other countries had had an adverse effect on travel. Now let me go to the final point that I want to make. In December 2011 the British Government announced an increase in departure tax for air travellers to New Zealand. The Prime Minister went to Britain. He “slammed the decision” saying it would place “a significant burden on New Zealand businesses on families who travel”. He said that it was a “tax” and he said it was “discrimination on the basis of distance”. That was said by the Prime Minister in 2011. He opposed this passenger tax in Britain. He flew there at the taxpayer’s expense—he flew there at the taxpayer’s expense.Hon Nathan Guy: It’s $150.Hon ANNETTE KING: I do not care how much it is Mr Minister. It is the principle—the principle. The principle—it is a tax and our Prime Minister flew to Britain to oppose it. He flew there to oppose it. He got headlines in the media. He got on the front of the television news because he said it was discrimination. Well I will tell you Mr Minister what it is. It is a double standard and it is what we expect from the National Party. Those members make promises that they break on a daily basis. They say: “No new taxes.” and they put in new taxes—the biggest one of course being increased GST which hurts the people who have the least in this country. Then tonight they are sneaking in a tax that they never consulted on. They have no right to bring it in.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei):Well the last speaker Annette King certainly showed up her leader. She got more words out in 10 minutes than he got out in 20. Unfortunately that speech was about as factual as his speech was the day before yesterday. I just need to point out a few facts in the process of supporting the two Ministers who have spoken before me on the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures Levy) Bill. For a start a levy is a levy a rate is a rate and a tax is a tax and clearly the Labour Party has not worked that out. Secondly the Government is charged with running the country. The Labour Party has clearly forgotten that it had a turn at doing that a while ago and did not do much of a job of it.The issue we have got here is that we have a large number of people coming into this country demanding a service of this country and creating a threat to this country in that we need to protect our border at all costs. We now have some 5.2 million people coming here annually. Well over 55 to 60 percent of those people are foreign visitors coming to this country. We have seen from the fruit fly just very recently in Auckland that there is significant risk to New Zealand.I just want to make a couple of other points before I finish. Firstly the taxpayers of New Zealand have been paying for this service for a long time. The average taxpayer in my electorate never leaves this country. The interesting thing about this is that most of the people who use this service are people who can afford to pay for this service and consequently I think there is a very fair way of allocating a levy or a charge to achieve a result for this country that will be much better than what we have seen before. It gives us some security it gives us a permanency of payment and it alleviates the need for a large number of New Zealand taxpayers who never use or have an interest in this service to contribute to it.One other point I want to make in this debate is that this country is significantly tested around infrastructure by the large number of visitors we have to this country. I think it has been pointed that some 5.2 million people came to the country last year. In my electorate I have a couple of little towns Sanson and Bulls. Some 14000 vehicles a day go through those towns. Those local ratepayers or taxpayers have to pay every bit of that bill. I think this is just another case of exactly that sort of thing going on. I have a great deal of pleasure in supporting this bill. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call James Shaw. Before the member starts with the barracking across the cross benches it is very difficult to hear. So please give some courtesy to James Shaw.JAMES SHAW (Green):We seem to be starting this bill where we left off with the Telecommunications (Development Levy) Amendment Bill with some rather cunning linguistics. When is a tax a tax? When is it a levy? When is a levy a tax? When is it a rate? “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet;”. That is where we started yesterday with the telecommunications legislation—was it a tax was it a levy? Actually who cares? Who cares what the language of it is. It is revenue that the Government needs to charge to cover its costs.The Green Party has never been particularly afraid of this notion. When the Government wanted to reduce and did reduce the top income tax rate and reduced the Government’s revenue by about a billion dollars a year which has led to record deficits and an inability to cover its expenses we argued against that. It is OK. Sometimes you have to raise taxes in order to cover your costs and the Government is doing that. It likes to pretend that it is not by calling it something that it is not. But actually we know it for what it is. We commend the Government for raising the revenue that it needs to raise in order to cover the costs of running the country. That is completely fine. Bill English has raised or extended any number of taxes. The Government has raised GST it has raised the petrol tax it has removed the paper boy levy and it has put a tax I think on private jets. Yesterday we extended an existing tax which is the telecommunications development tax—ah levy rate.Hon Members: Ha ha!JAMES SHAW: I am sorry. I am just pulling your ponytail. Whether it is a matter of double standards or broken promises that is OK. It is a National Government. We expect that.Let us talk about the substance of what this is about which is to raise revenue to cover the costs of biosecurity and customs. The purpose of this bill is to introduce international passenger levies which will be used to fund the costs of biosecurity and border control relating to imported pests diseases illegal drugs and contraband. The measure is expected to raise about $100 million a year. These are costs relating only to international passengers not to goods and freight which are already covered by other border levies taxes and rates.The Green Party is supporting this bill. We think that it makes sense for a number of different reasons. First of all it takes a cost of the industry essentially of the tourism industry that has previously been externalised to the New Zealand taxpayer and it internalises that cost back into the industry. That cost has been borne by the public at large through general taxation previously. The benefit of course comes back to the economy through international tourism and so on but this is a much more direct and transparent way of making that cost apparent. Also given that a significant number of the people who will be charged this tax levy and rate are foreign tourists to New Zealand we are managing to raise additional revenue from people who are visiting this country as opposed to the New Zealand taxpayers.Secondly we have and I have criticised the Government for a habit of corporate welfarism in the past which is to use general taxation to hand out to industry players in general. Both with the telecommunications development levy and this one this is a much more direct and accountable way of raising these revenues and internalising those costs that are otherwise externalised. So we think it actually increases transparency and accountability to do it this way.Another reason we are supporting it is that it ties revenue to actual numbers and actual costs. So as passenger numbers increase or decrease the amount of revenue will track directly to that and therefore costs will expand and contract based on actual passenger numbers whereas there is some inefficiency if you do it just from general taxation. The costs are borne by travellers in this case like I said many of whom are international guests to the country and all of whom are generally people who can absorb this cost. As one of the Ministers who spoke previously to the bill said this will account for less than 1 percent of the total cost. If you are paying $1000 to come and visit New Zealand another $36 on top is not actually going to make that much difference. Most other countries have airport taxes in place. I lived in the United Kingdom for most of my career most of my adult life and the airport taxes there—to go in and out of Heathrow will cost you something in the order of NZ$142 and in Australia it is about $58. So our $36 in and out charge is actually pretty reasonable.The Green Party has in the past called for the use of airport taxes to fund the Department of Conservation estate. Given that the vast majority of international travellers to New Zealand are people who are coming to look at the conservation estate and to take advantage of it that would be a direct way of helping to fund the cost of the tourism industry on the conservation estate. Also the cost of promoting essentially the conservation estate is borne in large part by a number of local authorities. There is some room to expand this in the future. Given that the levy that has been suggested here of around $36 is a pretty low rate there does seem to be some room in the future to bring that up to the median rate of airport taxes around the world which could be used for those other purposes as well. So it sets a precedent to create some other opportunities in the future.I understand that the industry has a number of concerns and again because we are sitting under urgency we are unable to have those voices represented either for or against the bill through the select committee process. That is unfortunate as with all bills under urgency. Horticulture New Zealand has said that it is for this because obviously it is deeply concerned about biosecurity incursions. Because biosecurity funding was cut some years ago by this Government there have been an increasing number of incursions. The cost to the economy of that is really substantial. So what this bill does is it restores some of the funding that was previously cut and I can understand why Horticulture New Zealand would be keen on strengthening our biosecurity.Air New Zealand Auckland Airport and New Zealand Airports Association are obviously not in favour of this bill and I can understand why. They have some concerns that it will affect our international competitiveness. It would be great if this was not an urgency debate and if we did have a select committee process where we could hear some evidence for and against that. I understand the industry concerns there. There are passengers who are price sensitive. My gut feeling is that a tax of less than 1 percent of the cost of travel is something that passengers can cope with and that it will not significantly affect our international competitiveness. Flight Centre has come out and said that it is pretty ambivalent about it. Its concern would be if the people who are being charged were not getting the benefit of this. So it has some concerns as well. I just wanted to represent those concerns in the absence of a select committee process.Having said all of that we do have a couple of concerns one of which is that the cost of this is both biosecurity and customs and some of it is revenue. It is $100 million of revenue estimated. Some of this revenue is going to go to upgrade our border security and customs including new technology X-ray machines and so on. We have some caution around the use of this money for new technologies that may invade personal privacy and we would like to hear from the Government side where that money is going and what kinds of new technologies it is looking at expanding that into. The upside is that I understand they are bringing back beagles. Everyone loves a beagle. We are going to see some puppies back at Auckland Airport which is great. Also there are some concerns about the extent to which the biosecurity money is simply topping up what was previously cut as opposed to actually extending the biosecurity regime as well. So we just want to hear a bit more of that sort of information.Having said that we do not like the fact that this bill is going through under urgency. We cannot see why it is an urgency bill. There does not seem to be anything particularly urgent about it but then there has not been anything particularly urgent about any of the bills that have come through over the last few days. We are not happy about that.We do have some concerns about privacy and about the use of the money for biosecurity. We do want the voice of industry to be represented if it has concerns that it does not feel have been adequately represented. But for all of the other reasons I stated we will be supporting this bill in the House. Thank you.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I am very pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in the first reading of the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill. This is a bill that New Zealand First would very much like to be able to support. At the moment we do not—or rather we cannot—support it because we have some questions and some concerns that are yet to be addressed and answered. I certainly hope that as the bill passes through the stages of urgency a Minister or Ministers or Government members take the opportunity to address these concerns and give us some answers. I notice that the Minister of Customs has already filled in a couple of details that I was not previously aware of so that helps to fill in the gaps. Yesterday the Rt Hon Winston Peters referred to this bill as the “Holiday Tax Bill” and that is one of our primary concerns. We are very concerned that in fact this may be nothing other than a holiday tax bill and I would like the Minister or someone else to reassure us that it is not.New Zealand First has called long and loud and often for better resourcing for biosecurity. We understand just how vitally important biosecurity is for the primary sector. We know full well how important the primary sector is to the entire economy and to our way of life. There is an awful lot riding on it and for that reason we have often and loudly called for better resourcing for biosecurity. If indeed this bill does constitute better resourcing if it does mean more money if it will mean more boots on the ground and if it will mean more sniffer dogs and more X-ray machines then those are good things that we will support wholeheartedly.I am a little bit concerned that Minister Wagner talked about cost recovery. That sort of raises a bit of a flag for me that perhaps this is not additional money; perhaps it is just shifting the revenue stream from one source to another. That is one of our concerns. If the Ministers can demonstrate how this levy is the best way to achieve an increase in resourcing for biosecurity and do so convincingly then we will be supportive of that as a move. But as I said at the moment we do not because there are still too many questions unanswered. There is too little in the way of detail and explanation in the bill itself and in the Government’s supporting material—its publicity material. There are some elements of that that are kind of ambiguous. There is material in the departmental disclosure statement for example that seems to be at odds with some of the Government’s publicity material and it would give us great confidence if the Government was prepared to address these matters as we go through the stages and hopefully persuade us that our concerns are not founded.I say that because if it does not then there is actually no other way in which this bill is able to be examined or explained because this bill like the others we have been debating since the Budget is being pushed through under urgency so there is no select committee process. There is no opportunity for the public to make submissions and no opportunity for industry for the primary sector to make submissions and no opportunity for anybody who is going to be affected to ask questions and to have input. That is the nature of urgency. When we move into urgency and pass legislation under urgency what we are essentially doing is suspending the normal constitutional processes of this House and of the country. It is not something that we believe should be done lightly or indeed often.But it does seem—certainly in the short number of years I have been in this House—to be becoming something that this Government is tending to do more and more often with greater frequency. Also it seems to me anyway that there is less and less in the way of justification. The day before yesterday when the Leader of the House was advising us why this bill would go through under urgency he said: “The Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill is being introduced because demand for border clearance services is increasing due to the number of airline and cruise ship passengers—”Grant Robertson: What? Over the weekend?RICHARD PROSSER: —yes—“arriving in and departing from New Zealand. This is expected to grow by some 3.5 percent annually for the foreseeable future and we simply need to have the users of the services that we provide to protect our borders paying for them. This bill requires Customs and Excise Act and Biosecurity Act changes because they do not currently provide the facility to collect that levy. Urgency is necessary to allow for a period of consultation on the design”—meaning the design of the levy—“post the passing of the bill which is the process that needs to be used. Thank you.”So according to Mr Brownlee urgency is needed because this is the process that needs to be used. So it is “just because”. Well “just because” is hardly an explanation for why the nation’s normal constitutional procedures are being sidelined. This is really a case of the Government saying to the Parliament: “Just sign this blank cheque and we’ll fill in the details later. Trust us. You don’t need to know.” So we have to ask why and we would really like some explanation and some clarification around that.This is only a levy-setting bill or a tax bill or a bill that authorises a fee or a rate—some money being paid. All it is is a bill that authorises a levy. We are not going to war. We are not declaring a republic. We are not changing the flag. I promise you we are not changing the flag—believe you me that ain’t happening—and we are not responding to some sort of natural disaster. We are applying a fee to passengers arriving and passengers departing and that is all. I fail to see how anything to do with setting a fee can be so crucial that we have to rush it through under urgency and dispense with normal procedure. But we will of course. The bill will go through with our support or not because the Government has the numbers. The ACT Party—all of him—will happily bend over in any direction the Government wants because he does not want to bite the hand that feeds him and United Future will also be compliant. That is just the way he has become. I recall a politician a member of this House from long ago who used to refuse on principle to support any legislation that was going through under urgency. That man was Peter Dunne. I wonder what ever became of him.So this bill will go through and we will have the opportunity to ask the Minister and the Government some questions about it. We will seek to have a number of matters clarified and if our concerns can be satisfied then I say to the Ministers that we are capable of having our minds changed by way of sound reasoning and we may well yet consider giving our support to the bill. Thank you.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura):In response to the previous speaker’s questions around costs 55 percent of the visitors who come to New Zealand are visitors from offshore and therefore the tax or the—[Interruption] It is not a tax; it is a levy and the levy will cover the costs and take the load off our taxpayers as it should. I commend the bill to the House.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I understand that this is a split call.Iain Lees-Galloway: I understand that too Mr Speaker.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): OK. Iain Lees-Galloway—5 minutes.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North):Finally we have confirmation from the member Stuart Smith that this is indeed a new tax. It is appropriate—Hon Member: One honest National Party member.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Yes we have found the honest National MP—he will not go far. We have sat through this Budget legislation over the last 3 days and many of us have been in the House for a lot of that time. The culmination of the legislation that has been passed through this House demonstrates to New Zealand that this is a Budget of broken promises and sneaky taxes.It is so appropriate that this bill is the finale because this is a bill that passes not only a broken promise but also a sneaky tax. You may be wondering how it does that in light of National’s promise at the last election. The sign I am holding says: “No new taxes”. Read my lips—no new taxes. That is what the National Party members promised to the people of New Zealand at the last election—no new taxes—yet that is exactly what they have done. They have brought legislation to this House in this Budget and introduced a bevy of sneaky little taxes because they cannot find a way into surplus.I will give them points for sincerity though because it says at the top here: “A strong economy means” and then “no new taxes”. So fair enough—they cannot build a strong economy. They have not got the faintest idea how to build a strong economy so that is why we have ended up with a bevy of sneaky little taxes and broken promises. This legislation is all about broken promises and sneaky taxes.I am very concerned about the inflation rate on this tax. When Nicky Wagner and Nathan Guy announced it just a couple of days ago it was going to be around $16 for people coming into the country and $6 to leave—Hon Nicky Wagner: No no.IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Do not disagree with me Nicky Wagner because it came from your press release. If you think I am wrong check with the communications team to make sure that your messages are getting through. So she said it would be about $16; today it is $20 or thereabouts. Nicky Wagner is looking confused. Read the Hansard of your own speech Nicky Wagner because this is what you said. It is already $20. That is a 25 percent increase in just a couple of days.This tax is going up faster than Auckland house prices and that is a scary thought. But hey maybe it is not a tax. Maybe Stuart Smith was wrong—no he was not. He is right. He is right—it is a tax. But if we accept for just a second National’s line that it is actually a levy that does not instil an awful lot of confidence because we know what National does with levies. What does it do with the ACC levies? It keeps them artificially high so that it can try to get the books back into surplus. So maybe the fact that it has gone from $16 2 days ago to $20 today to goodness knows what when it is actually implemented is actually about the Government’s plan to build up and overcharge on yet another levy so that it can try to get the books into surplus.We know what this is. It is a departure tax. I want to advise the Government members that we used to have a departure tax at Palmerston North Airport and the people hated it. The people absolutely hated it. They are going to hate this and they are going to see right through it. They are going to know what this is. This is just another broken promise and another sneaky tax from this sneaky National Government.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I call Steffan Browning—5 minutes.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green):We will be supporting this bill. We see that this sort of user-pays method to fund some aspects of biosecurity and customs processing is appropriate. But this levy is no magic bullet.Iain Lees-Galloway: It’s a tax.STEFFAN BROWNING: It is a levy. It is a tax. It is a whatever. It is a source of income for these processes at the border. It is just a fraction of what is needed for biosecurity. We will be speaking obviously at another time on the total budget for biosecurity. The Government has added—supposedly added—only about $25 million to biosecurity and that is a very very concerning thing. This is just another revenue source. The $100 million that is anticipated in 2017-18 is only a source to basically cover the limited amount that is being used already out of other revenue streams. Biosecurity at the border needs a lot—a lot—more money.I have put it to the Minister for Primary Industries that even if you used 50 percent of what you are going to get from this new income stream and added it to existing biosecurity money it will still not be enough for biosecurity. Think of the fruit fly. How did it get in this last time? Previously up in Whangarei we thought it was probably by a yacht and then another time another yacht possibly. Are these people going to get taxed? Is someone going to be tapping them on the shoulder to pay their levy? I hope so.Hon Nicky Wagner: They are as they come in as they clear customs.STEFFAN BROWNING: Yes so is the Customs Service going to be there for these stray yachts—waifs and strays—as they come in to inspect them properly and to gather their tax? I hope so because they need to be paying their part of it.However then we had the Auckland incursions the more recent ones. What has that cost so far? And it is not over yet. We have to wait until spring to see whether there is a re-emergence because it was not nipped in the bud quick enough. Worse these Queensland fruit flies actually got in here and were able to sit in New Zealand and breed for at least one generation and by the look of it there was more than one generation of breeding in New Zealand because we did not nip it in the bud. Is this levy/tax going to do the job? No it is not. It is just going to make sure that some of those people who could have been responsible are going to be paying their way.Back in the mid-1990s even when HortResearch looked at the potential cost of the Mediterranean fruit fly—a good proxy for the Queensland fruit fly—the cost for the Bay of Plenty should it get going there was $820 million and a cost basically of 3500 jobs. In the Hawke’s Bay it was $390 million with over 3000 jobs lost and in the Nelson area it was $265 million with close to 2000 jobs lost. It is critical that we do biosecurity to the nth degree and do way way better than we are doing at the moment.I would actually like to pat the Minister Nathan Guy on the back. I have been watching biosecurity very closely well before I was in Parliament and right through to this time. Unfortunately in 2008 when National got in there were significant cuts to biosecurity in this country. There was an immediate loss of almost 60 jobs and I think a year or so later there were another 200 jobs down the gurgler in biosecurity. Importantly many of these were on the front line. What we have been seeing is an incremental increase and repair to that. I will speak further on this in a later speech. Thank you.TODD BARCLAY (National—Clutha-Southland):I support this bill.DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):That was an excellent speech—an excellent speech. This is a tax. We know it is a tax. Government members might pronounce it “levy” but it is spelt t-a-x—tax. That is what it is that is what the Oxford Dictionary says it is and that is what it really is. Why does the Government not just front up and admit it? The reason it does not want to front up and admit it is that at the last election the National Party promised not to put up taxes. It also promised to get us back into surplus. The whole murky tangle of web is all around this. This is about trying to narrow down the deficit by putting through these sneaky taxes and cutting our KiwiSaver kick-start contribution. Those are the things that we see so transparently that the Government is doing in order to get us back into surplus. The National Party said no new taxes; this is a tax.Why is it that we are sitting here on Saturday night putting through a bill under urgency when there is nothing on the Order Paper? The Order Paper is empty. In a few weeks’ time Gerry Brownlee will stand up at the beginning of Parliament and say: “There is nothing to do today.” because there actually is not very much to do. Why are we sitting here under urgency? The only reason is that we do not want to give New Zealanders the opportunity to sit down and debate this. Why would New Zealanders want to be coming in front of a select committee? Because they would point out to the Government in front of the media day after day after day that this is a tax. It is not a levy; it is a tax.There is no secret as to why this Government needs to lift its game when it comes to biosecurity—not if you live in the Mt Albert electorate which I live in. It is currently infested with Queensland fruit fly. Maybe some of the money that it raises can be used to compensate the fruitgrowers and the shopkeepers in my electorate because they have suffered by most calculations of the supermarkets there 50 percent in terms of lost revenue from the sale of fruit and vegetables. They have been infested because this Government has taken its eye off biosecurity. There is nothing more important to the economy of this country than biosecurity. Steffan Browning said it before and I totally agree with him but he got his numbers a little wrong. It was 91 front-line staff who were cut in 2009—91. We stopped X-raying a lot of bags. We cut back on the number of dogs that were checking baggage coming into our airports. And the result is that we have had two outbreaks of Queensland fruit fly and one of them is still alive and active. That is a desperate and wanting policy and that is why this Government has to step up and really put some money behind it.But that is not the end of the problem—that is not the end of the problem. The other part of it which my colleague Rino Tirikatene pointed out is the JBMS. That is a shocker. The JBMS is the Joint Border Management System. It was supposed to revolutionise everything coming into New Zealand. Well it has failed. In 2010 it was on the books costing $75 million. In 2013 it had jumped to $90 million. In 2014 it was up to $104 million and it is still not doing what IBM which is the main contractor said it was going to be able to do. I would like to ask Nicky Wagner when she has a chance later on in the Committee stage to stand up and say: “No we are definitely not taking IBM to court.”—we are not taking IBM to court—because there is a very big rumour around town that IBM is under the gun and is going to be taken to court. This smells and tastes like Novopay and that is another reason why this Government has to bring out another tax—another tax—to try to cover the books.This is a disgrace. The biosecurity has let in more pests in the last 2 years than in any other time in our history and the Joint Border Management System and the customs system is falling over and costing this country millions. This is a tax a tax a tax and let us not forget it. Thank you.BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country):I am in favour of this bill. Thank you.A party votewas called for on the questionThat the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill be now read a first time.Ayes 73New Zealand National 59; Green Party 10; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 40New Zealand Labour 28; New Zealand First 12.Bill read a first time.Second ReadingHon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries):I move that the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Act be now read a second time.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): It is a levy bill not an Act.Hon NATHAN GUY: I move That the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill be now read a second time. As I outlined to the House earlier this levy will fund the costs of border processing incurred by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the New Zealand Customs Service and ensure that border services are sustainable.The Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service together spend around $100 million a year on border clearance for passengers and crew. In the past these costs have been met by taxpayers. It is worth noting that around 55 percent of arriving and departing passengers come from overseas and therefore do not contribute directly to the costs of our border services. The Government considers it is fairer for these costs to fall on passengers travelling internationally.Our borders are dealing with increasing volumes. Arriving air-passenger volumes have grown by more than 18 percent from 4.4 million in 2009 to 5.2 million in 2014 and are expected to continue to increase by around 3.5 percent per year. The levy will help ensure our border processes stay fit for purpose into the future.It is likely that the total costs for all passengers arriving in and departing from New Zealand will be around $22 inclusive of GST but further modelling—[Interruption]—in consultation with stakeholders if members opposite would listen and with the New Zealand public needs to be completed before the total amount is confirmed.Officials are preparing a discussion document outlining the proposed options which will be released for public feedback in June. The levy is proposed to take effect on 1 January 2016 and will be applied to tickets purchased on or after that date. Around 95 percent of travellers cleared at the border arrive on commercial airlines about 4 percent come on cruise ships and the remaining 1 percent come on private aircraft yachts cargo ships etc.This announcement is part of a range of measures in Budget 2015 to improve security and services at the border involving immigration customs and biosecurity. The Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service have already been working closely together to make improvements at the border sharing their facilities cross-warranting of staff enhanced profiling targeting of incoming passengers and the use of automated systems such as SmartGate.The introduction of the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill will put border services on a sustainable footing by allowing funding to increase as passenger numbers rise which is fairer and it will be more responsive to managing the risks at the border as well as providing quality services. I commend this bill to the House.RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to speak at the second reading of the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill. Ordinarily a second reading takes place after the bill has been referred to select committee and has received public submissions and viewpoints from the industry and from all around affected persons. That is the path that this bill should be taking but unfortunately here we are on Saturday approaching 6 o’clock and we are now into the second reading of a bill that this Government has admitted is a tax. I would like to acknowledge Mr Smith for telling the truth and acknowledging that this levy is a tax. So thank you Mr Smith for that. I am sure you will progress really well amongst your team. Good luck to you.This is a tax and unfortunately it is a slap in the face for New Zealand’s tourism industry. It is the second-largest foreign-exchange earner for our country: over $10 billion in earnings is generated by the tourism industry. What was the tourism industry told about this? What was the tourism told about this—absolutely nothing. And who is its Minister the Minister of Tourism? That is right “Jandal John”—“Jandal John” flip-flopping all the time. Just a couple of years ago he was trying to advocate to bring down these taxes so we could actually have open transfer and facilitation of tourism travel. But no what has he done? He has absolutely thumbed his nose at the industry and absolutely gone contrary to all of the work that it has been doing. It has been outlined in the 2025 strategy of the New Zealand tourism industry. A lot of work has been going on in terms of promoting freer flow of tourists and what we are seeing is the opposite. This bill will actually be doing the opposite. It is just an attempt by this Government to collect more revenue by targeting travellers—ordinary Kiwis ordinary folks and all of our international visitors who want to make a trip to New Zealand.But there is a cost to this. There is the assumption that yes we have got a free flow of visitors but if you look at the trans-Tasman market for tourists there are a million empty seats on those flights every year. It is a highly priced competitive short-haul flow of aircraft and so it puts a lot of pressure on the travel agents the airline industry and the like.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.RINO TIRIKATENE: As I was saying before the dinner break the tourism industry has identified the actual benefits from lowering or having no travel taxes imposed. It has been working very closely with our Australian counterparts. There are a million vacant seats—unused seats—on those routes and the tourism industry research said that there could possibly be a 13 percent yield in benefits from maintaining or having lower or no travel taxes imposed. But what has this Government done? It has actually done the complete opposite and we are now imposing our own travel tax.The other point I want to make is around what the proceeds from this travel tax will be going towards. As we know they are going towards protecting our borders and biosecurity. Basically this is an admission from this Government that its border management has been underperforming. This measure is an admission of that and what we have seen are the incursions of fruit flies and other nasty organisms that pose a real threat to our primary industries especially. This should not be taken lightly. It is a very very serious matter our biosecurity system. I know that the Ministry for Primary Industries has various levels of protection I guess that we use. But this is an admission that the Government has been underperforming because you know you are in trouble when you have to call your fisheries officers out to try to chase a fruit fly or look after a sick pig. You know you are in trouble when you are doing that. Our dedicated and highly trained fish cops have been diverted by biosecurity matters.Kris Faafoi: Coast gets plundered.RINO TIRIKATENE: Absolutely and then the coast gets plundered. So that is an admission from this Government that it has underperformed in this area. It is a shame though. The Crown has funded our biosecurity system and our services and it should continue to do so. There is no need. It is hurting our tourism industry and it remains to be seen whether there is a reduction in visitor numbers as a result of the imposition of this tax.The other point I want to move on to now goes back to the Joint Border Management System the JBMS. That is right that $100 million lemon which has not even been delivered yet. The full functionality has not been delivered and it is still kept a secret. If this travel tax is imposed I think that the travellers—the people who are leaving our shores and our tourists—have a right to know what their levy spend is actually going on. The Minister has given an assurance with regards to the Joint Border Management System that there is nothing to see and everything is all OK. Well if that is the case then why keep it secret? I believe that if Kiwis are paying this tax which is there to protect our borders and there is a joint system that has cost $100 million then Kiwis need to know what they are paying for. There has been a failure to deliver on the Joint Border Management System. For cargo users of the Joint Border Management System there is a user-pays charge. They know what they are paying for. Well what is the passenger component? What is the passenger component of the Joint Border Management System? What is that passenger component because travellers have the right to know? They do have the right to know.If passengers are paying a levy for greater enhanced sophisticated risk analysis of their movements well then it is very fair that the public of New Zealand especially who have paid over $100 million so far have a right to know what they are actually getting. Enlighten us Minister. Enlighten the country as to what it is because what are the risk and intelligence tools that the Joint Border Management System is delivering? We want to know because the system still has not been delivered yet. It is 3 years too late. It still has not been delivered. We have been told that the delivery date is going to be December this year but now it is getting put back. We are getting signals that it can be put back again. The Joint Border Management System is actually the engine room or it is supposed to be. The computer systems between the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service are joined up so all of the passenger screenings and the biosecurity risk analysis are driven by the Joint Border Management System. If the travel tax is going towards that then we need to know what the passenger component is. Hopefully the Minister will enlighten us later on because that is a very serious issue of public interest given the huge price tag on this system which no one seems to know what it is doing and you never hear anything about it.Hon Nicky Wagner: It’s because it’s working so well.RINO TIRIKATENE: Well it is not working so well. If it was working so well why are you keeping it secret? Why are you keeping it secret Minister?Hon Nicky Wagner: Success is no news.RINO TIRIKATENE: Well no. This Minister has been negligent in suppressing the details. The public of New Zealand deserve an answer particularly now that all travellers who will be crossing our borders will be paying a levy that will be subjected to the Joint Border Management System. They are paying for it so they have a right to know what they are getting for their spend. So we are looking forward to your elucidation on that point. We know that this is just another tax we know it is a broken promise from this Government and we continue to oppose this bill.Hon NICKY WAGNER (Minister of Customs):The New Zealand public told us they wanted a safe border. They want to make sure that it is secure against illegal people and illegal goods—that is drugs firearms and objectionable material—and they want us to manage biosecurity risks such as fruit fly and foot-and-mouth disease and that is what this levy will do. This levy in the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill will amend the Biosecurity Act and the Customs and Excise Act and it will impose a border clearance levy for arriving and departing passengers.I want to make it very clear that this levy is only cost recovery. It will be put into a trust account. It will have nothing to do with the Joint Border Management System because the Joint Border Management System deals with goods. This is to do with passengers and the Joint Border Management System deals with goods and Joint Border Management System goods have always had a levy. Goods have had a levy since the early 1990s so this is exactly the programme that we are going to introduce for passengers as well.I want to start by answering Mrs King’s question: what is the difference between a levy and a tax and why is it absolutely consistent that the Prime Minister has attacked the UK carbon tax and is absolutely supportive of this cost recovery levy? New Zealand’s cost recovery levy is about $20 maybe $22 and that reflects the cost that the New Zealand taxpayer is subsidising for every single passenger who comes across our border. The UK tax is about $150 and although $20 of it may be used for a border levy the rest of it is a carbon tax and it was designed to be a carbon tax. It is a carbon tax on distance a carbon tax on air miles flown for long-haul passengers. Of course that is calculated on the number of miles and that is particularly tough on a country like New Zealand on the opposite side of the world.At the moment if you look at the status quo in New Zealand it is a lose-lose for New Zealanders. Every New Zealander is paying for other people to come across our border. Then on top of that when New Zealanders go to another country they have to pay to go across others’ borders. So not only are we paying for our own borders but we are also paying for everybody else’s borders. That is lose-lose. This change will mean that it is best international practice and it will bring New Zealand into a place that is much more satisfactory for New Zealanders.I would also like to explain to Mr Lees-Galloway about the cost of this. It is all to do with addition. What our press release said was that it is going to cost $16 at arrival. The levy is $16 at arrival and $6 at departure. The reason for that is that there is much more work at arrivals than there is at departure because we deal with biosecurity at arrivals rather than at departure. But instead of it being inflationary as he seems to think it is actually going to be deflationary because I think it is probably going to end up at about $20. We believe it is $20 well-spent for New Zealanders to protect our borders. Just let me make it very clear. This is in comparison with Australia which is $58 and the UK which is $150.Let us now have a little bit of a chat about the Joint Border Management System. I would like to answer Mr Shearer’s queries and Mr Tirikatene’s questions. The Joint Border Management System is working well. I will make it clear again. It manages goods not passengers. Goods have always paid a cost levy. So this levy actually brings passengers in line with goods. I am really pleased to be able to announce a really good news story. Right now we are able to tell you that the Joint Border Management System has just reached 2 million transactions. I did put out a press release about this time last year when we got to 500000. But we have now got to 2 million transactions.Stuart Smith: Wow 2 million.Hon NICKY WAGNER: Fantastic. And on top of that exporters now have the ability the tools to be able to register online themselves. In the past it used to take 24 hours to register online. They can now do it within minutes. That is a fantastic improvement for the Joint Border Management System. I would also like to tell you that every week more companies are transferring to WCO Data Model 3 which is the new data protocol. This is cutting-edge latest technology latest data protocol and every week more and more of our transactions through the Joint Border Management System are moving that way.I would just like to make the point that the Customs Service is 175 years old this year. It is the oldest department—175 years. We are also dealing with cutting-edge technology cutting-edge IT and I think it just goes to show that you can teach old dogs new tricks.Also I would like to make a comment for the member Steffan Browning. He was concerned about private yachts. This levy will be in place for private yachts private aircraft and anybody who comes across our borders. As it is now every yacht and every aircraft that comes into New Zealand goes through the customs process for arrival and departure and we will collect the levy at that time. So he needs to understand that we will be doing a good job.Finally I want to get back to Rino Tirikatene again. I just want to tell him that we are not taking biosecurity or security at our border lightly. He seems to think we take it lightly. He probably has not realised that we have actually put $30 million in this Budget on top of this levy to beef up what we are doing at the border. So in the meantime this $30 million is going in this Budget. I also want to tell him that nobody seems to believe that this will make a difference to tourists’ behaviour. This cost is less than 1 percent for a long-haul flight and it is only one of thousands of variables that people have when they travel. For example how much does it cost you to get to the airport? What do you eat at the airport? What do you buy duty-free? What do you spend on entertainment on the plane? What do you spend in your country? The interesting thing is that I had a look at some research that said that in the last month the average Australian visitor to New Zealand lost more than $20 just on the exchange rate between Australia and New Zealand. So this is not going to make a difference. In fact I have a quote from a well-respected tourist leader who says “It won’t make a blind bit of difference.”I just want to summarise why this levy is so important for New Zealand and why New Zealanders should be pleased to see it. First of all it is flexible and futureproof. As the numbers of passengers and travellers increase across our borders the resources will be there to manage them. As we get more and they are more risky we will be able to make sure that we keep our borders safe. It is also fairer. I have explained that at the moment every New Zealander every Tom Dick and Harry is paying $23 in their tax to subsidise international people coming across our borders—people who are on a luxury cruise people who are coming to play golf in New Zealand. So why should the Whangarei panel beater or the solo parent in Christchurch pay for these people to come across our borders? What we have got now because the rest of the world is putting on these levies is a lose-lose for all New Zealanders.I just want to make one little reflection before I go. Before I was an MP I did not used to like paying tax. I think it was because Labour was in power and I did not trust the way it spent the money. But now I do understand where the money is going I know that it is spent wisely and I do not feel so bad about our tax. Most New Zealanders want their tax money to go to something useful. They want it perhaps to go to poorer families. They want it to go to hip operations. They want it to go to education. People like their taxes to go to something useful not to subsidise international passengers. So this levy is good for New Zealand it is good for New Zealanders and I commend this bill to the House.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central):There is hope for Stuart Smith because before the dinner break he got up and he told New Zealand what we all know: tonight we are debating a new tax that National brought in. We on this side of the House were discussing over dinner what a tragic end this was to Stuart Smith’s political career—so short burnt bright and out on one night. But Nicky Wagner has saved him. Stuart Smith could be the next Nicky Wagner—that is what we are finding out tonight—because she has just told us that the promise has been broken: “No new taxes.” That was the promise and Nicky Wagner has just told us right now that it is a tax. Every single New Zealander knows that Nicky Wagner.John Key went on the television last night and invited New Zealanders to google the difference between “tax” and “levy”. So I have done that and I can tell you that a tax is a compulsory contribution to State revenue levied by the Government on workers’ income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods services and transactions—something that we understand a tax to be. If we google “a levy” we see it is “a tax” or in fact both—the verb to impose a tax and the act of levying a tax. In fact some dictionaries go on to say “Use the word ‘levy’ as you would use the word ‘tax’.” So there we go—it is all there right here for you. We are happy to table it for you John. It is one with pictures so you will be fine; you will be good with that.So what we now have is a levy that is a tax and a tax that is a levy except that the Prime Minister does not think that they are the same. We are through the looking glass. This is what Humpty Dumpty told us: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” John Key is through the looking glass with Humpty Dumpty breaking the promise breaking the—Hon Craig Foss: Come on give us some poetry.GRANT ROBERTSON: Poetry? You would not know a poem if you fell over it Mr Foss.This is a broken promise. That is what this is. It is not just a broken promise to the voters of New Zealand who were told at the election by all the National candidates over there that there would be no new taxes; it is a broken promise to the airline industry. The board and airline representatives have made it quite clear that “National’s new tax”—they understand that—“breaches the understanding reached in 2003. Airlines already met the full costs of aviation safety and in return the Government met the costs of Customs. Under the deal the Government was to bear the costs of agricultural screening which is deemed to be for the benefit of the primary industries.” It is a broken promise to New Zealanders; a broken promise to the airline industry.But of course we all know that John Key is a straight-talking guy. If he went to a conference of a sector that was going to be deeply affected by something that was happening in the Budget—oh I do not know—2 days after his speech he might mention it to them. John Key goes to the Tourism Industry Association conference last week and it slips his mind. Obviously there are a lot of things on his mind but he fails to even mention it.Carmel Sepuloni: Slippery mind—that is why.GRANT ROBERTSON: That is right—because he is indeed Carmel Sepuloni very very slippery. It is a sneaky tax it is a broken promise and that is all that New Zealanders will see it as.But it gets worse. As we look through the department disclosure statement—and I hate to break this to the Minister Nicky Wagner who got up to give us the numbers before; we had 16 20 and 22. Do I have any advance on 22—no apparently not according to the Minister. When we look at the department disclosure statement it says as it goes through about the model of the levy: “[All of] this work will inform the final levy design including the level of the levy.” So the level of the levy—which is a tax—will still now be part of the consultation process.This is a bizarre situation. Here we are at 20 past 7 on a Saturday night apparently urgently passing this legislation to enable the imposition of this tax and the final design of the tax—the level of the tax—is not even going to be worked out. It is off for consultation. It is like going to the city council to get a building consent and saying “We are pretty sure the house is going to have some walls and we might put a roof on it and there could be a floor but look we’ll work it out later. Just give us the consent now.” That is what the National Party is doing tonight. There are all sorts of questions about whom it will apply to and will there be exemptions?Here is a question for the National members: will there be exemptions? Will it apply to every person who crosses the border? There is silence—absolute silence. They have not got a clue whether this tax will apply to every person who comes across the border. Here is a question for you: would it have applied to Prince Harry? No one—no one; they have not got a clue. They do not know what this is about. They have come to this House with an ill-thought-out tax—Carmel Sepuloni: Will it apply to Gerry Brownlee?GRANT ROBERTSON: Will it apply to Gerry Brownlee? He will sneak through so it will not apply to him. Actually someone called Gerry—his phone is on the desk so I am not sure what happened there. He may have been a bit angry earlier on and ripped it off. Ring up Gerry Brownlee and find out whether this tax will apply to him. At the moment what we are being asked to pass in this Parliament is a piece of legislation to impose a tax that the Government does not know how much it is going to be to whom it will apply how much it is going to cost to administer and exactly who is going to administer it. It is a shambles.Chris Hipkins: But it is very urgent.GRANT ROBERTSON: It is extremely urgent but it is a complete shambles and it is a total broken promise which symbolises everything about this Budget—a tax on travellers that is a broken promise a property tax about which Bill English said today that he did not even know whether it would work; he is not too sure about that. These are broken promises and a shambolic Budget. On this side of the House in a second reading debate we really should be debating now the contributions of all of the people who submitted at the select committee—the tourism industry the airline industry travellers—and we do not have their voices here today. For all of those reasons we cannot support this bill.IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei):I will be very brief. I commiserate with Mr Smith; I would not want to be on Grant Robertson’s dinner plate.Two very quick points: the levy will not put an impost on those who cannot afford to pay it. It is worth remembering that. The second point about this is that the levy also affords further protection to the income streams of rural and provincial New Zealand thus boosting the potential for rural and provincial New Zealand to participate in or make a contribution to the Government’s growth targets. I have great pleasure in commending this bill to the House.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green):I rise to speak in the second reading of the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill. Following on from what the Labour members were saying this shows a sad lack of process. We might be supporting the bill but we think there is a very sad lack of process. We agree that there should have been submissions to a select committee which would have added a much better context.As we heard importers might want to see a little bit of a fairer balance between their fees and the tourism industry the fees on these people who will be coming in. I am wondering which one actually deserves to pay the most. We are hearing that it will be $16 probably—probably but we do not know about the exemptions. It will be $16 out maybe $6 in and possibly $22—we do not know. For every importation an importer pays $13.15 from 1 July or depending on another level $17.37. It is pretty similar money. I am just wondering if we had submissions and we had some very solid depth to this we would understand which one was the riskier which one should pay to get the balance right if we are talking about biosecurity alone. I would like to know that.I would like to know—probably from the Cabinet papers that we have not seen or the other papers that we have not seen yet—in terms of the real costings where the risk lies and what the cost-benefit ratios of each would be. Under what sort of consultation will that happen? Consultation will not be that thorough and it will not have that opportunity from our previous experience.I started on a story before about where the Minister is going with biosecurity. He said that it was his most important area. I believe him actually. I think he is doing quite well in that area but he will never do well enough if he is using 2008 figures when National came into power and did these big cuts. It would appear that the Minister Nathan Guy has got us back in dollar terms to 2008. But 2008 was not good enough either. Before that in the previous Labour Government we had didymo the varroa mite and a lot more. But our risks appear to be increasing. Of course we have more tourists and we have more trade and we need to go a lot lot further.The Minister has done some catching up. I want to know from the Minister what his real numbers are at the moment in terms of staff and in terms of dogs. Some of the time he talks about new staff and new dogs but we are still not up to those 2008 numbers and the question is whether this Budget or this bill will help exceed those numbers and ultimately exceed them significantly. Good on the Minister.It is a real shame about the incursions that we got and are still getting because of the huge knock backs that happened following 2008. There is a whole range of different pests and diseases that have come in in recent times and that have not been managed very well. Theileria is one that possibly came in with cattle; it may have come in with some other animal. Where is the tax for that one? Did Psa come in pollen? Did it come in a matchbox in somebody’s luggage? Was varroa on a bee in a matchbox in someone’s luggage? Didymo was probably on some fisherman tourist’s spongy boots I would expect. Kauri dieback was probably brought in on machinery but we do not know for sure. How did the Hadda beetle come in? We assume that the great white butterfly at Port Nelson came from the port; we assume it did not come with a tourist but we do not know. And what about Psyllid. All these have had massive costs to this economy and to this country.A number of them are still here with significant costs. They have come in because of inadequate biosecurity controls. Not only that will this fund address the next stage—the clean ups the dealing with those incursions? I doubt it.They are finally getting on to the great white butterfly thanks to the Minister possibly listening to the Greens and others. The Department of Conservation was actually the one that really got it moving because the Ministry for Primary Industries did not but ultimately between them it appears they may have got control. But at what huge cost was that and what was the threat to both biodiversity and also the agricultural economy? The Theileria which I mentioned before is here for ever. How did this Government manage that? Absolutely woefully. MAF Biosecurity is underfunded. I do not think MAF Biosecurity staff are bad. I do not think they are incapable. I just think there are far too few of them and they keep getting mucked around and being told to do a new strategy. I think we are on the third new strategy within a decade—the third new strategy.And then some of the pathways work that looks to be actually meaningful in getting there is getting some funding knocked off it. That Theileria is huge: it will be costing us hundreds of millions of dollars in the near years—what it has cost and what it will carry on costing in lost production. There is major lost production: the loss of cows being able to carry embryos to conceive other ones dying ill thrift lack of production—a massive cost. Varroa is still costing us and will continue to cost us. These things also mean we end up using pesticides that we do not need to be using in this country—if we were to stop these things at the border or clean up absolutely immediately.I mentioned the fruit fly earlier and that clean up. I visited the Auckland area several times to see how they were doing this and how they were managing this fruit fly incursion. I believe that they did not have adequate advice. Again the staff are pretty good and I have met with some of them and had a briefing and understand what their logic was. They did not open up to enable further advice to do a better quicker job and as I heard from one of our fellow members over here before the cost was something like 50 percent of turnover for some of the businesses. I watched the changes in that and eventually we got some better systems in and businesses were able to trade a little bit more freely. But there are still impositions on business in that area and no doubt there will be a lot more in spring again until we get the all clear. So the Greens will support this but we want to see a lot more than this going into biosecurity and customs clearance. Thank you.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I am very pleased to rise to take a call in the second reading of the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill as it scurries its way urgently through the House. In the absence of a select committee process—or any other mechanism of public scrutiny come to that—it appears that all we have left as a means for ascertaining the reasons behind this bill and for getting some kinds of answers out of the Government is this process of urgency. I have to say that I am a little hurt that Minister Wagner addressed everyone’s questions except mine. I am not taking it personally; it is just that I want to know why. Maybe they were questions that the Minister felt she could not answer. Maybe they cut too deeply to the heart of the matter. But anyway I am sure that the Minister will take the opportunity to address the concerns that we have as a party.The first question I have is that we have been given an indication that this levy—fee tax whatever we want to call it—is going to be added on to the cost of tickets and that will be tickets that are sold here going outwards and tickets that are purchased overseas coming inwards. What I want to know from the Government is: at what stage of the GST process does this levy get applied? Does this levy get applied before GST is added or after? Is it in fact going to have GST on it as well and is it going to be another tax upon a tax in the same way that GST on rates is a tax on a tax? This is another case of what happens in terms of unintended consequences—or perhaps actually they are intended consequences—when due process is done away with and things happen in a hurry and there is not the time for reflection and contemplation and consideration and questions being asked and answered. Maybe this is one of these things that will just get sorted out later. If the Government does not want to make it a tax upon a tax and add GST on to the levy well then there is going to have to be a whole lot more administration involved and that is going to raise the cost as well so the value of the levy itself is going to fall—unless of course it does not mind adding a tax on a tax but this we will find out I suppose at some stage in the future.What is really starting to coalesce as being the centre point I guess of our difficulty with this bill is that we do not know whether this levy is intended to be additional funding for biosecurity or whether it is actually intended to just replace existing funding. Mr McKelvie in his long rambling speech of about 30 seconds I think it was spoke of a boost to biosecurity funding. But the Minister has consistently talked about cost recovery. Well it is one or the other. You know it is either an additional source of funding or it is a switch in funding from one source to another. I have a horrible suspicion—and it is growing on me all the time—that this levy which is touted as being a boost and an increase for biosecurity is in fact smoke and mirrors and that actually funding allocated to biosecurity will be flatlined and it is just the source of it that will change.When you drill down through the mud of the Government’s Budget figures it seems that all the appropriations relating to what used to be Vote Biosecurity and now appears to go by a number of different names are either flat or slightly reduced. There is a one-off capital injection to fund new X-ray machines—we see that. Whether that is actually funded by the levy or the tax or not remains to be seen. There is a mention of some additional staff but that comes in some of the Government’s publicity material and not actually in the bill itself. Again there is no clear indication as to whether the ongoing funding for these things—for the additional staff and for the X-ray machines—will be coming solely from the levy or partly from the levy or whether the existing baseline funding from general taxation will continue or not and the levy will be on top. This we actually need to know.Last year I think it was we passed the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill. Airports where that levy applies will not also have the new levy. That to my mind adds weight to the idea that this levy—or tax as is being suggested—is intended to be the primary source of funding for border inspection activities and not an additional source. Cargo inspection as we know—containers and freight coming in—is already funded through levies and fees. But we also know that only about one in four or only about 25 percent of incoming shipping containers are actually inspected. I would like to see increases in this levy as well if indeed the passenger funding is to be additional to existing revenue.The Customs Service website advertises inspection fees for containers for the importation of personal household effects of $330 for a 20-foot container up to $480 for a 40-foot container plus fumigation if necessary. That is for the likes of people migrating to New Zealand or New Zealanders who have been away coming home—their personal effects and so forth. So we know that all these containers are inspected because that fee is charged and paid and there is a devanning process. But the great majority of containers general freight are not inspected. There is an audit process where some are taken out or there will be a period of time or—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Passenger levy.RICHARD PROSSER: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. They are not inspected there are not enough inspectors and I am wondering whether any of this levy is to be directed to that sort of thing. We would actually like to see the levy extended for that. That is a large barn door that has been left open.Our other primary concern is whether or not this levy is simply in fact a holiday tax. It gets back to my earlier questions around whether or not this is an additional stream of funding or a replacement stream of funding. I do not believe that the travelling public would mind too much about paying $16 on top of their air tickets to come into the country if that was going to contribute to additional safety in terms of making sure that New Zealand does not get diseases like foot-and-mouth and so forth. We would certainly expect and the New Zealand travelling public would certainly expect that overseas travellers would pay that as well. The primary sector certainly expects that anyone any person who is a source of potential risk will pay their fair share. It is fairness and the relative fairness of who is expected to pay what that is at the heart of this matter. So we would like some clarity around that.It is puzzling as to why we would be charging a $6 levy for people to leave the country. I know that the Minister has explained that this is to add to or cover the costs of customs for people on the way out. Customs and biosecurity as we know are two different things. But again it makes me suspicious that if we are going to charge a levy on passengers leaving the country paying $6 towards the cost of running the Customs Service that to me says very loud and clear that actually this is a replacement source of revenue not an additional source of revenue.Hon Nicky Wagner: This puts $4.7 million on for departures.RICHARD PROSSER: Well I would love the Minister to stand up in the Committee stage and spell this out quite clearly. I want an assurance from the Minister that this levy is going to be on top of existing baseline taxation funding for biosecurity and customs not instead of. There is just too much ambiguity about it. The way the Government is spinning this thing as being great and marvellous and wonderful and additional—maybe I am a naturally suspicious person but it seems to me as if what we are going to wind up with at the end of this whole process is the same amount of money coming from a different place and not actually an increase.Actually most of the bill is concerned with who collects the money and what trust accounts it goes in and what records need to be kept and what penalties will apply if these rules and conditions are broken. It actually does not say anything at all about what the money will be spent on other than Government statements around funding for biosecurity which itself is a welcome thing. The explanatory note states: “The objective of this Bill is to ensure that funding arrangements for MPI and Customs are sustainable and the costs associated with the delivery of those activities are borne by those who directly benefit from the activities or give rise to the risks.” I mean costs being borne by those who directly benefit—Hon Nicky Wagner: That’s what a levy is.RICHARD PROSSER: Well in terms of customs Minister I do not understand that because arguably the only direct beneficiary from a customs inspection would be the Customs Service itself. Although the entire nation benefits from biosecurity inspections the primary sector could arguably be called the primary beneficiary from biosecurity but it is not being targeted by the levy at all. I am not saying that it should carry more of the cost—the primary sector pays tax and tax currently pays for biosecurity—but it is a direct beneficiary and yet this levy appears to be targeting a group that is not a direct beneficiary which again is confusing.The descriptions in the bill itself talk about functions—OK I guess “functions” can mean anything. We would like a bit of that spelt out a bit more clearly. I have another question: do cruise ship passengers get to pay the exit and entry levies four times over if for example their cruise ship stops in Auckland and in Wellington and in Lyttelton and at Port Chalmers? Because if the ship goes outside the 12 mile limit arguably the passenger has left New Zealand and then come back in again and gone out and come back in and gone out and come back in. Do they get stung with a fee every time they leave and every time they arrive again? Why have we not been told these things?Again there is no mention of whether or not this additional or altered source of funding is going to be used to reinstate 100 percent screening of all incoming passengers’ luggage mail and freight. This is something we are quite hot on. It is something that will actually make a material difference. Rearranging the beans into different-sized heaps before you count them does not actually increase the number of beans. Again we have—Hon Member: What does Jack think?RICHARD PROSSER: —questions that are—Jack and the Beanstalk—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry to interrupt the member but his time has expired.STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura):It is with great pleasure that I commend the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill to the House. Thank you.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call James Shaw—5 minutes.JAMES SHAW (Green):I have got a couple of questions that I would like a response from the Government side about one of which is the question of the money. There were three press releases relating to the levy and there is a question about whether this replaces existing money or whether it is actually new money. One of the press releases was talking about how biosecurity funding will be boosted by $24.9 million over 4 years plus $2 million of capital funding. A second press release talked about how the Customs Service would receive a $4.7 million operating funding increase. The general release about the airport tax said that the Ministry for Primary Industries and Customs Service currently spend about $100 million a year and that the airport tax is expected to raise about $100 million a year. That would imply that the new airport tax would raise an equivalent amount to what is currently being spent.I just wanted to check with the Government. The $24.9 million boost over 4 years and then the $2 million capital funding for biosecurity—does that come out of the $100 million—Hon Nicky Wagner: No.JAMES SHAW: —or is it additional? And the same with the $4.7 million—is that out of the $100 million or is that actually new money?Hon Nicky Wagner: New money.JAMES SHAW: OK.And then the second question was around the Customs Service press release. This is relating to the privacy concern that we flagged in my first reading speech. I just wanted to read it and then get a response. “ ‘The officers will use the targeting techniques that Customs currently applies to arriving international passengers to identify departing passengers of interest who are unknown to security agencies or not on an international watch list’ Ms Wagner says. ‘Customs officers will take appropriate action at the border before a person of interest leaves the country. This could include stopping them for questioning or alerting other authorities in New Zealand or abroad. Extended-risk screening for departures will complement the existing automated and face-to-face passport checks and the alert system already in place and will provide an additional source of intelligence. The aim is to counter potential terrorist activity maintain New Zealand’s low risk status and contribute to international efforts to combat terrorism’ Ms Wagner says.”From a Green Party perspective we have a pretty strong civil liberties kind of strain in the Green Party and some of that language there flags some concerns. So I would like it if at some point during the course of the debate the Minister would not mind just saying a little bit more about that and describing any new technologies or any risks analyses that have been done on what the implications are for personal privacy and security.And then the one I guess that everybody is waiting for. In the Ministry for Primary Industries release it does mention that it will be “Expanding our biosecurity detector dog capacity”—I am speaking to particular constituents here obviously—“to manage risk at the border.” The Government has made a great deal about the number of people who are returning home from Australia. I just wanted to check whether those dogs are going to be beagles or alsatians because I think beagles will be a great deal more attractive and bring more people back home.Hon Nicky Wagner: Labs. Customs likes labs.JAMES SHAW: OK. Thank you.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Kris Faafoi—5 minutes.KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana):Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak briefly to the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill. I believe that the questions just posed by the Green member of Parliament James Shaw are good ones. The time of this Parliament would not be being taken up asking these questions if this piece of legislation had followed the normal process. If we had the select committee process this piece of legislation would have gone to either the Primary Production Committee or perhaps the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee and these really basic questions could have been answered. But no we are here at 11 minutes to 8 on a Saturday night.I know that some of the members across the other side of the House do not want to be here but it is their own fault. It is their own fault because this did not have to be rushed through this Parliament under urgency. Some of the very basic questions that Mr Shaw is asking could have been answered. The process has been completely backwards and that is plain to see in the departmental disclosure report where a simple question was asked: “Were any regulatory impact statements provided to inform the policy decisions that led to this Bill?”. Usually that is something that is basic and is on the table for us so we can get answers to some of these simple questions that Mr Shaw has asked that Mr Prosser has asked that members from the Labour Party have asked. But the answer to that question is no.It is quite surprising that we have got to this stage—we are into the second reading of this bill—and a departmental report says: “A Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) was not prepared in support of the decision to implement the policy. However the regulatory impact of imposing a levy”—that is the Government’s spin—“and alternative options was set out … in the Cabinet paper proposing its introduction. A consultation RIS will be prepared and submitted for consideration by Cabinet when approval is sought in late May”—in about a week or so well after this piece of legislation is going to be passed. You know this is just not good enough. If this Government wants to introduce a new tax a travel tax on New Zealanders put it through the wringer through the scrutiny of a select committee. But no it did not warn anyone. It said there would be no new taxes. So to try to get away and sweep this under the carpet the Government puts this legislation under urgency at 10 to 8 while it thinks people are watching the Hurricanes beat the Blues.I will come to a conclusion soon but I would just like to also make a plea to members on my side of the House: take it easy on Stuart Smith. He is a new member to the House it is his first urgency he is a bit tired he has had a hard week he let his guard down and he got caught out telling the truth. Let us forgive him. Let us forgive him for that because he only confirmed what we already know: this is not a levy; in fact it is a tax. It is not the first time that the Government has used this urgency to bring in another tax. The telecommunications development levy was also a tax and this is also a tax. Let us forgive Stuart Smith. Forgive him. But we cannot forgive Nicky Wagner. She is the Minister. She is the Minister and she let it out also that this is a tax. A tax is a tax is a tax.The Prime Minister says that this tax will not make a blind bit of difference but I do not think that is necessarily the case because what did the Tourism Export Council’s chief executive Lesley Immink I think it is—I hope I have pronounced that correctly—say a couple of days after the Prime Minister spoke to its conference? She said: “Clear surprise is the first reaction that there was no discussion with either the inbound or outbound tourism agencies in New Zealand and the implications for the traveller.” Mr Key went along and spoke to them but did not bother telling them. What is the go there?Mr Chair the Prime Minister also posed a pretty simple question—Mr Speaker sorry. I have got the jitters from the Committee stage sorry Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister posed a pretty simple question. Is it a levy or is it a tax? He said: “Go google it.” We googled it. It is a tax—end of story.Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister for Small Business):An additional $100 million to protect the biosecurity of New Zealand—an extra $100 million to protect the economy of this country—and ladies and gentlemen Labour is voting against it. Labour is voting against an additional extra $100 million to protect jobs in the region and to protect our economy. Do Labour members agree that the increase in the numbers of visitors to our country means that biosecurity risks are ever increasing? Do they agree with that? I certainly hope so because the Labour Party policy on biosecurity says exactly that.This levy will help to boost the capability of the biosecurity system to identify offshore threats to the many and varied production sectors across primary industries such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome and foot-and-mouth disease. This additional $100 million will protect our nation our country our jobs our regions and our biosecurity. That is what that will achieve.Labour members are actually voting against their own policy which is on their own website. I actually think that originally they were going to vote for this. I do worry deeply. Thank you to the Greens for their support even though they had many questions. My only concern about this is that perhaps we have done something a little bit wrong because we have got support from the Greens. But maybe just maybe this is the new beginning. Congratulations—perhaps I am a bit early—on this new sensible approach of the Greens in dealing with sensible policies from this fine National Government. Is this the beginning of the blue-green revolution Mr Shaw? Perhaps it might well be.Jobs in the regions jobs across New Zealand—it just shows how out of touch Labour is with the regions. It is voting against an additional $100 million to protect biosecurity to protect our land-based industries and to protect jobs. Labour is no longer the party of the workers; National has always been. Once again this additional $100 million to protect regional jobs is a fine worker-friendly and job-friendly policy of this fine National Government. I commend this fine bill to the House.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka):About the only impact that speech by Craig Foss made on this particular debate was to destroy James Shaw’s chances of becoming the next co-leader of the National Party—of the Green Party. He could well become the next co-leader of the National Party too.Craig Foss rants and raves about the extra $100 million to protect biosecurity that this new tax that National is introducing is going to raise. What he did not say was that the National Government cut funding from biosecurity in the first place. This new tax it is introducing is to restore cuts that it made before and to restore funding for things that were previously funded out of general taxation. Now it is introducing extra taxes to pay for something that it cut previously. That is what this Government is all about.I want to talk about this picture of course. “No new taxes” John Key and Bill English went around the country promising New Zealanders at the last election. But actually there was another part of this that is very important. Look at the little bubble above that. It says “A strong economy means no new taxes.” So which bit did they break? Which promise did they break?Rino Tirikatene: All of them.CHRIS HIPKINS: All of them probably—both of them. National is delivering a new tax so it has clearly broken that promise. “A strong economy”—it has not delivered on that one either. It has broken that promise too. This is a Government that is breaking all of its pre-election promises. “No new taxes”—that is not true. This is the third of three new taxes introduced in this Budget alone. It is National’s first Budget since the election and it is the first set of broken promises. Of course we know National Party members cannot be trusted at their word. Let us just go back to just on a year ago when John Key flew to the UK—at the taxpayers’ expense without paying this tax on the way in or the way out—to encourage them to remove the taxes that they have on Kiwi passengers going in and out of the UK.Hon Annette King: He called them taxes.CHRIS HIPKINS: He called them taxes. “Prime Minister and tourism Minister John Key has welcomed the British Government’s decision to reduce taxes for passenger flights to New Zealand. ‘I have consistently advocated for such a change’ John Key said ‘which will benefit travelling New Zealanders and encourage more tourists to come to New Zealand.’ ”So only a year ago John Key was arguing that another Government should be reducing its taxes to encourage people to come to New Zealand. And how has he responded in kind? By whacking our own taxes up on them in this year’s Budget. Of course we do not know how much that is going to be. Of course the tax changes that were made in the UK which were welcomed by the New Zealand Government reduced the cost to the travelling public of about $50. We do not know how much this levy is going to be. First we were told it was only going to be about $16. Then we were told it was only going to be about $20. Then we were told it was only going to be only about $22. That is all in the space of a couple of hours. I tell you what the longer this debate goes—it will get to fifty bucks before midnight at the rate that the Government is going on that side of the House.When the Government said that there were going to be no new taxes why did it not tell New Zealanders that there were a whole lot of riders on that? It was just going to try to call them something else and pretend they were not actually taxes. The Government can dress it up as a “levy” but it is actually a tax. As for the reassurances that “Oh this is a levy. It is going to be ring-fenced. It is going to go into a fund. It is not about ensuring that the Government gets back into surplus. There are no implications for that whatsoever.” that is of course what people in Governments have been arguing for years about ACC and yet the Government has kept ACC levies high—artificially high—in order to try to create the illusion of a Government surplus when we know that it is not going to be able to deliver one. It is certainly not going to deliver one this year and it is highly unlikely it is going to be able to deliver one next year because we know that Treasury has said that unless the price of milk rebounds the surplus next year is in doubt as well.So we get the Government saying that this is not a new tax. We know the Oxford English Dictionary describes a levy as a “tax raised by levying”—a tax raised by levying. So it is a little bit like John Key’s promise that he was not going to increase GST. He will probably argue that was not a tax either but he increased GST despite making a specific promise down the barrel of the camera that he was not going to raise GST and he did exactly that. So who is this new levy going to apply to? Is it going to apply to everybody travelling across the border in New Zealand? Will there be any exemptions? What about the people who barge their way through security without going through the appropriate channels? Will this apply to Gerry Brownlee? Gerry Brownlee bypasses security. Pick up the phone that he has broken off the desk and give him a call. Will Gerry Brownlee pay this particular levy? Will all of the people coming to New Zealand pay this levy? How can the current Government be trusted to give factual information on that?This is yet another broken promise by this National Government and it is barely beginning this term in Government. New Zealanders can expect many more broken promises from the National Government and I am sure that is what we are going to see because this Government really has no major plan or vision for the future of this country. It is tinkering around the edges. It is dealing with little bits here and there but it is not dealing with the big issues that are actually going to result in New Zealanders earning better incomes having better jobs being able to afford houses and having a higher standard of living. That is not what the Government is dealing with and trying to deliver in this Budget because it does not know how. It has not got any new ideas it does not have a vision for the brighter future that it has promised New Zealanders and even if it did have the goal of delivering its brighter future it just has no idea how to do it.BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country):I commend this Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill to the House. Thank you.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I have reason to believe that the previous speaker read her speech from her notes in contravention of the Standing Orders.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Humorous but not a point of order.A party votewas called for on the questionThat the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill be now read a second time.Ayes 72New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 33New Zealand Labour 21; New Zealand First 12.Bill read a second time.In CommitteeJAMI-LEE ROSS (Junior Whip—National):I seek leave for all questions in this debate to be considered as one question.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I will put the leave in the terms that have been put—all debates as one question. Is there any objection? There is no objection. So we now have all of the debates as one question.Parts 1 and 2 and clauses 1 and 2Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour):This of course is now a wide-ranging debate because we can cover absolutely everything that is in the bill in one job lot. The first thing that I wanted to say to the members opposite is we are voting against this bill because it is a nasty sneaky little tax that has been brought into this House with no consultation with the very industry bodies that are affected by it. That is not good policy-making.I want to go back to trust because in 2003 the Government in conjunction with the airline industry and the tourism industry decided on an agreement. It was agreed that the airline industry would be responsible for aviation safety because it benefited airlines and passengers and the Government would pay for customs and for agricultural screening because it was of benefit to the public and to primary industries.The first question to the Minister in the chair is: did he go and consult with the industries that were part of that agreement that was made in 2003? Did he go and speak to the airline industry and to the tourism industry before he had work done on this bill before this bill was brought before this Parliament? When did that consultation take place? Did he say to those in the industry: “I am going to break an agreement that was made in 2003.” an agreement that the industry would pay for the aviation safety costs and that the Government would pay for agriculture and customs costs? I want to know if the Minister did not consult what right he has got to come into this Parliament and override an agreement that was made between the Government the airlines and also the tourism industry. You see when you treat such agreements in such a cavalier way there cannot be trust in a Government. You cannot believe what it is going to do and what it is going to say. So Minister when did that consultation—if there was any consultation—take place? Were they warned that you wanted to bring in a tax that was going to have to be added to the fares of the passengers travelling?The next question I want to ask the Minister is: why was there no regulatory impact statement prepared for this bill? We have got the department’s disclosure statement. It is dated 10 May and it shows that it was done 11 days before the Budget. It also shows that no review or evaluation had been done on this policy. There is no regulatory impact statement but it does say that there is going to be consultation around a regulatory impact statement later on. Why Minister is there not a regulatory impact statement on the Table of this House so that the members of this Parliament could look at the musings that went on when you were deciding to put a tax on New Zealanders which will be paid by New Zealanders but one that I do not believe was ever consulted on with the industries? When will we receive this public consultation document?We are told that there is going to be a public consultation document with a final design in October 2015 so when is it going to be available for perhaps this House to have a look at—well at least for the industry to have a look at? Maybe the public would want to have a look at it because after all they are given no input into this bill at all. There are no submissions on this bill. It was just slam bam here it is—another tax. There was no ability to be able to have a say on it at all. So Minister the consultation document or the regulatory impact analysis—when will that be available to sit on the floor of this House and when will we get to debate that?What we are seeing here is a Government that wants us to pass under urgency tonight legislation without the detail and I am surprised that the Green Party would be voting for something that it does not know the detail of. Those members are putting their trust in a Government that has already welshed on a deal with the airline industry and the tourism industry. Why would any party put its trust in a Government that has not honoured an agreement that has been in place since 2003? We were all told: “Just trust the Government. It is going to give us the details later on.” We are not even sure that it will be the levy that we are being told about tonight. It may or may not be $22. I suspect that as they work on the detail and the design of this maybe there are a few other things that will creep in—“Oh no we didn’t mean $22. It has just gone up to $27. No no maybe it’s $35.” Why should we trust a Government that could not honour an agreement that it made?I would like to see the Regulations Review Committee look at the design of these taxes after the Government has finalised what they are going to be. I would like that committee to see whether in fact this is a levy or a tax that is actually doing what they say it is going to do and the right amount of money has been taxed and levied against New Zealanders. I think we ought to insist that the Regulations Review Committee look at this. This is setting a levy tax. We have had no consultation with the public. We do not know whether it actually does cover the costs. We are told that by 2016-17 we are going to have $80 million gathered from it and we are told it goes into a trust account and therefore cannot be used for anything else. Well as we said what happened to ACC? What happened to ACC? That is a dedicated levy that goes to an organisation that can spend on virtually what it likes. Why should we believe the Government when it comes to this?I believe that this Government has been incredibly sneaky with this bill. It has brought it in without talking to the industry. The Government’s own Prime Minister who is the Minister of Tourism was two-faced to his own industry. He went to a conference and he did not tell them he was going to do this. Was it on your advice Minister that he did not tell them this is what was going to happen?I would like the Minister to now get on his feet and explain to this Committee whether the Government consulted with the industry before it did this. Has the Government discussed with the industry the agreement that was made in 2003? When are we going to get to look at what is going to be the design and the shape of this so-called tax levy? When is this House going to be able to scrutinise that? Is the Minister prepared for it to go to the Regulations Review Committee to see whether it can determine that this is a tax that has been properly imposed on New Zealanders? None of that has been answered tonight. I agree with Mr Prosser. There is so much missing that any party would be idiots to vote for this on trust from this Government.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):I rise to take just a short call on the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill. We heard a lot during the first and second reading speeches that obviously from the Government’s perspective this was such an important issue for it that it wanted to put in place this levy to ensure that there was adequate funding to provide protections at our border controls. My question would be: how have we done that until now? Up until now how have we ensured that we have adequate border protections? We have done it without this levy/tax until this moment in time. This idea that this demonstrates what a priority it is for the Government really defies belief. It has been a priority of Governments in the past without a levy. That is not a justification for introducing something like this.My second question is that surely if this was as important as the Government claims then we would have more detail in this bill than we do right now. If it was such a priority why have we got this shallow framework of a bill rather than the detail that we would usually have in this Chamber when considering such legislation? So I really question whether it is the priority that the Government claims.I also wanted to come to clause 5 which inserts new section 140AA. That provides that every traveller who arrives in New Zealand on or after 1 January 2016 is liable to pay a levy. So that is basically the part that says the individual liability is on the traveller. I heard one of the speakers on the other side of the Chamber claim that another rationale for us having to introduce this levy is that we have got more passengers coming here. We have got more passengers; therefore we should make those individual passengers pick up this tax or levy. But the question that arose for me when hearing that is that actually the risk has always been there. Regardless of the size of the population coming into your country the risk has always existed.Nicky Wagner is shaking her head. I have just one reference to make to you—Grey Lynn fruit fly. That came in before a levy; that came in with the number of passengers we happened to have coming through at that time. Your risk exists around whether or not you have got proper processes in place to stop that from happening in the first place. If this bill is an admission that to date we have not had proper processes in place because we have not been able to fund them that is a different story. But I have not heard that admission from the Government yet. My argument is that it is not about scale; it is about whether or not you are properly resourcing your people to do the job.We have long had a concern on this side of the Chamber that we have not been properly resourcing our border control staff to carry out the functions we require of them otherwise why would we have had such a massive economic threat to our horticultural sector such as we have seen in the past couple of months? We cannot afford something like the fruit fly. It is the Queensland fruit fly; I called it the Grey Lynn fruit fly. It is the Queensland fruit fly which has found a new cosy environment in Grey Lynn. People have recently asked me whether or not we have got rid of that problem. The answer is no. Things have gone very quiet. That is only because the fruit fly is in hibernation. It is absolutely still a risk to our economy as a whole and one that was a massive wake-up call. We should not be reliant solely on introducing at the last minute these kinds of measures as being the mechanism for ensuring we have proper border controls in biosecurity.We know there has been a loss of experience in the Ministry for Primary Industries. We know that that has been a problem across the board. It has been something that Labour has continually raised and we raise it again here tonight.The second issue I want to raise is really covered by Part 2 of the bill and that is the amount of auditing that is going to have to go on and the amount of scrutiny over whether or not the levy is being recorded properly. Who is going to follow up on that? Is that another job? How much red tape and bureaucracy is being created by this bill? What will the costs of enforcement and that auditing be? I think it is a fine question to ask of the Government which purports to be a Government against red tape. It certainly introduces a lot of it. What is the cost of enforcing this bill? It is hard to know because of all the lack of detail but we certainly see that there are auditing requirements. Everyone is required to keep statements accounts and records. Who is going to enforce that? Those are some questions. I would love to hear answers from the Minister in the chair Nathan Guy if he would like to respond to me. Thank you.JAMES SHAW (Green):I would like to start by addressing some of the points raised by Craig Foss. He was saying that Labour is voting against $100 million of extra funding which does seem to contradict the press release that was put out saying that the current spend at the border is about $100 million and that this new tax would raise about $100 million. Is he saying that in fact costs are going to inflate to $200 million and that this new tax covers $100 million of that? I am assuming that he misspoke as he did about a number of things during his speech and that this is in fact just covering the additional $100 million that is currently being spent.Secondly related to that as I understand it the $4.7 million operating funding that is going to the Customs Service the $24.9 million over 4 years going to Biosecurity New Zealand and the $2 million capital funding going to Biosecurity New Zealand is on top of the $100 million that is currently being spent. Does that mean therefore that the $100 million revenue that is expected to be raised by this new tax will not actually cover the full costs? The current costs are about $100 million and then if we add that $30 million - odd that means that the spend will go up to just over $130 million and the tax is expected to raise $100 million. So I just wanted to clarify whether this new tax is expected to cover all expenses or just current expenses. Where is the additional funding coming from if it is not?Thirdly I just wanted to gently remind the Labour Party and Annette King—she says that Labour will not be voting with the Government on the bill tonight—that a few weeks back Labour voted with the Government on the Remuneration Authority (Members of Parliament Remuneration) Amendment Act. This is legislation that contained a fairly complex piece of algebra that literally no one who voted for it understood and members completely took it on faith that it would do roughly what the Government said it would despite the Government not actually being able to provide any kind of information about it actually doing what it was intended to do. So this kind of thing it seems happens a fair bit around here but thank you for the point.I wanted to speak particularly—given that we are taking this bill as one question—to clause 1 the title clause: “This Act is the Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Act 2015.” Just to pick up a theme from earlier we might want to consider some other options because the dictionary definition of a “tax” is a “compulsory payment to Government to raise revenue levied on income property or goods and services”—and the service may include entering or leaving the country and getting your underwear patted down while you are doing it depending on whether you see that as a service. Some other words that we might want to use here in addition to “tax” or “levy” are “tariff” “toll” “excise” “duty” “fee” “imposition” “impost” “exaction” “assessment” “tithe” or “payment”—the point being I think that the argument about whether to call it a levy or a tax is frankly redundant. In broad category terms it is a tax and we should move on to whether we think this is of any substance.In terms of the argument about no new taxes and whether this is a broken promise and so on I think it is a fair one to have if the Government said going into an election that it would raise no new taxes and then it raised new taxes. Then you could argue that it won the election on false pretences along with things like running a surplus and so on. But the attacks on the Government for raising this additional form of revenue do buy into the narrative that a Government raising revenue to cover its costs is somehow a bad thing. Actually it is not all the time. There are times when we need to do this to cover our costs and as I said in an earlier speech when the Government cut the tax rate for high-income earners it actually meant that revenue was going to be running below costs for many years to come when it could have actually been running a surplus ever since. So in terms of—[Bell rung]The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): James Shaw.JAMES SHAW: I will not take too much of your time Mr Chair. I will just complete the thought on the narrative around whether taxes are good or bad or anything else. The reason the Greens are supporting this one is that we feel it is actually a good one because it locates the cost with the users. It is transparent and it increases accountability because rather than being funded out of general taxation it means that the revenue can rise and fall along with passenger numbers. So the cost is directly related to the activity and it means that transparency around this is greater. So if we are going to be raising new taxes to us this looks like a good one and so we will continue to support it.Aside from the process issues which are shocking—generally the Greens are against pushing things through under urgency that are not urgent and this does not seem in any way urgent—we are in favour of this bill. We have not seen any real substantial arguments as to why we should not pursue this course of action. But we do want some answers to those questions about whether this is $100 million worth of new funding or additional funding and then if the new funding that was announced in those press releases is on top of that $100 million whether that means that this tax itself is not covering the full cost of border security the Customs Service and biosecurity. Thank you.RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First):I want to pick up where my colleague Mr Shaw has left off. I was not going to wade into the debate about whether this measure is a levy or a tax because actually I think it is irrelevant and as Labour members and others have gone into in quite some detail when you look in the various dictionaries online and otherwise and google them it seems that the one is the other and the other is the one. So what it is called does not actually matter. It is significant though if we look at the departmental disclosure statement at page 9. Part 4.2 about significant legislative features asks “Does this Bill create or amend a power to impose a fee levy or charge in the nature of a tax?” and the answer given is no. The explanation is that “The levy is not proposed to be greater than cost recovery and there will be a clear relation to the costs of the functions performed. The funds collected will be held in a Trust Account to be used solely for funding the cost of the levied services. Given this officials consider the levy is not in the nature of a tax.”So whether it is regarded as a tax or a levy—and there is obviously some difference in the mind of the Government or at least in the minds of the officials who drafted this particular statement—it raises a question that goes back to a theme that I have raised in earlier stages of this debate. When we say that the funds collected will be held in a trust account if we by a little stretch presume that the consolidated account for example is a trust account—because in a manner it is—to be used solely for funding the cost of the levied services one would presume or I guess one could be forgiven for presuming that the purpose of a Government raising tax at all or raising revenue at all through whatever means would be to fund the cost of levied services. In other words the things that the Government does it has to raise money for and I do not see that there is a difference in that regard between money being raised for a purpose specific to government and money being raised by a Government specific to a purpose.What it does get back to—and this is the point I have been making and the one that Mr Shaw picked up on as well—is whether or not the $100 million that this levy tax fee or whatever is intended to raise is going to be additional to baseline funding for biosecurity as it currently exists or not. This is fundamental to our support or lack of it for this bill. If we are talking about $100 million extra going on top of what we currently spend on biosecurity we are all for that and that will swing us around. We will come in behind it and say: “Good on you Minister.” The Minister has made a point over his time as the Minister for Primary Industries of saying that biosecurity is his No. 1 priority. We absolutely support him on that and in fairness I think he is genuine in that. He may struggle at times I think to extract a sufficient degree of priority out of his Cabinet colleagues for the primary sector because their focus may be on other areas but I think he is genuine in wanting to improve the level of biosecurity. We may disagree on the methodology by which that is achieved and the processes he intends to go through but doubling the budget for biosecurity would make an enormous difference to whether or not New Zealand First could support this bill. I think it really does require some absolute clarity as to whether or not this levy—it is a new levy—is going to provide an additional stream of funding for biosecurity or whether it is going to replace the current stream of funding for biosecurity.Again I come back to the point the Minister of Customs made earlier when talking about cost recovery whereas Minister Foss and Mr McKelvie have talked about boosts. Either it is a boost or it is a cost recovery. It is one or the other. So we are talking about either another $100 million or the same $100 million coming from somewhere else. That is really quite crucial.Hon Annette King: Extra.RICHARD PROSSER: I know yes. People have said “extra” and other people have said “cost recovery”. So it is one or the other. I wonder whether perhaps then—if we want to go back to the title of the bill—we could say that it should be called the “Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Additional Levy Bill”. That would clarify it completely saying whether this is additional funding or not.I also want to ask another question and I am certainly hoping that some Government members are going to rise and take calls in this stage of the debate. Perhaps they are just leaving it for the Minister or Ministers at the end. If this measure is simply cost recovery and we look at some of the perhaps fringe pathways through which people and goods and so forth come into New Zealand we know that about 95 percent of incoming passengers are airline passengers about 4 percent are cruise ship passengers and the other 1 percent are yachts private jets military personnel and so forth—and never mind that there are diplomatic visitors and so forth guests of the Government who we already know from prior Government statements will be exempt because it is not appropriate to charge guests of the Government money to come in. But if we are talking solely about cost recovery then I cannot see that it is feasible in any way to imagine that for $16 a person it warrants sending an inspector up to say Ōpua in the Bay of Islands to inspect the crew of a yacht coming in. It cannot materially or physically be possible to adequately inspect a number of people coming in on a yacht and that yacht itself at $16 a head. So that in itself begs the question: if the levy is not sufficient for these sorts of things is it going to be topped up from general Government funding? And if that is going to be the case is that going to be across the board? Can we please have some clarification from the Minister or from one of the Government members as to whether or not that is going to be the case. Thank you.Hon NATHAN GUY (Minister for Primary Industries):This is a great opportunity to take a call on this very important bill that we are debating this evening. Thank you very much for the contributions that I have heard this afternoon and this evening in the first and second readings and now in the Committee stage.It is interesting to put some balance into this because there has been quite a focus from the left about how this is going to really harm the tourism industry. I think they have not done their research well enough. It is interesting that some of the comments that I have read are that the tourism industry in 2013 indicated that it was not opposed to a border levy. This issue has been around for quite a period of time—in fact Labour even considered it when it was in Government. What is also interesting is that the Flight Centre Managing Director Chris Greive said: “So long as there are real benefits for our customers and the additional fees are spent on ensuring the customer experience is as best it can be through keeping border processes updated and investing in improvements then we would not see these new charges as a negative.”Hon Annette King: Did you consult them?Hon NATHAN GUY: So I did not hear that from Annette King. I did not hear that. All I heard was rhetoric from Annette King. There is no balance in Labour’s argument this evening.What is also missing in its rhetoric are other public comments—other public comments that I have seen that Annette King might be interested in. The chairman of Kiwifruit Vine Health says it is both logical and sensible to implement a passenger surcharge that will go a long way to futureproof the cost of New Zealand’s biosecurity system currently borne by New Zealand taxpayers. That was from Kiwifruit Vine Health chairman Peter Ombler. Annette King did not make any comments about that.I also want to quote the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand which thanked “the Government for its commitment to responding to the changes which are altering New Zealand’s biosecurity risk profile … DCANZ is encouraging the public to see this levy within the bigger picture of biosecurity for New Zealand … Biosecurity is not just concern for primary industry; the introduction of didymo ‘rock snot’ has permanently altered many waterways and affected recreation activities.” So it is interesting that the Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand is straight away not only talking about biosecurity but moving into biodiversity and the fact that if we do not strengthen our borders with an increase of volume and risk then our tourism industry is going to be affected. Annette King has not acknowledged that in 2001 when the UK had foot-and-mouth disease it affected their tourism industry by about NZ$15 billion.What is also interesting are other comments I want to bring to the attention of the Committee from Horticulture New Zealand. What the Horticulture New Zealand president said was: “The good thing about this levy is that as the number of visitors increases so will the revenue it generates to cover the increased cost of processing passengers and the risk they represent.” The Horticulture New Zealand president goes on to say that the suggested levy “is still a long way off the $58 charged by Australia a country with similar biosecurity requirements to our own”. So on the one hand we have the primary industry saying: “Good on the Government for bringing this in.” and actually one of them is saying it should be even higher. We also have a departmental disclosure statement on the Table tonight which some members have referred to that says that the impacts on visitors are going to be low. Yes we have got a regulatory impact statement that is going to go out with the discussion document and that will answer Annette King’s questions. That document we propose to be out in June.Also Annette King has raised—I am not sure whether it is mythical or not—this 2003 agreement. I have asked my officials to have a look and see what they can find on this agreement. They cannot actually find anything official about this agreement. What I would say is that time has moved on from 2003. Our visitor numbers are growing. Our risk profile is also increasing. This is about fairness. This is about 2015. This is about passenger numbers forecast to grow at 4 percent a year for the next 6 years. This is about focusing on risk passengers. Also can I clear up another point that has been made—Hon Annette King: And they bring nothing to New Zealand. No benefit to New Zealand—$10 billion.Hon NATHAN GUY: If Annette King would give me a moment I will try to clear it up for her. She might be interested. This is about a levy. Over the next 3 years or so it is going to generate about $100 million to $105 million for biosecurity run by the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service. Currently that is funded by the taxpayer. We believe it is fairer that those who are utilising those services—55 percent of those are foreigners—should pay for the use of those services. As our volumes increase by what I have said—estimated to be 4 percent maybe 5 percent a year looking out—that money will come in with that passenger. So to put it another way as more people come into New Zealand from overseas the funding will follow them. That means that our services will be able to continually improve and be bolstered.Can I clear up another point for Mr Shaw who has made I think a very good contribution to the debate this afternoon and this evening. Mr Shaw gets it. He gets it. He realises that this levy is about strengthening the biosecurity system. Mr Shaw gets it because he knows that if we have a biosecurity incursion it affects our tourism industry. Mr Shaw also gets the fact that it could have an impact on biodiversity.Mr Shaw has raised another comment that I want to clarify and that is about the money that has been allocated in Budget 2015 for the Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries which equals about $30 million. That is going to be focused in the next 4 years on further strengthening the biosecurity and customs systems. That is extra money that I have been able to get out of the Government from the taxpayer to further strengthen the biosecurity system. That is going to be focused on more detector dogs more X-ray machines more audits of our import health standards and more visits to offshore countries where we bring produce and trade from to check that they are following and adhering to the import health standards. So this is more money. This is a significant investment in the biosecurity system.My challenge to New Zealand First which wants to run around the regions of New Zealand and say that it is the regional party is to get on board with this legislation—get on board and support it. The primary industries Mr Prosser are backing this. The primary industries realise that more needs to be done. They realise that this is about fairness. So as volumes grow the money will increase. That means more of a focus on the biosecurity passenger system.The other important thing in this debate is to realise that this money goes into a trust account—a memorandum account. It must be spent—it must be spent—through the Ministry for Primary Industries Biosecurity New Zealand and the Customs Service on the passenger pathway. That is an important point to make this evening in the debate.So in conclusion I support this bill. It is about fairness. It is about a growing volume of passengers coming across our border. It is about a risk profile that is changing. It is about the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Customs Service being more responsive. It is about protecting our primary industries. That actually by the way enhances tourism because a lot of tourists come to New Zealand to enjoy our biodiversity to enjoy the great outdoors and to enjoy what New Zealand has to offer.KELVIN DAVIS (Labour—Te Tai Tokerau):I would like to thank the Minister in the chair the Hon Nathan Guy for that because we do get it. We do get that this is about our biosecurity and about protecting our agricultural interests but there are a few things that we do not get. One of the things we do not get is why there were cuts to biosecurity 4 or 5 years ago and why 54 biosecurity staff members were cut 4 or 5 years ago. This is just a replacement—this tax. And it is a tax and let me tell you why I know it is a tax aside from the OxfordDictionary as well as the Collins English Dictionary saying a tax is a levy and a levy is a tax. I also checked the Māori dictionary and the Māori dictionary says that a levy is a tax and if us Māori say it well then it must be true. So what we do not understand is why there were cuts 5 years ago and why this is now happening and why all of a sudden it is really important that we get more in tax to replace those services that were lost.I have a few questions and they stem from some of the comments made by the National Party members during the second reading. One was from Ian McKelvie. He said: “the levy will not put an impost on those who cannot afford to pay it.” I am not sure what that means. If people cannot afford to pay it then of course it is going to be an impost. So I would like the National Party to explain exactly what that was meant to mean.Another question I have is how much this will cost to administer. If it is going to cost $6 to fly out of New Zealand how much of that $6 is actually going to go into the administration of it? If I can just go to the police vetting legislation that the Law and Order Committee is talking about one of the concerns of submitters about the $7 fee for police vetting is that most of that $7 is actually going to be used to administer the fee. That is a question I have for the Minister. Exactly how much of that $6 fee to go out of New Zealand is going to be used up in administration? If the biosecurity threat comes from tourists coming into New Zealand then why do you not just exempt New Zealanders who are flying out? New Zealanders flying out of New Zealand do not pose a biosecurity threat to New Zealand. Sure when they come back in I can understand that they may bring in an apple or something such as my wife did when she came back from Australia one day and it cost us $400.I also have got a few questions based around section 140AB “Contents of border processing levy order”. It is around the word “may”. It says: “A levy order under section 140AA may”—it “may” so it is not saying “it will”. It is just saying it may “prescribe different rates of levy”—or it may not—“on any differential basis for different persons or different classes of persons:”. That is really unclear—first of all that it says “may” and not “will” or “should” or “must”. It says it “may”. But what is a different class of person? I am really not quite sure what that means and I would like the Minister to explain that. For “different persons” why would one person be prescribed different rates over the other? It says it may “prescribe a maximum rate or maximum rates of levy:”—so may or may not? That is still unclear.The bill says it will “provide subject to such conditions as may be prescribed for extensions of time for the payment of levy:”. Will there be extensions of time for the payment of this levy or not? What is going to happen to people if they need to have an extension of time? That is unclear. It will “provide for the payment of additional or increased levy in the event of late payment or non-payment:”. So will there be increased levies if there is non-payment of the levy or the tax? It may “provide for circumstances in which levy paid may be refunded:”. What are those circumstances for which the levy may be refunded? We have got no idea. It is very unclear as to what the circumstances may be that the levy would be refunded and to whom and under what conditions. It would be good for the Minister to explain that to the Committee. The bill may “require that levy funds payable be held on trust in separate accounts.”—it may “require that levy funds payable be held on trust in separate accounts.”I would like to know the answers to those questions. I would like to have those issues cleared up. This word “may” or “must”—it says “may” in the legislation; should it be “must” or not? So those are just a few questions just to add to the debate that I would like the Minister to clarify for the Committee. Kia ora.RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga):I would just like to add further comments in addition to Mr Davis’ because the amendments to the Biosecurity Act grant a very wide and broad discretion to the Minister to set the levy—the rate and the conditions around that levy. It is a very very broad discretion and there is no legislative guidance around considerations that he must take into account. At the end of the day the Minister can effectively set whatever he wants in terms of the rate. There is no control on that discretion and that is why it is really dangerous to impose a tax through legislation under urgency in these situations.As an example I would just like to seek the Minister’s clarification around. As part of his discretion it says here in clause 5(4) of the Biosecurity Amendment Bill (No 2) that the Minister “must consult persons who the Minister believes are representative of interests likely to be affected substantially by” the levy order. That is completely up to the Minister—who he “believes” has interests that are substantially affected. I am just wondering whether the Minister could advise which groups would be substantially affected because in my mind a major group that will be substantially affected will be inbound visitors—tourists. How is the Minister to consult with them? Is he going to stand at the airport in the arrivals lounge and have a survey or have a chat have a kōrero? Because they will be substantially affected by this.It is very unclear but it is a very very broad discretion that is granted to the Minister. This is a tax. It is not good practice for this Parliament to be granting broad power to a Minister to be able to impose these rates and these conditions really as he sees fit. I would like to ask the Minister how he intends to consult these substantially affected groups. Who are these substantially affected groups? How does he intend to do that? I know that Government members have already talked about advising on the rates and the levies because it is true that the actual end number is unknown. We do not know the cost that will be imposed on travellers. There has been talk about $16 $22 $32 but you must also add to that other departure taxes that are also payable by travellers. There are a range of costs that are all factored in a range of taxes that need to be considered. That is why there is just such a broad discretion given to the Minister that it is really beyond the scope.I am also really unsure about some of the drafting in these bills and the consequences of some of the provisions. Because if I look at the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2) there is the provision here that—you have got two methods by which the Crown can currently recover the processing costs. There is the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Act and that legislation I believe allows the Crown to collect from the airport companies the cost to the Crown of setting up biosecurity customs and other services including the services that are envisaged by this bill. So the Crown can collect the cost there from the airport companies. It is also talking about collecting the same costs from travellers. I know that the Government is wanting to do an exclusion say that airports that are currently under the former Act will be excluded from this piece of legislation. But it will lead to confusion.The easiest way I can think about it is this. Hypothetically a person departs from Christchurch International Airport. Christchurch International Airport pays the Crown the costs of recovering and doing the biosecurity screening under the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Act and it is subject to that Act. So what does that mean? Does that mean that every traveller who is leaving from Christchurch will not pay the travel tax? If that is the case how will you administer that? How will you be able to administer all the differential rates that will apply for the two different regimes that will be at play? In one case you will have an airport company paying to the Crown the costs to process and in this present case you will have the traveller paying the Crown the cost for them to be processed. So there are real practical issues that I see arising out of the application of this legislation and they are why this legislation should be referred to a select committee and it should be subject to greater scrutiny from all the relevant parties that will be interacting with this legislation.As we have heard the Minister has not consulted with the tourism industry or the airline industry. Of course you are going to have the primary industries sector clapping its hands at this legislation. Who would not? This is really good for biosecurity and we all want strong robust biosecurity systems—absolutely. Of course the primary industries sector would say that but it misses the point in terms of there being no regulatory impact statement. There are real practical issues here that I see that could pose some real difficulties in the application of this law. I would just like to ask the Minister how he intends to deal with all of these matters.Could I ask this: what are the chances of bringing this legislation to some sort of select committee so that some proper scrutiny and amendments could be made? Because what I do not want to see is the passage of this legislation and then as has occurred with some Crown minerals legislation just recently passed—here we were at Parliament and the Government was back 3 weeks later saying: “Oh we need to make some amendments to it.” That is a very real possibility just on my cursory glance at the legislation as it stands at the moment. That is a plea that I would make to the Minister. Let us refer this legislation to some sort of select committee review process so we can really look closely at it. Otherwise once it is passed into law what will we have to do again? We will have to come back in a few weeks’ time and put through some more legislation to try to fix it up. That is a waste of Parliament’s time and it is not good lawmaking.STEFFAN BROWNING (Green):Earlier we heard from the Minister for Small Business and Minister of Statistics and he is also the Associate Minister of Immigration and the Associate Minister of Transport so he should know about this stuff. He was very very adamant and strident and was yelling across the Chamber that this was $100 million more for biosecurity. I agree with Richard Prosser that that would be fantastic. On top of the Budget Minister Guy you said there would be about $25 million of new money but the Hon Craig Foss says there will be $100 million of new money. You have gone some way to try to tidy that for him I think because I think he has got it wrong. I would love to hear that there is $100 million on top of what was being spent in the last budgetary year. You can nod or shake or whatever. Is there $100 million more on top of past spending on biosecurity? I do not think there is is there? No answer.Hon Member: Do you want an answer?STEFFAN BROWNING: I hope I will get an answer. Just a simple question: is there $100 million more—as the Hon Craig Foss said and insisted on multiple times—over and above what we have had?The other question I have because any more money for biosecurity is good money is: why is there a drop for business for their importation for their biosecurity system entry levy? It is not big but there is a drop. If I look up the Customs Service at the moment it is $17.63 and it is just going down either to $13.15 per importation or $17.37. It is not a big drop for that part—the $17.37—but it is for the $13.15.The question as well is comparison. So I go to Aussie soon and when I come back I will have a suitcase or whatever. These guys are bringing in how many containers for that? One container 20 containers or whatever—I know there are some other fees for them; they are not big either. So is the Minister going to be able to go and say: “We’ve looked out for you in business we’ve actually dropped your fee and we’ve put it on to the tourists coming in.”? I think—and we are supporting the bill—that is right for the tourists but I do not think there should be any reduction anywhere in terms of levies and biosecurity so I would be very keen to see that tidied up or clarified. But it is there; I have got it from what has gone through in the Order in Council and what the current fees are. I am also interested in as we have heard from others the exemptions. What about the exemptions? Who is going to be exempted—who why when what and what for? “Different classes of persons”—what are they?Leaving that—I hope for some clarification around that—I was very pleased to hear the Minister say that there was going to be some money specifically around import health standards. We have got the imported pork now and 52 percent of pork that is consumed in New Zealand is imported. We know that the pork industry—because the Biosecurity Act is wanting and does not have precaution in a meaningful way in it—lost through multiple courts and spent millions in the process of trying to defend its sector from a slack import health standard. They are the particular questions I would like answered.It is good that there is more money going to the import health standard. It did not seem a hang of a lot but there is some. We really do need answers to why businesses that are importing potentially multiple containers are going to have a levy that is very very similar to an individual with a suitcase. I want that individual with a suitcase to have 100 percent X-rays and it looks like you are doing that and are headed that way. I want to see more dogs coming in. I want to see more money. So are we going to have $100 million of new money on top of old money or is it that $25 million to $30 million - ish of new money only in the past Budget? Thank you.A party votewas called for on the questionThat Part 1 be agreed to.Ayes 72New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 33New Zealand Labour 21; New Zealand First 12.Part 1 agreed to.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of the Hon Nathan Guy to clause 12 be agreed to:in clause 12 new section 288H(2) (page 8) delete “or declaration”;in clause 12 new section 288H(3) (pages 8 and 9) delete “or declaration” in each place.A party votewas called for on the questionThat the amendments be agreed to.Ayes 84New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 21New Zealand Labour 21.Amendments agreed to.A party votewas called for on the questionThat Part 2 as amended be agreed to.Ayes 84New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 21New Zealand Labour 21.Part 2 as amended agreed to.A party votewas called for on the questionThat clause 1 be agreed to.Ayes 84New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 21New Zealand Labour 21.Clause 1 agreed to.A party votewas called for on the questionThat clause 2 be agreed to.Ayes 84New Zealand National 59; Green Party 9; New Zealand First 12; Māori Party 2; ACT New Zealand 1; United Future 1.Noes 21New Zealand Labour 21.Clause 2 agreed to.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): I will point out it is unusual for the party that is declared the winner of a vote to ask for a party vote on the question but it is not outside the rules.The Committee divided the bill into the Biosecurity Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 2)pursuant to Supplementary Order Paper 79.Bill reported with amendment.Report adopted.