Goff Phil: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16519. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):As Labour has previously mentioned this Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill is a bill that had its origins at the time of the last Labour Government. Therefore it is the intention of the Labour Party to support the bill. I think the reasons for that are important. This bill is about facilitating the movement of goods across the border. To have an efficient system is obviously to the benefit of the economy it is to the benefit of the consumer and it helps New Zealand to become more internationally competitive. So for all of those reasons we are in favour of the concept of this bill.It deals also with the Biosecurity Act and we have raised concerns that although this bill probably cannot deal with the other problems of biosecurity there are significant problems in biosecurity. We are a country that is dependent on our trade. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease would just destroy our economy. It would make the global financial crisis look like a minor technicality. Although this bill may facilitate the transfer of information about biosecurity it does not solve the problems of the growing concern about incursions into New Zealand like we have seen most recently with Psa. So we have questions about whether the system is adequate to deal with that.The concerns I have are not about the concept of this scheme; they are about the implementation of the scheme. And I do have some questions that I hope the Minister of Customs will address. This scheme with its single portal relies on an information technology system. It replaces the current system of providing information about movements across the border and it integrates the border clearance processes. It is a good thing to have the Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries working as one on that.We heard during the discussion of the bill in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee that tranche one of this bill has already been put in place and we actually had the opportunity to go down to look at the operation of the scheme down on the Wellington waterfront. But I have some concerns about the reports that I am hearing about how well that system is working and I would like the Minister to reassure the Committee that the problems that have occurred are being properly dealt with are manageable and are not seriously undermining the system. So what I would like the Minister to do if I set out the questions very clearly is to respond as he normally does. He is one of the few Ministers in the House who does respond when in the chair. Most of them sit there like stuffed dummies and ignore the debate but this Minister actually does make an effort. So I am putting the questions—serious questions—and I am putting them in a way that the Minister can provide information to the Committee on which it can make its decisions.So the first question is a general question: what difficulties have there been with the technology in the implementation phase of tranche one? Secondly how big have those problems been? Are they minor technical difficulties which is usually the answer that we get when there is talk about significant problems of implementation? What have been the consequences of the glitches in the technology system? What is being done to address those problems? I imagine that the Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries will be looking at how to address those problems. Have those problems been resolved? Which problems are still outstanding? And what additional costs have been incurred because of the implementation problems? I hope that I have not run through those too quickly but I notice that the officials are taking notes and the Minister will be fully briefed to answer those questions.Those questions are important because we have seen before efforts to introduce new technology that frankly have been disastrous. You and I Minister were I think both in the House at the time the INCIS system was being introduced. Interestingly INCIS was a project that involved the same technology company IBM that we are involving with the single portal here. We know from INCIS that we poured $100 million into it and in the end the system had to be scrapped. I do not believe that the problems faced in this area would be anything of that magnitude but I certainly need reassurance about it.I need reassurance also because a more contemporary information technology system that we have been working on is Novopay. Novopay of course has been a disaster and I would not want to see this replicated in the critical area of customs and goods going across the border. We had the original Minister in charge of Novopay Associate Minister of Education Craig Foss sacked. We had “Mr Fix-it” Steven Joyce brought in as Minister responsible for Novopay but “Mr Fix-it” has not fixed it and that is a real problem. I was at a school in my electorate just last week where they said that the problems are immense and they are not going away. I want to know that we are not being undermined in this very good concept of the Trade Single Window by a technology system that is having the same sort of difficulty. So I think it is really important Minister Williamson that you do take a call and you outline just what those difficulties have been and that you make sure that the Committee is well informed about how you have sought to resolve them.It is good to have the single portal because it means that business and industry can minimise their dealings with different departments—minimise the bureaucracy in dealing with arrival and departure requirements of customs and the Ministry for Primary Industries. I believe that the legislation does meet those needs. It provides the very basic things that need to be in place for this system to work—the registration of users of the Joint Border Management System. It sets out the forms and requirements of registration. It sets out the grounds on which the Minister can refuse to register somebody who wants to work through this system. Perhaps the Minister could explain to the Committee what the grounds might be for the Minister to determine whether a person may not be registered and use this system because that would have fundamental effects on their ability to import or export.The bill sets out consequential changes to offences. That is pretty straightforward. I think that what we are quite pleased about is that this bill is compatible with the World Customs Organization so it is part of globalisation and it means that New Zealand can work effectively with other systems around the world.The other point that I want to raise in this initial call is to do with biosecurity. As I mentioned before biosecurity although it is expensive is nowhere near as expensive as the costs of biosecurity not working. I am aware that there have been significant cutbacks in the last Budget. I think that about $6 million was cut out of it. I am aware that we cleaned out I think about 54—if I have got that figure right—biosecurity offices. I want to be sure that while we introduce this new system to facilitate going through the biosecurity process the system is adequate to provide the protection that New Zealand needs. I have been talking to kiwifruit farmers in the Bay of Plenty. They say that the costs of Psa coming into New Zealand run into hundreds of millions of dollars. I would hate to see us nickel-and-dime a system of biosecurity only to pay out far more money in terms of the disastrous consequences of the incursion of pests into New Zealand.Although our Trade Single Window is a symbol of globalisation another symbol of globalisation is that goods can move much more readily across our borders. We need to know that this system and the resources applied to the people who work in this system can ensure New Zealand’s security against an incursion of a pest or a disease. We saw quite recently the discovery of one fruit fly in Whangarei. We are always curious about how one fruit fly can arrive in the country. If there are two and one of them happens to be female then we have got a real problem. That is a discussion about the birds and the bees and I am sure the Minister is appreciative of that problem.These are significant problems; they are not theoretical problems. This bill relates to biosecurity and what the bill does is not bad. But we have to ask the question of whether we have sufficient resources behind the bill and behind the new system to ensure that it is a smooth system and also an effective system. The Minister has often spoken about when he comes through customs how good it is to go through SmartGate. I came back from the United States over Christmas and the system was very quick. Nobody checked my bags and that is because they probably thought I was a reputable person coming from a country that was not a problem. That might surprise the Minister too. I need some reassurance from the Minister on that point as well. But I would really like the Minister to focus in his answers on the IT problems.