O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you Mr Speaker. Due to the fog of war—the smokescreen if you will—I won't declare the National Party's hand till the very end. But I'm struck that this House sitting on a Friday in Budget urgency facing arguably what the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and others have put forward as the greatest crisis to this country in one hundred years and what—Hon Member: Unprecedented.SIMON O'CONNOR: Unprecedented—which in fact as a lover of the English language I'm almost losing the will to live because that's been used—in unprecedented times". In the most crisis-driven time of our country supposedly in a moment where we are spending tens of billions of dollars the Government has decided that a minor tweak to the Customs and Excise Act is what this Parliament needs to focus on. I can't fathom it. I'll come honestly to the nature of the bill and what it's going to do and what National thinks of that but I am struggling to reconcile in any rational or meaningful way—Hon Member: They're not rational.SIMON O'CONNOR: —why after a Budget day a Parliament—SPEAKER: Order! It's not fair to say that about the member.SIMON O'CONNOR: Oh I see. He may not have been implying the member—who knows. But it makes absolutely no sense that this Parliament is in urgency hours after a Budget as I say which is going to put this country into enormous debt for generations and feels that the most important thing it needs to focus on is two minor tweaks—now I want to stress that again: minor tweaks—to the Customs and Excise Act. As context we know—actually in the course of this speech statistically between three and five New Zealanders are going to lose their jobs. I'd better be clear: that's not because of my speech. But if we divide about a thousand jobs—SPEAKER: Well I'm going to warn the member now. He's been going for two minutes; he hasn't actually touched on the substance of the bill. And it won't be because of his speech if he continues like this. SIMON O'CONNOR: OK. Well the substance of this bill of course is tobacco. What is this bill trying to do? Firstly it wants to put forward import licences. What it's really going to do is enable the big players to be the sole players in this market. And I don't say that with any love of those who are bringing tobacco in illegally—it's a growing problem. But an import licence is going to be required and importantly too within that import licence a promise not to use the postal stream. Why that's important is pretty much unless you are licensed to bring tobacco in—in effectively a giant container—any other tobacco coming into the country will be seized. Importantly cigars are exempt and that's not an advertisement for cigar smokers but that's exempt. And probably important for those who appear to like the tobacco leaf you can still get your—whatever the rule is at the airport; you can get how many of the cigarettes you need. The second part to the bill which follows up is that basically now customs can seize whatever it deems illegal destroy it immediately and only compensate you if the person can prove that they were legitimately to have it. The Minister sort of explained some of the dynamics. The current system I think—and if people are listening into this again as they have lost their jobs and are sitting on the couch wondering about their future and what the Government is offering them. What they're offering them is a change to the process that if they bring in illegal products as you do at the moment you get sent a notice by customs you've got about seven days to appeal and customs has to hold on to it. The sheer volume—and the Minister did touch on this—of tobacco is filling warehouses. A little tongue-in-cheek and a little darkly perhaps it's actually good for the warehouse companies to have something in them because again the Government's offered absolutely nothing in this Budget to help them. But fundamentally it's going to be tossed out—SPEAKER: Second warning—the bill.SIMON O'CONNOR: Let's see if we can go for strike three then. So fundamentally we have a bill which does so very little. Importantly when one looks at the regulatory impact statement it came out in November last year and I think it's incredibly important that we in Opposition ask the Minister why it has taken to Budget day 2020 in the midst of the greatest crisis in a hundred years to push it through now. This was planned and decided upon in November last year. Again those who want to—Hon Member: All of a sudden it's urgent.SIMON O'CONNOR: Now it's urgent—now it's urgent. As I say we need to acknowledge customs themselves. They do a great job. I'm very conscious—and again to echo the Minister's words customs does a very good job intercepting. But if you look at all the things that could be done is this really what customs needs? Because when I talk to customs what they want is more ability to intercept at the border. So it's all well and good that we've said "Oh we're going to." but I'm a little confused at why there is not more money announced to enable them to intercept tobacco coming into the country be it the new technologies that can be deployed to detect it and in fact more staff that's needed. We are going to see in this customs and excise space a lot more product in general coming into the country. If we want to meaningfully and quickly intercept it as this bill intends then why is there actually not money and support for that? I think the priorities are completely out of whack. The last thing I have to note around all of this is the glaring continued contradictions we have from this Government around tobacco and other drug products. Here we are again in Budget urgency at 10.30 on a Friday morning putting through these two minor tweaks to make it more difficult to—and rightly I would say you know—stop illegal tobacco. Yet we have a Government that's promoting cannabis use which makes no sense at all. Chlöe Swarbrick: Ha ha! No we're controlling it.SIMON O'CONNOR: So it really makes no sense at all. It's one of those glaring contradictions. [Interruption] Children will mock this sort of thing and can't get their rational heads around it—that's childishness. Most adults can understand what is a glaring contradiction. So we've had a Government keen on making sure you can have 30 or 40 whatever you call cigarettes of cannabis and yet here we are wasting the Parliament's time around this—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat."