Ardern Jacinda: Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Border Processing (Arrivals and Departures) Levy Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3911. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]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.