Locke Keith: Border (Customs Excise and Tariff) Processing Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Locke Keith: Border (Customs Excise and Tariff) Processing Bill — Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8226. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 During the first reading debate on the Border (Customs Excise and Tariff) Processing Bill our speaker Kevin Hague was in somewhat of a quandary. The bill had been made public—and therefore able to be read—only a few minutes before the debate started. The Green Party in protest against not having notice voted against the bill at the first reading. It is often difficult with omnibus bills to work out whether to vote in favour or against because there are often a number of things we agree with as is the case with this bill—such as the improvements to the workings of the Customs Service—and some things we are much more questioning of. On balance we are voting against this bill but we recognise that there are a lot of good measures in it. 
I will go through firstly the SmartGate measures that will be brought in I understand on 3 December. The Green Party is supportive of more efficient processing of people crossing the Tasman between Australia and New Zealand. I understand that the purpose is to allow people on both sides to go through proper processing—immigration checks etc.—only once rather than twice which is certainly an advantage. Also there are security issues with SmartGate. Making sure that one has the right person going through is important. 
We have some questions as to where biometric identification might go. At present the system envisaged and implemented in some respects in New Zealand is the facial recognition system where certain points of a person’s facial features are by a photograph compared with what is on the chip in the passport. But the Green Party is concerned that that might be extended to other forms of biometric identification. During the debate on the Immigration Bill which has now passed through the House we put forward an amendment to the effect that iris scans should not be used at airports. An iris scan is a much more intrusive form of biometric identification that is coming in around the world including I think in Australia. We are wary that the SmartGate system might use the iris scan system or even worse another system that is being brought in. It is not necessarily used just for identifying people but it could be part of the SmartGate system. It is often called the naked scanning system. A person going through the sorts of things we go through at airports now is scanned and a naked image of the person taken. I have seen articles around the world in various papers complaining about this system as a grave intrusion on the privacy of people. One writer complaining about it said: “It is often said that if you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got no need to worry.” but in the case of naked scanning we do have something to hide. So the Greens are hoping biometric identification does not go too far down that track. And it is good that a manual alternative for people has been put in the legislation. 
There is also the problem of electronic proof and we have seen this just last week with the debate over council car-parks in Auckland and the gaining of people’s credit card numbers. Upon first analysis that does not seem to have been done by people skimming the machines that the credit cards are put in; somebody has got in behind the system. That can be a problem with relying too much on electronic identification. Someone could get in behind the electronic system and change round the electronic part of the identification—for example mucking up the chip in a passport so that the SmartGate system thinks it is John Smith when it is really John Jones. Someone could even get into the computer database. That is always possible. One of the problems with electronic systems is that people completely rely on them; they think that if people have gone through the electronic system they must be OK. There is not the same vigilance the same looking for human characteristics for the suspicious indications that people might give out that our customs officers and immigration officers are trained to recognise at the present time. 
The other question that has come up and has been spoken about by other speakers is biosecurity. There is a bit of tension between a SmartGate system where the whole point is to rush people through and proper biosecurity checks. The person doing the biosecurity check has to do the same biosecurity check on all the people coming through but there might be some nervousness about holding up people coming through the SmartGate system because that might be seen to be undermining that system. That nervousness can be complicated by what Chris Carter has just talked about. There seems to be a loss of staff at the frontline. He mentioned the figure of 50 staff lost from our airports. I think it is important to keep up the biosecurity checks at our airports. It will be very bad if we let that down at all. 
Also there is reference in the bill to improvements in the X-raying of containers. The problem at the moment is that the overwhelming majority of containers are not given any serious biosecurity inspection and that has resulted I think in a number of the nasties that Chris Carter talked about coming into New Zealand. Even X-ray systems have a limited use in relation to true biosecurity with smaller items. The X-ray systems are very good. I have seen them in operation. They are time-consuming but they tend to pick up people-smuggling. They pick up the bigger items such as people or other big objects that are not supposed to be in a container. The X-ray system picks them up. But little nasties and things like that require closer inspection and I do not think we are doing quite enough about that at the present time. That is one of the reasons why the Greens would like this bill to go much further. 
There is the question of powers of arrest. It is a tricky question because clearly at the airports themselves often we have to detain people pretty quickly. A police officer might not be around so the officials having that power has validity. There is a certain caution among the Greens about extending that power to 7 days beyond the suspicion that a person may be about to commit some sort of crime. It is understandable in certain situations where like on sea craft the customs officer cannot get to the people immediately and that is one of the reasons I think why that 7-day provision was put in. But if one has advance suspicion then I think that in general a police officer should be obtained to go with the customs officer so that the customs officer does not develop a consciousness that over those 7 days he or she can do the arresting. Wherever possible we do not want to turn customs officers into police officers and to give them all the hassles of doing the arrest process themselves. I do not think it is what the customs officers would want. The commentary on the bill as reported back from the Government Administration Committee states: “Under section 174(3) a Customs officer who arrests a person under section 174 must unless the person is released sooner as soon as practicable call a constable to his or her aid and deliver the arrested person into that constable’s custody.” That is clearly trying to get away from customs officers doing much more than very immediate arrests then quickly passing the person over to the police to be taken into custody and charged. 
The other thing that the Greens are worried about with this bill is that it tends to streamline the regulations around the free-trade agreements in operation. The Green Party has been a bit concerned about those free-trade agreements lowering tariffs to zero and undermining New Zealand manufacturing. We do not want a streamlined process of regulation that is out of the purview of Parliament and that detrimentally affects New Zealand industry. We have seen that over just the last week with Griffin’s and some of its iconic biscuits; some of its operations are now going offshore. Also the production of various Cadbury’s bars like Moro or whatever they are is going offshore. I think the Government’s approach of total deregulation—sometimes through free-trade agreements—the high dollar and everything else that goes with the completely open-market free-trade approach of the present Government is being helped by the implementation of this legislation. That is why we are voting against it. 
Bill read a second time.