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:16526. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill):I would like to go back to the questions that I asked the Minister in the chair the Minister of Customs because although I appreciate that he attempted to address some of them I think his answers have left more questions than I began with.The Minister said that the IT is sort of off to one side with regard to this legislation but that is not strictly true. This legislation the Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill implements the Trade Single Window. The success of the Trade Single Window depends on the IT system that operates it. So if the IT system is not working then we are legislating to implement something that is not going to succeed for New Zealand and may cost us.There are a lot of things out of what the Minister said that I think we need to ask more questions about. Minister you talked about contractual obligations and the implication of your comment about contractual obligations was that the party that we were contracting to has not met them. In fact you said that people can be held to account. I want to know the extent to which that party—I presume the Minister is talking about IBM—has not met the contractual obligations on it. The Minister said that yes there had been a little bit of creep in the budget. That is not an accounting term that I am aware of—“a little bit of creep”. Would the Minister quantify for us the cost that this system has gone up by and say whether further increases in costs are expected that were not anticipated at the beginning.Minister you also said that there are elements that did not quite work to start with. I would really like to know what those elements are. Are we talking about elements that are fundamental to the system? I know that the advantage we have in this instance is that the CusMod system was designed to keep going for 6 months—I think it was 6 months—as a parallel system in case it broke down and to that extent we are different from Novopay. It must be close to 6 months if not over 6 months since we implemented tranche one and therefore we should be talking about phasing out CusMod. Can the Minister tell us whether we are actually phasing it out or whether the problems are such that we are going to have to keep on implementing that dual system.The Minister also mentioned that there were two variations in the contract that were causing problems. Can you be more specific. What are those variations to the contract? Why are they needed? What is it costing the New Zealand taxpayer to have those variations? And in what respects is the system not delivering? Excuse my cynicism. Early on I started asking questions about INCIS. No not the thing that the ACT Party is crusading on but INCIS the police IT system. It has got nothing to do with the family. I started off asking questions about INCIS and the Minister of Police at the time gave me the very answers that I am hearing now. “No it is a small problem—minor. We’re going to just spend a bit more money do a bit more. We’re going to require IBM to do this.” The problem did not get resolved. It got bigger and bigger and bigger.I want to know more specifically what the dimensions of this problem are. I am glad we have had an acknowledgment from you Minister that there is a problem with the IT system. I have seen no press statements from the Government saying that there is a problem with the system. So I want to know if there are problems with the system why the Government has not been more up front about it because we are talking about taxpayer money. But for the fact that people in the Customs Service have talked to various people in the Opposition and said “Oh this is bad. This is not working the way it should.” we would not have had that information. That is not the way to explain that there is a problem. If there is a problem be up front honest and transparent about it. Tell us what the dimensions of that problem are. Tell us what the causes of that problem are. Tell us the extent to which you have been able to remedy that problem and the extent to which that problem is ongoing.They are all critical elements to our support for the introduction of this system which is meant to do a better job than before. If the IT system fails we will be back to where we were and we will have expended a lot of money. So let us be a little bit more specific than “a little bit of creep in the budget”. What has been the creep in the budget? What are the anticipated additional costs? Will IBM meet the contractual obligations on it? What is the Government intending to do if we do not do that?