Prosser Richard: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15906. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to this bill the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill—which admittedly is in its dying stages—even though it is not a piece of legislation that New Zealand First has had the opportunity to make input into. This is a shame because if we had we could perhaps have brought some common sense and a degree of sanity to what is yet another example of poorly thought-through lawmaking on the part of this Government.This is short-sighted legislation. It is misguided in its intentions and driven by a grasping mentality. Like much of this Government’s biosecurity agenda it places too much reliance on unproven technology and questionable techniques at the expense of front-line officers with years of experience and actual boots on the ground. This bill has obviously not been regarded as a crucial piece of this Government’s agenda coming through as it has from the 49thParliament rising and falling on the Order Paper for most of the 50th Parliament and limping through finally to the stage where we are about to sign it off.Similar to my Green colleague who spoke earlier Julie Anne Genter I confess I wrote the nuts and bolts of this speech about 2 years ago. I had to go back through it again to find out why we were opposed to the bill. I am happy to report that our reasons are still sound. In essence New Zealand First does not really object to the Government attempting to recover costs associated with screening passengers who are entering NewZealand through new and reopened airports and through new and low-volume ports of entry for biosecurity and other risks if these costs are materially over and above that which could normally be expected.We have some misgivings that this approach picks on the little guy and that the provinces are marginalised by it the smaller airports the regional airports such as Palmerston North Airport in the same way that this Government appears to regard much of the heartland as an irritant and an encumbrance rather than as the vitally important—indeed the essential—core of New Zealand’s agriculture and tourism-based economy that it actually is. Perhaps the National Party has forgotten its roots as part of the process of selling its soul to the free-market economics of neo-liberal ideology.But I digress—I digress just a little. We do not really object as I say to the Government attempting to recover costs where they have been incurred unreasonably or outside the scope of expected norms. We would question however how far the concept of user-pays is destined to proceed while general taxation continues. Will there come a time when every last dollar of Government expenditure is matched by a direct recovery of costs in some form or another? And yet general taxation continues unabated alongside it. We would question also the Government’s rationale in claiming that it must recover costs from new airports restarted airports and low-volume airports because operators of those airports are able to commence operations bring passengers into New Zealand and expose New Zealand to potential biosecurity risks without regard to the cost that such operations will necessarily impose on the nation’s border agencies the Customs Service the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the Aviation Security Service. Mentioning the ministry dates this speech. It no longer exists; it is now the Ministry for Primary Industries.New Zealand First asks why when it is the Government itself that should be licensing and approving the activation and operation of these newer and smaller airports the Government does not take these costs into consideration when it is making the decision to allow any such new airport or point of entry to commence operations. Is this yet another case of deregulation and self-regulation of industry along the lines that we have seen with the likes of leaky buildings and Pike River?Even under these circumstances New Zealand First is not expecting the passage of this bill through the House to be arrested by our protests regarding it. It is a fait accompli that this bill will pass into law because the Government that is sponsoring it has the necessary numbers in order to make it happen. This we accept and this is why we regret that we were not able to make input into its early stages. We are voting against it because in action it will serve to reinforce bad practices at the border. It will make the Government’s current faulty direction in terms of biosecurity even worse. If the Government was intending in any way to focus its efforts on a regime of proper and effective biosecurity measures at the border we would have less opposition to it. But it is becoming apparent that this Government has no such intention. New Zealand’s biosecurity is becoming less robust and more threatened at every turn.Officers at the border are demoralised and disenchanted by the direction in which the Government is heading with regard to the treatment of biosecurity risks. They are struggling to understand why the ultimate responsibility for New Zealand’s safety and security should rest with them when at every level of authority and management above them such responsibility is being abdicated. There are insufficient dog teams available to service our ports of entry and officers complain frequently and with genuine concern about chronic and unaddressed understaffing. These shortcomings are being made in favour of scanners profiling and most disturbingly SmartGate—which as any frequent traveller will attest should be more accurately described as “DumbGate”given that it allows for the potential to admit all and any biosecurity risks without any recourse to interception or redress at all.Ian McKelvie: You’re rabbiting on a bit.RICHARD PROSSER: If this Government’s desire to recover the cost of biosecurity—I am just looking after your patch Mr McKelvie—screening at the previously described ports of entry was to be used to provide for adequate screening methods and effective interception of unidentified risk factors New Zealand First would be less opposed to the bill. But while this cynical money-grubbing exercise disadvantages provincial areas in the way that it does and does not address New Zealand’s actual and real biosecurity needs as it should New Zealand First remains opposed to the bill. Thank you.