Williamson Maurice: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliamson Maurice: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16523. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister of Customs):I will take a brief call just to answer some of the issues that the Hon Phil Goff and David Shearer have raised. First of all I have got to be careful because a lot of what they raise is not actually part of this bill the Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill. This bill is about implementing the law around how people can be registered for systems and so on. This is not about the contractual obligations for implementing a computer system.But I do want to give those members some assurance along the way. First of all if you are going to start a comparison between the Joint Border Management System and Novopay my view is that the comparison that is best—for the audience out there—is building one huge big manufacturing processing plant compared with buying a carport because this is an enormous system across a whole range of Government agencies with moving parts and with functionality that will be rolled out in tranches and was always planned to and it will take some years as it already has done to get operational. I gave the Customs Service and in fact the whole implementation crew some very strict instructions that I would be allowed to give as Minister—because I cannot get involved in the contractual obligations; that is between the Ministry for Primary Industries and the suppliers—and one of the things I said and I think this was the case with Novopay was that I did not want to pull the plug on the old system until all of the functionality had been tried and trued and had been used for some time.That is still the case. CusMod still runs today. It still functions and some people are still on it but we are migrating people across quite rapidly. We have trialled some of the biggest of the cargo operations out there from Mondiale Freight Services to CargoWise and FedEx and so on which have been involved in trialling the Trade Single Window and they love it. So unlike other computer systems where you will hear from the users: “This is a dog and you shouldn’t have it and we don’t like it and it’s not working.” I challenge members of the Committee to find anybody who is involved in the use of it who does not like it and who does not love the speed that it processes at.But again if you are building some massive big warehouse operation you will know for sure before you start that there will be elements of it that do not quite work to start with. The big roller doors jam and need the motors changed or the conveyor belts are not fast enough or whatever—the temperature of the air conditioning. The same thing applies to this system. Because it is so big defects will by definition occur as you start to begin the testing phase of it. I have been around the computer industry long enough to know that that is always the case. When trialling big computer systems as I did in my job before I came here we always ran the duplicate system on another machine. If it was not working on the night we switched over we flicked back to the old one. So those are some assurances that members need.Yes there has been a little bit of creep in the budget but that is because we have sought two major modifications two variations on the contract of additional stuff. That is because if you are developing a system over the years that we are taking to develop this big system you know that your requirements when you set out will have changed over time. One of those is to bring us into line with the World Customs Organization WCO Data Model 3 and that was a variation of contract that we negotiated and so on.So let me give Phil Goff and other members of the Committee a little bit of surety here. The vast bulk of the system is working well. The defects are being managed and being identified as to what they are and are being fixed as we go to a point that I think is acceptable. There is a contractual obligation that was well negotiated at the beginning of this process between the suppliers and the Government agencies that contracted to it and people can be held to account for it. And no we are not scaling back expectations—no we are not. For a whole range of the facilities that are yet to come in tranche two we expect that the contract is well written and they will be delivered. There will be as always in any big process like this disputes about the minutiae. But it is not a Novopay. It is most certainly not an INCIS where the thick end of $100 million was delivered and nothing came back. This system is working well. I am happy to give members some names of a number of the cargo operations out there that love it. In fact I have been to dinner with a few of the chief executives and they are screaming about getting more of the tranches delivered quicker because they cannot wait to come into the new world. But I do not believe I need to carry too much of this debate because it is not part of the legislation.The second thing I think members raised was whether we are cutting back on biosecurity at the border. That is most certainly not part of this legislation and I suggest that members take that up with the Minister for Primary Industries by way of question time or the select committee and so on. Nothing about biosecurity staffing and operations at the border is to do with this legislation.