Lees-Galloway Iain: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill Biosecurity Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Advance Copy - Subject to minor change before inclusion in Bound Volume.] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 I find myself agreeing with the previous speaker Simon Bridges. That is a rare moment in the House and I will savour it for as long as it lasts; I completely agree with him. The Customs and Excise Amendment Bill and the Biosecurity Amendment Bill are a technical pair of bills. He used the word “bland”. He may impugn the legislation I think with that word but he is absolutely right. These are a technical couple of bills but nevertheless because they deal with issues of customs and of biosecurity they are absolutely fundamental to New Zealand’s security and to New Zealand’s economy. 
We are a small country with big borders and we rely heavily on our primary industries and for those reasons biosecurity needs to be paramount in our thoughts. We need to make sure our biosecurity systems and our biosecurity personnel are resourced to the maximum that they can be so that they can carry out the work that is required to keep our borders safe and to keep our economy moving. Although it is absolutely true that what these bills really deal with is goods and people coming into the country biosecurity and that ability to secure our good name internationally are very important for our exports. Of course trade is absolutely fundamental to our place in the world and what we do. So these are technical bills and reasonably bland as Mr Bridges said but they are extremely important. 
Again drawing on what Mr Bridges said what is central to these bills is that they are about information sharing and improving processes. It is important I think and some of my colleagues have mentioned this that we do not put such an over-reliance on process and on technology that we ignore the role of people like biosecurity officers. It was their role that was ignored by the Government in the last term and I think what Damien O’Connor was alluding to is that you need a system and people—a total system—that is robust and reliable and you cannot reduce the focus on personnel and shift all the responsibility on to technology in some misguided attempt to save costs at our borders. As much as we support this legislation we recognise that you need total systems to be able to ensure that our borders are safe and robust. 
I think there have been some aspects of these bills particularly the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill that have been overlooked in this third reading. I am quite happy to admit that I was not on the Justice and Electoral Committee and I am reasonably new— 
Simon Bridges 
: Missed out. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: I did miss out. I am sure it was a very pleasurable experience. I found a couple of things in the legislation that I thought were particularly interesting. The issue of biofuels has been mentioned by some other members. Duty will not be applied to biofuels that are manufactured for personal use which is an interesting phrase given that we are talking about customs and some of the other substances that we are trying to keep out of the country maybe that people want to have for personal use. But it is good to see that a sensible amendment was made by the select committee there. 
I am interested to see that customs officers are now able to use reasonable force to remove people from a customs area and that it is now going to be an offence to harm a customs dog. I am surprised that those two provisions had to be introduced. The poor beagles have apparently been able to be harmed in some way by some upset traveller as they are arriving at Auckland Airport in the wee small hours of the morning and the dogs now have some method of defence available to them which is good news; I am surprised to hear that it is being introduced in this legislation. 
What has been completely overlooked is the increase in fines that can be applied to travellers coming into the country—petty offence provisions. It will now be easier for the Customs Service apparently to extract a fine from people who commit minor offences but those fines are being dramatically increased. Minimum fines increase from $50 to $200 and maximum fines increase from $10000 to $50000. So whilst we are smoothing the passage through the customs area at the airport we are dramatically increasing those fines. 
This is one bit I am really interested in and this shows my sort of lack of experience of the passage of the bill through the House. The Customs Service will no longer be required to give any infringer the opportunity to say why they should be exempt from a penalty which seems to me to be contrary to the laws of natural justice. I am sure this was addressed at the select committee and if any member who was on the select committee can address that issue and say why that is not contrary to the laws of natural justice I would be interested to hear what they have to say. Counter to that interestingly the infringer will now have to pay the fine up front and if their case is either reviewed or appealed the fine will be refunded. The bill introduces a system of bargaining where the infringer can admit an offence in writing and pay a fine of about a third of what a court might order. So it facilitates someone who is accused of a customs offence to admit their offence but it actually takes away their ability to offer some defence up front for their infringing which is an interesting development in the bill. As someone who is new to it I found that particularly strange. 
There are some costs associated with this bill as well. Although everybody has been talking about how this will improve processes how this is going to be good for travellers and how this is going to make our borders safer and more robust there are some costs associated with it. Industry sources have estimated that the cost of new information-sharing systems could be around $200 million. The Government has conceded that it expects to recover at least some of those development costs from the expanded import transaction fees. So people who are bringing goods into the country are going to face higher costs as a result of this legislation. As David Parker said we should be focusing on trying to drive our exports not our imports so perhaps increased fees for people importing goods is not such a bad thing. But a country that is reliant on trade wants to be careful not to apply too many I suppose hidden tariffs to people who are trying to import goods into the country lest we be faced with a similar approach to additional costs and tariffs from the countries that we are trying to send our goods into. 
As I said these bills are an important part of ensuring that we have strong borders. Biosecurity is such an important part of ensuring that the New Zealand economy is resilient. The examples of  
Pseudomonas syringae 
 pv.  
Actinidiae 
 the varroa mite and the concerns that the pork industry has over the possible introduction of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome in the future with the loosening of pork importation rules are all part of this total system of which these bills are a small part. We need to be constantly vigilant and aware of what is going on across the whole system. The relaxing of rules that allow less stringent treatment of pork before it comes into the country the laying off of biosecurity officers—those things actually undermine what these bills are trying to do. So let us be honest: it is not all roses. These bills are good but there are other things going on as well that we need to be vigilant about. On these bills we do support them.