Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to rise and support the Estimates as they are presented. I would like to speak primarily to the customs portfolio if I can. We heard from the Minister of Customs and he described to us the ongoing benefits of SmartGate: a 30 percent increase in passenger management from last year—in fact the 27 millionth passenger will pass through in June—and 95 percent of people are processed within 45 minutes. We were interested in what the criteria are for other countries joining SmartGate and what we were told was that fundamentally this is able to be done because of robust standardised visa sharing and information sharing between Immigration New Zealand and the airline reservation systems. This was useful because we then asked the question Well could this be applicable to cruise ships?" and we were told because the information is not as robust as the airline reservation system probably not now but at some soon-to-be future date yes indeed.We also then talked—and spent a lot of time in the Estimates hearing—about illicit drugs coming across the border. We learnt how efficient our new border technology is and how we are catching more and more at the border particularly methamphetamine. We were particularly interested though in what might be coming across and the question was raised as to how we might guess—how we might assess—how much we are maybe not catching. We know there are several ways to look at that. There is the Massey drug survey. We also know that the street price is a measure. If we have more supply the street price goes down. I think one of the new Customs tools that is quite interesting is wastewater analysis. This builds on work done earlier last year by the National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology Massey University and Australian and Belgian researchers. They published an article in the Drug and Alcohol Review called An exploratory wastewater analysis study of drug use in Auckland New Zealand. They looked at two waste-water sites in Auckland and assessed 17 drug residues. They found high levels of methamphetamine. At the end of last year the Police commissioned the Institute of Environmental Science and Research to use that same sort of methodology and have a look again. This time they just looked in Auckland—did waste-water analysis in Auckland. They looked at five drug types—methamphetamine cocaine alpha-Pyrrolidinopentiophenone methylene dioxy-methyl amphetamine and heroin—and they also found methamphetamine in high levels. I think as a new tool for Customs to get some sense as to what we are not catching at the border waste-water analysis is a very good tool and we are very pleased to hear that.To move briefly to the defence portfolio we heard that the Government is further supporting defence and the Defence Force. For Vote Defence we heard that we are strengthening the procurement process with a 24 percent increase in funding on the previous year. That is important because Vote Defence Force is also going up 8 percent and that funding is being used to upgrade military equipment provide targeted personnel with critical military capabilities and regenerate the defence estate. The procurement process is very important because there are $20 billion of purchases over the next 15 years and so that increase to defence to strengthen up its procurement capabilities amongst other things is going to be used to increase the staff from 11 to 40 in this critical and specialist area.We also heard that procurement practices are bringing forward—and one of the other members mentioned this—organisational knowledge from the past to improve procurement going forward. What does that mean? Well more specifically there is a change from early adopter to operationally proven—yes? We maybe do not want to be the first people in the world to be using something; let us get something that is operationally proven first. Secondly we need to be aware of optimism bias in our acquisitions and thirdly there is the use of a whole-of-life costing model over 25 to 30 years. I think this demonstrates Government support for defence and the Defence Force. With increased strategic funding the Government is protecting and managing our borders with state-of-the-art technology and the Estimates confirm that funding is fully supporting these objectives. Thank you."