Shearer David: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: 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.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):I will take just a 5-minute call in this debate on the Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill because I see that the Minister of Customs wants to respond to Phil Goff’s questions and I think that is only right. I want to reiterate what Phil Goff has already said which is that obviously we are supportive of the principle of the Trade Single Window. It is important for New Zealand to have this hub of information that will enable our importers our exporters and people moving across our borders to be able to access technology in a way that will make that movement more safe and better.But my questions are really about where Phil Goff was going before as well. I want to ask a couple of additional questions because the word that I am hearing out there is that the Trade Single Window has been successful but this has been the only successful part of the roll-out of this IT system. At the moment a lot of finger-pointing is going on between the Customs Service and IBM about how much it has been able to complete and how much it is going to cost to complete it. Right now there have also been accusations as I understand it of taking IBM to court. Obviously this is an election year and we do not want to see that happening so what is going on instead is that we are redefining success. Redefining success is a little bit like a cricket game where you go out there and you aim to hit 200 and when you come in and you have hit only 35 everybody says: “Well done. We were successful.”—except we were not successful. We did not get to where we wanted to go and instead we are accepting something that is way less than what we anticipated when we set out.My understanding of this system is that the Customs Service wanted to retire the old CusMod system and institute this new system. My understanding—and I would very much welcome the Minister’s reflections on and answers to this—is that instead of retiring it we have got some way down the road and that includes the Trade Single Window but we have not got to the point where we can say that the IBM-initiated system is going to be able to achieve what we set out in the beginning to achieve. Not only that but IBM is now saying to the Customs Service that it is going to cost tens of millions of dollars more to be able to complete that job.We have been reminded by Phil Goff about Novopay. We reflect back on the INCIS programme back in the 1990s. We now have a process in place called the Gateway process with the implementation and roll-out of these particular schemes. My understanding is that this has gone through some of that Gateway process but has not got through a lot of the others.So I am here alongside my colleague and I would like to know the answer to exactly what is going on with regard to the IT system. The concept in itself we are completely and utterly in support of. As Phil Goff said we initiated this process. We want to see it through because it will be helpful to all of those people who are involved in importing and exporting. We have seen that the submissions that we received—only a small number—have been very much in support of it. The issue here is that we are very unclear and would want to have much more clarity over where the Customs Service’s IT system is at at the moment and whether it will be able to achieve what the Government has said initially it will want to achieve or whether in fact it is redefining its success in a much smaller number of objectives. If that is the case—and I am not saying it is; I am waiting for Mr Williamson to respond to this—then we have wasted an enormous amount of money getting way less than we wanted to get which is very much reminiscent of Novopay and of INCIS.