Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18503. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) 
Second Reading 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs) 
 on behalf of the  
Minister of Customs 
: I move  
That the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a second time 
. This bill was introduced into Parliament in December 2007 and it has three purposes: to reform the statutory appeal review rights and the forfeiture and seizure regime in the Customs and Excise Act to provide greater flexibility for the Customs Service to deal with ad hoc arrivals and departures of craft and to give the service better control over illegal tobacco manufacturing operations.  
The matter of appeal rights arose as a result of a Law Commission report on the forfeiture regime in the Customs and Excise Act. The Government has agreed to reform the appeal rights available to allow the owners of goods that have been seized the right to be able to reclaim the goods in a much less complicated way. The Law Commission concluded that it should be possible to challenge the seizure by an initial internal review process which would involve little or no expense to the challenger and should be accomplished without delay. To give effect to this the appeal rights in the Act are being repealed by this bill and are being replaced with a Customs Service internal review process. Applicants who are dissatisfied with decisions resulting from an internal review will be able to appeal those decisions to the Customs Appeal Authority.  
In relation to ad hoc arrivals and departures I tell the House that all arriving craft and those departing New Zealand are required to do so at a nominated customs place. There is currently very limited power to make exceptions and this bill will allow that flexibility to be there. On the matter of tobacco I can say that in a recent case the court determined that the amount of tobacco a person could hold for personal use was quite substantial. The argument at the select committee was whether this new determination should be done through statute or by delegated legislation. The select committee gave this matter careful consideration and the Minister of Customs also discussed the matter with the Law Commission. The happy result was the acceptance of the recommendation of the majority of the committee that the personal use exemption should be moved from delegated legislation into primary legislation and clause 6A gives effect to this decision. On behalf of the Minister of Customs I commend the bill to the House. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 Madam Assistant Speaker given your opening comments at the beginning of Parliament today that you wanted both humorous and erudite speeches I respect your call! I start off by saying that the National Party supports this Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) for a range of reasons that I am sure will be covered in the speeches following. First of all as the Minister just said the bill does three things. Forfeiture and seizure regulations will be amended as per the recommendations by the Law Commission and others and there will be an ability to appeal to the High Court and to the appeal authority within the Customs Service if something is seen to be less than acceptable by someone who may be before that authority.  
The second thing which I guess is probably the most important but which I am sure will not get the most debate is the ad hoc arrivals and departures. I think most people accept that something needed to be done in this regard because the Customs Service was left in a bit of a legislative vacuum with regard to the situation prior to the proposal today. Obviously with increasing air travel large airliners and sometimes an inability for customs to cater for three or four planes—747s—arriving all in one go the ability ad hoc as it were to shift them in adverse weather conditions to somewhere like Ohakea or Palmerston North for example if the jet is of a size that can land in those places is clearly sensible. The concern I have about that of course is whether the resourcing for biosecurity as well as for customs will ever be big enough in those destinations in that ad hoc circumstance to be able to cope with the volume that will suddenly be placed on facilities that are not normally required to carry out that efficient service.  
So that is yet to be tested. I know that the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee put some time into that. I was not a member of the select committee but I know that my National colleagues on the committee certainly scrutinised these things closely. So that is yet to be tested; I am not very anxious about it at this stage but it is an area that needs to be signalled as potentially of concern.  
The third area of amendment that the Minister touched on was the tighter control of exemptions for tobacco growing for personal use. I notice that the select committee members clearly did not entirely agree on this. In fact there was quite an unusual circumstance whereby on one of the Government’s select committees—a committee chaired by a Government member—the Labour members put in a minority report. That is not the norm as I understand it in a committee where the Government has a majority. For Government members to be putting in a minority report is quite an unusual circumstance. The only thing I can draw from that—and I am sure my colleagues who will follow will enlighten us as to how it came about—is that the agreed figure of 15 kilograms of tobacco per person that is allowed to be cultivated is about the consumption of some of the members on the committee in a week. 
So they clearly were not happy with that and the Labour members felt strongly about it and wanted that amount to be much higher— otherwise there would not have been a minority report from the Government on that. It is interesting and I will be interested to hear the debate from the Government members of course who will take a call and explain how they ended up with the Labour Party members having a minority report on that matter.  
I noticed that the Green Party also had a minority review about the exemption of 15 kilograms for personal use. I would probably guess that they were not keen on that quantity. I would give the Green Party the benefit of the doubt and suggest that it was probably trying to get the amount down rather than up. Clearly the Government was not—it was trying to get it higher. I am sure the National members brought some sensible sort of consideration to that.  
My colleague John Hayes points out to me that the committee is chaired by the very capable Martin Gallagher from Hamilton. Dr Wayne Mapp is the deputy chair and Taito Philip Field I am sure was rational at all times. Tim Groser of course would have been completely against tobacco growth and would have opposed it at every opportunity. John Hayes my good colleague from the Wairarapa is another person whom I know is an ardent protester against the use of tobacco. The only person whom I could see who buckled must have been the Hon Murray McCully and that would have brought about the exemption of the quantity of 15 kilograms.  
Going back to the original bill the weakness that was uncovered I guess in the forfeiture and seizure regulations by the Law Commission is one that has been around for some time. I understand based on some of the research I did prior to the debate that there have been some substantial examples of people who have felt that they have not been given a fair deal. But on the whole the Customs Service—and we must remember that the Customs Service in New Zealand is the oldest Government department—has a very proud record. It does not often feature in the media. It does not have a high profile which in itself says it is doing a good job.  
It is the oldest department. It was the first Government department set up more or less as a gatherer of taxes that was handed over to the Inland Revenue Department. The Customs Service is one of our most important departments in terms of maintaining the integrity of our sovereign nation. Some of the new technologies that are being developed for this department are very exciting particularly in the wake of the 9/11 event in the USA around terrorist activity. They are developed not only in the US I hasten to add but also in Europe and other places. They show some exciting opportunity not only for customs but also for biosecurity. I hope that going forward the Government will have the wisdom to adopt that latest technology and I also sincerely hope that there is an opportunity to explore further synergy between the Customs Service and Biosecurity New Zealand at our borders so we can accommodate particularly the ad hoc arrivals but not just the ad hoc arrivals but also the increasing volume of passenger flow with tourism and trade that we as a nation are experiencing.  
I want to give the Customs Service a bit of a bouquet because I have met with a number of its people. In fact I recently attended a ceremony here in Parliament where the Prime Minister presented a number of people with 50-year service medals which is not very common I have to say in most Government departments. Its staff turnover is one of the lower percentages in Government departments but there has been a concern around that—there has been a bit of a flight of institutional knowledge in recent times. Attracting and maintaining the institutional knowledge and also the expertise that is needed to run a department such as the Customs Service is absolutely essential not only for the safety of our revenue but also for our integrity and safety.  
So I close by saying that the Customs Service in general does a very good job. It is more or less apolitical. I doubt that we would ever get much debate in Parliament between parties as to whether the approach being taken is the right one. I wish I could say that with Biosecurity New Zealand; we cannot but maybe we will achieve that one day. At this point in time the Customs Service is one of those departments that does a very good job. 
MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) 
: 
 As chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee let me thank all members of the committee for their sterling work on the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3). We acknowledge that in the spirit of a true MMP committee in Parliament there was a variety of views. But in essence I think previous speakers have certainly outlined the context of this bill. 
I just want to make the point that the bill replaces a dual system with an internal review process with a right of appeal and a Customs Appeal Authority and hopefully this creates a cheap and expeditious review process. 
In a sense this bill is something of a technical bill but I have to say to be honest that I was a little surprised in terms of the time that we took on it but it was time well spent. Hopefully this will be a good law. I compliment the Minister the Hon Nanaia Mahuta and her officials and thank them for all their wonderful advice. This was a very very interesting bill. I was delighted to be on the select committee when we considered it. 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 A former member of the House who actually rose to the top of the greasy pole and became Prime Minister albeit very briefly once told me that one of the interesting things about coming into this House is that it is like entering into a giant postgraduate training institution because whether or not a member likes it one is forced to address a whole range of issues that one would never in any other occupation ever have to deal with. Although there is always a concern for any member of Parliament about being once-over-lightly the reality is that one gains over a period of years considerable knowledge. One offshoot of that is that one drills down into any technical bill and I would argue that a bill with a title the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3)—eye-glazing-over material it cannot get more technical than this—is a beautiful example of the point that was made to me a few years ago. Behind this bill there are some really important things but one has to drill right into it. I will start by making that point in respect of the whole treatment of what is actually called “chop chop” which is home-grown tobacco. To understand what the actual issue is here is I think an interesting illustration of this former member’s point.  
This issue is actually about organised crime. We start off with a health policy objective and so we have extremely high excise taxes on tobacco as you know Madam Assistant Speaker. There was a landmark World Bank study that we came across in the course of our examination of this legislation written in 1999 which from memory stated something like: “All the evidence around the world tells you that the most effective measure you can take against smoking is to raise the price.” If one raises the price by 10 percent the literature suggests there is a 4 percent reduction in usage. This country and many other countries have extraordinarily high excise taxes on cigarettes for I would argue health policy reasons. I personally do not believe that revenue is the leitmotif of this policy; I think it is a genuine effort by Governments around the world including various New Zealand Governments to deal with the shocking health implications of smoking. However as soon as one has done that one increases a massive incentive to arbitrage the difference between the low cost of manufacturing a cigarette—or producing a cigarette—and the retail price. This is one of the chief sources of finance for organised crime around the world. 
So behind this so-called incredibly technical and one might say almost boring bill are issues like organised crime. Tobacco smuggling is a huge issue. According to British authorities it is a larger source of finance for organised crime in the UK than narcotics. In Quebec 60 percent of cigarettes sold are estimated to have been smuggled. In New York there are huge State taxes on top of federal taxes and we were shown an estimate whereby one trailer truckload of contraband cigarettes taken into New York and sold through legal for the most part outlets is worth about a million dollars. It is also related to terrorism. When the federal authorities broke into the apartment of the first bombers of the World Trade Center they found a whole stack of counterfeit cigarette stamps showing that the excise had been paid. By the nature of our job as members of this House we are forced to get into issues that we would frankly never want to get into and what we find behind them are issues like this.  
Our concern was primarily gangs in New Zealand and since the question has been raised as to the personal exemption on home-grown tobacco I will just explain what I took to be the committee’s view. The difference between the overall view of the committee and the minority view is not a large issue in terms of the underlying problem. It simply is that one set of people in the select committee working to exactly the same script wanted to leave it to regulations. We in the National Party as a matter of principle do not like so much discretion being left to officials. We prefer the House to state its view. So the reason why we came up with a firm figure is an issue of principle about how law is made. We just do not like ambiguity in things that affect the lives of our citizens and we do not like changes to be made that people are not happy with and consultation with officials instead of the bill coming back to the House. That is the reason but that point of principle is not really an issue of any substantive policy difference among the members of the select committee.  
I have to say that the limit on home-grown tobacco—“chop chop” is apparently what it is called; I had never heard the term before—provoked a lot of discussion. First of all there was an enormous amount of confusion. I do not think we were terribly convinced by one of the submitters because of the conflict of interest between that submitter’s interests and our view about what matters in the community but I will not go into that. There was a huge amount of confusion over whether the measurement should be of dry or green matter and how many cigarettes one person could smoke in a day. But fundamentally we have come up with quite a high personal exemption use. It is the same as Canada’s so it is not extraordinary in any sense. The logic behind it is this. We felt strongly that we want our customs and police authorities to concentrate on real criminals. If we have a very low level of exemption the law has to be administered to some halfwit out there who has just gone a gram or two over. We did not want the good men and women who carry out such tough services on behalf of us all to be frankly wasting their time with trivial matters of this nature. So we have gone for a relatively high personal exemption precisely to allow the authorities conducting our business on our behalf to concentrate on the real problem which is organised crime.  
There is potentially an enormous amount of money to be made out of organised crime. We find as we go through the bill that there are some very tight definitions around the manufacturing and growing process. I do not have the precise clause in front of me but it is a concept that it must be grown on a property one lives in; people cannot start up some little semi-garden plot and start to farm it. It has to be manufactured in one’s own home and it has to be absolutely for one’s own personal use. There are a few issues around that. We understand that we will never have a watertight situation. In the case of somebody who rolls his or her own tobacco and gives it to a mate we could probably argue about whether that was within the law but the whole philosophy of the members of the committee was that actually this is a huge and serious problem. It is not out of control in New Zealand as it is in many other countries where it is linked literally into terrorism and massive and vicious organised crimes. There has been testimony on homicides murders and witness intimidation that we can find right throughout the literature on this subject but in New Zealand the issue is gangs and we want to be sure that we are not wasting the time of the authorities but are focusing on the real target.  
That is a first introduction to the bill. I think it is good legislation. Like the select committee chairman I think the members worked very very well together and I think we have something that is worth putting into law. 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I rise in support of the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) and I invite members of the House to have a good look at it. This bill is a good bill. It is good well-written legislation in contrast to the emissions trading scheme legislation and the affordable homes legislation. If anybody in the House looks at the documents on the Table he or she will see that a huge number of changes and additions have been made to those bills. This legislation is substantial common-sense legislation. It is not theatre without substance which the affordable homes legislation we have just passed is and which the emissions trading legislation is. This bill reflects the substantive work of this House and I am in absolute support of it. 
The legislation comes from a department that is very well run. One of the pieces of education for me over my 3 years in this Parliament has been to see chief executives and their teams come to select committees to contribute to and interact with them. Martyn Dunne the Chief Executive of the Customs Service and the Comptroller of Customs stands out head and shoulders. He has a good team and the department is very well led to the point where during this Parliament our committee has not gone through a questions and answers process with the Customs Service because we have such confidence in the administration of that department. 
This legislation makes effectively three changes to our existing law. The first is to adopt a more pragmatic regime in respect of the forfeiture and seizure regime contained in the Act. This has application in my electorate. For example a woman recently moved from Switzerland to New Zealand there was a mix-up in the rules and she ended up with all her household effects being seized. It was a nightmare to unlock the arrangements because of the complications of the law that she had to operate under at that time. I got involved and we managed to get a good common-sense solution. Those sorts of bureaucratic inanities are removed by this legislation and I support totally that element of it. 
The second part of the bill gives the management of the Customs Service more flexibility to deal with ad hoc arrivals in and departures from New Zealand. The bill talks about “craft”. “Craft” could be aircraft or yachts or small boats. It makes eminent sense for example to allow the Comptroller of Customs to decide whether to send someone to Milford Sound so that a man rowing here from Australia can clear customs there rather than being required to paddle up to Picton or to Westport—if they are authorised Customs Service ports. The provision would work in the same way for yachties up in Northland. Let us say a yachtie wants to head out to Tonga from Houhora; Customs Service officials could be sent up there to clear a yacht or a cruise ship if that would make sense. What we are doing here is putting common sense into the hands of the Comptroller of Customs and that is an extremely good thing to do. 
The third element of this legislation is that—as my colleagues have said—it regulates the amount of tobacco or “chop chop” that can be grown for personal consumption. There is an issue that has not been discussed in the House this morning and that is that the Customs Service collects excise tax from tobacco. Because the rules have been a bit loose some people operating in the top of the South Island—not in my electorate—said that they could grow tobacco for personal consumption and they were growing tobacco in quite significant volumes. The Customs Service took a case against some growers and it lost because of the inadequacy of the law. So I think our select committee has been perfectly sensible in deciding what quantity of tobacco meets the needs of personal consumption. 
The first two changes as I have said are rooted in absolute common sense and pragmatism and I think they represent good simplified law that is not in the nanny-State mould of the Real Estate Agents Bill which we were debating yesterday afternoon or the emissions trading scheme bill or as I have already said the bill we were just dealing with— 
Chris Tremain 
: The appalling affordable housing bill. 
JOHN HAYES 
: —the appalling affordable housing bill as my colleague Chris Tremain reports and I totally agree with him. An issue that caused some concern amongst members of the committee was the personal exemption for production and manufacture of tobacco leaf beyond an area controlled by the Customs Service. As my colleague Tim Groser has pointed out we did a great deal of research on it and looked at what other countries did. There was an element—and I will be more straightforward than Tim was—of self-interest on the part of the people who came here to back the bill. That is because all cigarettes available in New Zealand are actually manufactured in Australia and the manufacturers of those cigarettes were quite keen to shut down competing supplies from locally grown tobacco. 
I go back to the legislation. It seems to me that the issue fell into two parts. The first was in the context of an argument with the Crown Law Office over whether the committee should put penalties within the legislation or whether we should leave them to be determined by Order in Council—essentially by officials. On the question of whether punishment for offences under the legislation should be contained in the primary legislation or whether it should be put into delegated legislation a majority of us strongly supported the principle that individuals who face a possible jail sentence should have the certainty of having the penalties spelt out in the primary legislation—in other words in this bill. The flexibility and the speed with which delegated legislation could be amended could create uncertainty in people’s minds and as a committee we felt that that was undesirable. 
We recognise that in bringing the exemption for tobacco into primary legislation we have left an anomaly in the law in that there is an exemption in the context of producing alcohol. I hope the next Parliament will consider correcting that anomaly by bringing all exemptions relating to offences punishable by imprisonment into our primary legislation. The next Parliament ought to look at the offence of illegal alcohol production and bring the penalties for it into the primary legislation. 
The other part that concerned the committee was the amount of tobacco that could be grown for private consumption. The committee eventually agreed that 15 kilograms was a realistic amount. We did not want to have an amount that was so low that the Customs Service was engaged in trivial pursuit of people growing tiny amounts of tobacco in their garden or backyard for their own use. Although there are some health issues around the volume the majority of the select committee came to a consensus that 15 kilograms was a good figure. I would note that the Government members on our committee did not agree with that figure but common sense prevailed. I personally would have preferred a rather greater exemption but that is the value of democracy—that we reach a common-sense generally agreed perspective. 
With those words I offer the National Party’s full support to this legislation and I particularly commend the officials for the excellent job they did in advising the select committee. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I sensed the member John Hayes’ relief when his 10 minutes came to an end. He struggled through those 10 minutes and I have to say to the honourable member that we suffered the pain also. It was a relief to us when he finished. 
This bill is a tidy-up bill. To my mind it does three things. It updates the penalties and procedures around offences and seizures and New Zealand First members think that is a good thing and eminently sensible. 
It provides for an individual—[ 
Interruption 
] I think the Berocca is kicking in over there. I sense the Berocca is kicking in. The bill provides for individuals to grow and cultivate tobacco for their own private individual use—provided that they grow it on their own land and provided that they manufacture the tobacco into whatever form they want in their own house. Those are the two provisos—and of course they have to be over 18. 
I was interested in the Greens’ minority report; it intrigued me. It states: “The Green Party member opposed writing into the legislation a limit of 15 kilograms for the personal use exemption as evidence received suggested that such a high limit was not appropriate.” I wonder what those members would have said if it were cannabis—an illegal drug. They do not mind growing and smoking cannabis but they have an objection to some old veteran growing a bit of tobacco putting it in his pipe sitting on his porch and enjoying watching the All Blacks win against whomever they are playing. We think that amount is a good insertion in this bill. 
I am particularly keen on the insertion that provides for craft—sea craft aircraft—that in extraordinary circumstances arrive in a place that is not controlled by the Customs Service. I think it is a good move. It is a sensible move. There are three provisos. The bill allows sea craft or aircraft to arrive as a result of a statutory obligation or navigation requirement and that is a good move. I can remember that when I was a chief officer at sea our ship carried a little amount of explosives—and I am not talking in respect of this country. When we arrived at the place we were taking them to we declared that we had explosives—a dangerous commodity. We were totally upfront—as we New Zealand First people normally are about things. We arrived at this particular port and we declared that we had explosives on board. A little bit of panic resulted and we had to berth away from the mainstream berths. That was a genuine circumstance. 
Shane Ardern referred to aircraft and I thought he made a very good point. I will not go over it. The bill allows for the result of a mishap—something happening on board either an aircraft or sea craft—or bad weather. Ships have to pull into all sorts of places in bad weather; I can tell members that it is sometimes pretty rugged. 
Finally it allows for craft authorised by the Chief Executive of the Customs Service for whatever reason. I listened to Shane Ardern and he made a very good point: can our border control officials and individuals cope with such circumstances? This bill at least provides a midway step. It compels the chief executive to consult before he or she gives an authority for a craft to berth wherever it needs to berth. The chief executive has to consult the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry the Ministry of Health and the New Zealand Police. If it is an aircraft the chief executive has to consult the Civil Aviation Authority and if it is a sea craft Maritime New Zealand. I think that is a step in the right direction; it recognises that other Government departments may need to be involved and that they need to be consulted. 
I will stop where I began by saying that this bill is a very good bill. It is very sensible. It is tidy-up legislation and New Zealand First supports it. 
A party vote was called for on the question that the amendments recommended by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee by majority be agreed to. 
CHRIS TREMAIN (Junior Whip—National) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. It is a point of clarification. Voting on amendments is normally done in the Committee stage. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: No no. These are the amendments made by the select committee. When a select committee amends a bill and brings it back to the House at the time of the second reading we authorise those amendments made by the select committee. That is what we are doing now. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendments recommended by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee by majority be agreed to. 
Ayes 112 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand National 47; New Zealand First 7; Green Party 5; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independent: Field. 
Noes 5 
Maori Party 3; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Question agreed to. 
Bill read a second time. 
In Committee 
Part 1Amendments to principal Act  
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 It is a privilege to rise and speak to the clauses in Part 1 of the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3). Can I at the same time touch briefly on Supplementary Order Paper 241 which we will probably be voting on in this part as well. I note that unlike the emissions trading legislation where there were 785 amendments Supplementary Order Paper 241 has just two amendments. One affects clause 2 and omits the word “August” and substitutes the word “October”. Likewise in clause 18A it omits the word “August” and substitutes the word “October”. As there was pretty much universal support for the bill in the House and in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee the only conclusion we can draw is that once again we have a very tardy Government that cannot conduct the important business of the State in a timely fashion and so has to come to the Committee of the whole House in order to extend the time by which the bill will receive its Royal assent. I notice that the date—October—is still within the term of this Government. It is amazing that it has not actually kicked it out to December or January of next year but it has not and that is a good thing because this is worthy legislation. 
I will briefly touch on new section 68A “Exemption for tobacco manufactured for personal use” inserted by clause 6A. Subsection (1) states that “Section 68 does not apply to the manufacture of tobacco in a private house or dwelling place” which describes the piece of land or what is known in real estate terms as the “house and curtilage”. For those who might wonder what that term means that is the section or the land attached to or associated with what would normally be described as someone’s house or dwelling place. In other words if I were to decide to plough up 15 acres at the back of my dairy farm and put it into use for growing tobacco for my own personal use then I would not be exempt under this section of the customs and excise legislation. My colleague Tim Groser touched on the reasons why the select committee spent so much time on that and they are very valid because of course it is the area where the Customs Service has I guess a jurisdiction over revenue or the control of the integrity of what should have a customs excise duty and what should not. 
I applaud the committee as I said in the second reading debate for its common-sense approach in arriving at a sensible exemption of 15 kilos of tobacco per annum. Let us see how it goes. It is one of those things we will not know until it is tried. It should not tie up Customs Service staff in needless inspection and trying to track down those who are growing a bit of tobacco for their own personal use. Like the member from New Zealand First I was quite fascinated with the Green Party minority view on this in which it raised concern about the exemption of 15 kilos for personal use and suggested the limit was a bit too high. I like the member would wonder whether if it were another plant that was being grown for domestic consumption in a person’s dwelling place or on land associated with the dwelling place the Green Party would have had such a firm view. One can only conclude that according to the Greens’ philosophy one type of “chop chop” if you like is safer or less health threatening than another. Maybe one of its members will take a call and explain their logic in that. Certainly it is not backed up by medical science to the best of my knowledge. 
I would also like to touch on as I did earlier forfeiture and seizure. I know that this was an area the Customs Service itself spent quite a bit of time agonising over and the ability to use the chief executive’s discretion in the way it is now able to be used is a sensible and pragmatic step in regard to that. I know that there are some cases—and bad cases make bad law as a general approach—where there have been some extreme one-off examples. It is not widespread but there are cases where people feel as though they have not been treated fairly by the system. All of us who are constituent MPs have probably received such cases from time to time and found when we look into them that they are perhaps not as grave as those who bring them to us might have us believe. But sometimes they are and this step potentially will help tidy up that loose end. 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 I will focus on just a couple of aspects of Part 1 again to make a broader point. I am looking at the serious penalties provisions and the appeal procedures around those provisions. We are dealing with something that members of the Committee now understand is related to some core policy objectives—that we must have at our borders a very high level of discretion about what is imported into the country and what is not for all manner of good reasons. 
There is a general feeling out there in our community and amongst the political parties that the New Zealand Customs Service does a particularly good job for New Zealand. That is a sentiment we often hear and for very good reason. But it does have Draconian powers. Those powers must be exercised by often very junior officers and they have to be exercised right there on the spot without senior personnel necessarily there to guide the individual judgment of the young customs officer concerned. We want the Customs Service to move swiftly expeditiously and in some ways almost brutally when it has reason to be concerned that something being brought into our country will endanger the interests of our citizenry. The other side of this is that when we give people—particularly at times younger people—Draconian powers of the State we have to be very careful about the appeal process. This bill is extremely sound in terms of getting the balance right. 
We have a situation where a whole-of-Government approach which is exercised by as many as 15 different Government agencies is exercised by one agency the chief executive of the Customs Service and his or her officers and quite deliberately written into Part 1 of the bill are procedures that do not require a consultation process. That is quite deliberate. It is not normal that we get up as politicians and praise the lack of consultation. We are trying to get very swift and expeditious action on something that really matters. 
Equally because of the danger of decisions being made that when we have the fullness of time to look over the facts were perhaps marginal line calls there is a very simple appeal process. It does not cost anybody any money to ask for a review of forfeited goods. That is made very clear. I do not have the exact clause in front of me but I remember extremely precisely the provision dealing with it even if I cannot find the number. The chief executive has wide discretion to make a quick decision and this flows out of the Law Commission’s report suggesting we need streamlined procedure. In respect of new section 231 “Applications to review seizure of goods” inserted by clause 13 a New Zealander can apply to a single agency. There is no cost. It is a very simple process and the chief executive has a wide discretionary power to review the circumstances. For example the applicant must state the grounds on which the review appeal is being made and so on and so forth and there is an appellant process above that if things go wrong. 
I do not want to introduce a discordant note into this debate but I cannot recall many other instances in the life of this Government of people simplifying the bureaucracy and the administration. If the Minister wants to take a call on this part we should give credit where credit is due but ask at the same time why the Minister was unable to persuade colleagues that a whole host of other important matters should not go down the same track of streamlining the bureaucracy lowering compliance costs for citizens who have to deal with the armed and other powers of the State and giving a better result all told. 
I think there is a very good new process involved in something that is quite important and can give rise to a lot of upset on the part of citizens stopped at airports and ports. I imagine many people feel nothing short of outrage when they are asked to justify why they are bringing this or that into the country so it is a delicate matter and always no doubt very difficult for our front-line customs officers to deal with on a personal level. We all know that they need strong backing from members of this House for the work that they do. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That Part 1 be agreed to. 
Ayes 113 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand National 47; New Zealand First 7; Green Party 5; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independents: Copeland Field. 
Noes 6 
Maori Party 4; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Part 1 agreed to. 
Part 2Consequential amendments and transitional provisions  
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: The debate on this part includes the Minister’s amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 241. 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I have to say that that last vote was absolutely astonishing. Here we have very good legislation—and Part 2 is very good—and two parties are railing against common-sense and excellent legislation without explanation. The only conclusion one can draw in the case of ACT perhaps is that it does not want there to be any limit on the amount of tobacco that can be grown for personal consumption because that in some way rails against freedom. I say to the Minister in the chair the Hon Rick Barker that there is no other logical explanation and I am sure he is as confused as I am. 
Part 2 amends three or four pieces of legislation. The first is the Protected Objects Act 1975 the second is the Misuse of Drugs (Prohibition of Cannabis Utensils and Methamphetamine Utensils) Notice and the third is the United Nations (Iraq) Reconstruction Regulations. There are also some transitional provisions set out on clause 18A—the reason being that if one thinks about the life cycle of a tobacco plant one cannot arbitrarily draw a line in the sand and say these regulations are being brought in and will apply from today when people may have moved under the old regulations. The regulations will apply to the growing of tobacco from 30 June 2009. 
People may find some astonishment in the fact that the United Nations (Iraq) Reconstruction Regulations of 2003 needed to be amended. I certainly did so I got a copy of the relevant statute just to get a handle on what was being discussed here. These regulations were designed to enable the Government to control the activities of our soldiers and our troops in Iraq and other officials that may be there. This legislation has been put in place particularly to protect Iraq’s cultural property and to make sure that if elements of Iraq’s heritage are pirated and brought back to New Zealand if people were to get involved in the trading of petroleum or gas products or if people were caught looting Iraqi Government assets then these matters could be dealt with under New Zealand law. 
Because of that and because under this legislation we are giving the Customs Service the opportunity to follow a more pragmatic regime in respect of the forfeiture and seizure of items under the Act we are having to modify the United Nations Iraq Reconstruction Regulations in two ways. Regulation 12(1) makes it clear that the Customs Service is authorised by this change to act using its own common sense in regard to all goods that are prohibited in New Zealand. Also the bill amends regulation 12(2) to take into account something that may have been imported into New Zealand and then re-exported and to authorise the Customs Service to become involved in the transaction and to operate. So it is quite important to realise that when we change one piece of law here it can have unintended consequences in other pieces of law. I think that our officials have done a very good job in trawling through quite obscure legislation to make these transitional arrangements work in historic legislation passed in this House. 
The second part of the legislation applies to modifying section 10 of the Protected Objects Act of 1975—legislation that has been modified on many occasions. This part of the bill relates to the return of unlawfully exported protected foreign items. We are changing this legislation so that the Customs Service management can intercede and make some common-sense decisions about how issues should be addressed if for example we were to find that some Buddhist or Islamic treasures had been found in Iraq and brought back to New Zealand. 
With those few words I will just say that we on this side of the Chamber are fully supportive of Part 2 of the bill and will vote accordingly. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 241 in the name of the Hon Nanaia Mahuta to be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 113 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand National 47; New Zealand First 7; Green Party 5; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independents: Copeland Field. 
Noes 6 
Maori Party 4; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Amendment agreed to. 
Part 2 as amended agreed to. 
Clauses 1 and 2  
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 As I said earlier on the amendment in Supplementary Order Paper 241 is one that really draws a contrast between the legislation that we are discussing here today which has pretty much widespread support in the Committee—we thought unanimous at one stage but we have since discovered that that is not the case—and the excellent work done in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee reporting back on time and this Supplementary Order Paper before us which changes the date simply because this Government could not do the important business of the day. In other words it is a Government that was too preoccupied with all sorts of social interference instead of getting on with the core business of government which is customs and excise.  
I tell the Minister that the Customs Service is the oldest Government department there is. He has probably not heard of it—although he probably has because I am sure it will have detained him at the border on one or two occasions so I am sure he has run across customs before today.  
Here we are in the Chamber today still locked into Tuesday which is an interesting concept is it not? This is the third 2nd of September that I have debated in the Chamber this week even though everybody else has caught up to Friday debating a Supplementary Order Paper that would not have been necessary of course if the Government had actually got on with the business of the House at the time it should have instead of wasting so much time on things such as trying to enforce on local bodies social interference like “you must” “you must not” “could” “could not” “will” or “if you wish” provide social housing. So it is I guess somewhat ironic that we are now debating a Supplementary Order Paper that omits the word “August” in clause 2 and substitutes the word “October” and in clause 18A omits the word “August” and substitutes the word “October”. It is quite ironic; it does demonstrate that this Government is tired and I think we should go to the polls and have an election to see what the folk of New Zealand think about that. 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 I tell Mr Ardern that I am into that; let us bring it on! I do not think the date can be very long away. I say to him that comment was probably not appropriate given that we are speaking in sweet harmony on the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) but it is nevertheless a sentiment I strongly share.  
When we look at this bill we see it does a number of things that are of central importance to New Zealanders. We all understand that sometimes our geographic isolation is a fundamental problem and at other times it is a huge advantage to us. We do have certain advantages in our isolation. We rely on the front-line officers of our Customs Service to secure our borders and they do a fantastic job. There is widespread recognition of that.  
I talked earlier about one of the many policy objectives related to this bill. Behind this bill is health policy. The need to move comprehensively against smoking is absolutely understood and there is huge positive evidence that the higher the price is the lower the consumption is. But as the evidence indicates as soon as one moves in that direction there is a serious danger of creating an incentive for organised crime. As I indicated in speeches during earlier stages of the bill cigarette smuggling is a massive problem internationally. I recall that in the United Kingdom it was estimated to be a larger source of criminal funding than narcotics believe it or not and there are massive issues of law and order enforcement in many countries around this issue. Of course ultimately the point about terrorism is not some academic point. We recall that the bombers of the World Trade Center had counterfeit cigarette excise stamps in their apartment when the federal authorities broke into them. 
There are big issues here. We have cleaned up our act here. I think we had a pretty reasonable regime but there were certain things that the Customs Service and our authorities wanted to move on and they persuaded the Government and then the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee to move on them. We have expedited procedures that allow the chief executive of the Customs Service acting on behalf of a wide range of Government agencies to take very swift action. But of course since the powers that customs officers have are Draconian involving the seizure of people and property there have to be civil liberties checks in place. I think there is an excellent new regime for the forfeiture of goods. It is very simple and operates at zero cost—just the cost of a stamp to send the request for a review to the chief executive. I think we have a very nice example—and I just wish that we could see more examples of this type—of the simplification of procedure being introduced into legislation. I think this country would be a better place for it.  
There is wide-ranging support for this bill. It achieves a number of objectives and I think it will facilitate the work of our front-line staff. It has very strong support in this Parliament.  
SUE MORONEY (Junior Whip—Labour) 
: 
 Just reflecting on the vote that was recorded for Part 1 I wonder whether I could seek clarification that the vote cast for United Future was 2 votes in favour. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: The vote cast was 1 in favour and therefore the member is seeking leave to amend it? 
SUE MORONEY 
: I seek leave to amend the United Future vote on Part 1 to 2 votes in favour. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: Is that agreed? It has been agreed. It has also been confirmed that it was a mishearing. Let me just say that sometimes there is so much noise quite close to the Chair that we do not hear the votes if they are not called out. This vote was misheard and recorded as 1 vote in favour but it has now been corrected and is recorded as 2 votes in favour. The vote on Part 1 is Ayes 113 Noes 6. Thank you very much for the clarification. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: The question is that clause 1— 
John Hayes 
: Madam Chairperson— 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: I had started to take the question. John you are a bit slow but I will be very kind and so will New Zealand. 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I was polite and held back because of the seeking of leave caused by the noise of some members on the floor which did not enable the three people at the top table to hear the vote that was cast.  
I rise again in support of this legislation and I would just like to draw the Committee’s attention to a headline in this morning’s  
Dominion Post 
: 
“Kiwis get half the pay of Aussies in same jobs”. Madam Chairperson you might ask: what is the relevance of this to the legislation before us today? It comes back to a point that I made when I spoke previously. This is common-sense legislation and therefore National is supporting it. If we run this country in a common-sense way with a light bureaucratic touch we will create conditions that will enable us to keep Kiwis in New Zealand and will enable us to help increase people’s pay by cutting their taxes.  
As we think about making this country a better-run place we want to have pragmatism. We want pragmatic Government policies in this country because we want our communities to be well governed. The first part of this legislation helps us to adopt a more pragmatic regime in respect of the forfeiture and seizure regime contained in the Act.  
The second area where we need to cut down bureaucratic overhead costs is underlined in this legislation by allowing the Customs Service management to be flexible about where it locates its staff. Clearly it will keep most of its staff in the bigger centres where there are a lot of craft—both air and sea—coming and going but it also enables the Government to operate good friendly policies by sending staff where it makes sense to small locations as I have said like Houhora or Milford.  
The third element of this legislation is that the Government has to be funded—there is no question about that. Taxes have to be charged. But as a Government we must make the smallest possible impact on our communities—often as in my case in the Wairarapa where people earn quite low incomes. When we take money from their pockets we have an absolute obligation to make sure that that money is well spent. I am comfortable with this legislation because it will help us to do that. I hope we can do that across the whole gamut of legislation in this Parliament not as we have seen in this last period under urgency with the emissions trading scheme the affordable homes legislation which will not make homes any more affordable and the real estate agents’ legislation. Those are bills about theatre not substance. In contrast this bill is about substance not theatre. I absolutely think that it is important that all parties in the Chamber embrace this legislation because it is an example of good legislation. It will help us to run this country better. It will have a smaller impact on the pockets of individuals and provide a far more flexible way of imposing bureaucracy on our communities. I absolutely support this legislation and again commend the Customs Service officials who have helped to prepare it. Thank you. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 241 in the name of the Hon Nanaia Mahuta to clause 2 be agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the amendment be agreed to. 
Ayes 113 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand National 47; New Zealand First 7; Green Party 5; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independents: Copeland Field. 
Noes 6 
Maori Party 4; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Amendment agreed to. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That clause 2 as amended be agreed to. 
Ayes 113 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand National 47; New Zealand First 7; Green Party 5; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independents: Copeland Field. 
Noes 6 
Maori Party 4; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Clause 2 as amended agreed to. 
Bill reported with amendment. 
Report adopted. 
Third Reading 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister of Internal Affairs) 
on behalf of the Minister of Customs 
: 
 I move  
That the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a third time 
. This bill has been through its second reading and the Committee stage and now has its final reading. It has received widespread support from the House because it seeks to reform the statutory review rights in the case of the forfeiture and seizure of goods under the Customs and Excise Act it gives the Customs Service a greater flexibility to deal with ad hoc arrivals and it gives better control over illegal operations.  
One of the key decisions of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee which has now been agreed to by the Committee is to set in statute the amount of tobacco that a person can have for personal use. Rather than the amount for personal use being set by delegated legislation it has been set at 15 kilograms. Just to put it on the record that amount equates to I am told by the Ministry of Health people 58 to 103 cigarettes a day for 365 days. I am not saying that amount will now be compulsory but one would have to say it is on the generous side. So 15 kilograms of tobacco will now be in law once this bill has passed as the maximum amount defined as being for personal use and that clarification will be very helpful to the Customs Service when it is dealing with these issues.  
I commend the bill to the House. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 Like the Minister I on behalf of National also support the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) in the third reading. As the Minister has just said the bill basically tidies up three areas of the Customs and Excise Act: forfeiture and seizure provision of greater flexibility for customs with ad hoc arrivals and a remedy to legislate for inconsistencies relating to illegal manufacture of tobacco. 
I will touch on the forfeiture and seizure part of the legislation for a start because I have a real and practical example of how the legislation as it was before the amendments could get the Customs Service bound up in something it did not really want to be involved with and there were some innocent victims in that.  
In Taranaki the Taranaki Rescue Helicopter Trust which of course is publicly funded and privately funded from fund-raising activity for health services in that region bought some night-vision goggles about 6 or 8 months ago—in fact it is longer ago than that; it is more like 12 months ago. The goggles were about to be delivered to the rescue helicopter service when they were found to have been stolen in the US by a US military person. Of course the Customs Service did what it must do and seized those goods with the intention of holding them until the legal position was established or tidied up and that went on for a long time. The Taranaki Rescue Helicopter Trust had bought the goggles in good faith off a New Zealand person who traded in this stuff and who had no idea they were stolen in the US. Finally through negotiation and after some time the trader of this equipment as I understand it was able to resolve the legal status in the United States. That status was that the military was paid for the goods or they came to some arrangement—I am not sure of the detail—but because of the legislation in New Zealand the Customs Service was still unable as I understand it to make a speedy or timely decision to have these goggles released to the rescue helicopter. Of course the helicopter trust had spent something like $40000 or better on purchasing this equipment and it was out of pocket and did not have the equipment.  
If the Chief Executive of the Customs Service had the powers that he or she will have then a common-sense decision or intervention at that level potentially would have overcome this problem. That is a practical example of one case where there were no guilty parties except for obviously the person who stole the equipment from the US military in the United States in the first instance and who was subsequently proven to have stolen it. 
Ad hoc arrivals have been of concern for a while. I think someone in the Committee stage of the bill touched on the fact that people arrive here by all sorts of craft—by pleasure craft by aircraft in big numbers and suchlike. The discretion to say that the beach at Opunake—or it might be Raglan or Kawhia or somewhere else in the great Taranaki-King Country electorate—can be a customs place for the purpose of the arrival of a pleasure craft is at times a useful and necessary requirement. As I said in the second reading the only concern I have is whether we will be able to meet the stringent requirements that we must meet regarding biosecurity otherwise we are liable to open our borders to further risk. I am confident that concern will be able to be met but we will have to watch and see. I suspect that at some stage in the future there will be further debate in this regard in this Parliament. Maybe some amendments or some further resourcing will be required to meet that concern. 
The final point covered in the bill is the control for the exemption of personal tobacco. I now know as a result of the good work done in the select committee that it is known as “chop chop”. Plenty of people have suggested that I should chop-chop and get moving a bit and sometimes when we listen to debates in the House we could certainly come to the conclusion that members should chop-chop and move on. But tobacco is referred to colloquially as “chop chop” and the reality is that the select committee has done a good job no doubt ably assisted by the officials who clearly have done a good job in helping the Minister draft this legislation to submit to the House and the select committee in the first instance. They have done a good job a practical job and a pragmatic job in coming up with a solution. 
I note that the original proposal was for 8 kilograms of tobacco to be exempt. The select committee has extended that to 15 kilograms. The Labour Party put in a minority report and one can only conclude that it was clearly not happy with 8 kilograms. Ministers obviously wanted a higher volume than that but I know my colleagues on the select committee—the anti-smokers that they are—probably would not have been supporters of that. But in any event the end result is that the figure is now 15 kilograms and that seems like a pretty practical solution. It is one that will not tie up the customs staff and officials in needless trivial pursuit—as someone described it and I thought it was a very good description—out there trying to find out if someone has grown a kilogram or two or four or half a kilogram more than he or she was legally allowed to. Fifteen kilograms should cover the domestic needs of even the heaviest smoker in society. Potentially if a person smokes 15 kilograms of tobacco annually that person will not be around for that long to breach customs laws in the future according to medical science. I think it was probably the right figure to arrive at and it is a pragmatic decision. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. 
MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) 
: 
 I would certainly like to take a long call on the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) and I know that the Leader of the House would support my doing that but I am not going to; I am going to be quite concise. 
The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee consideration of the bill was very interesting. There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with regard to the tobacco exemption and what we have come up with is a compromise which is obviously accepted. There are some serious health problems around tobacco consumption. I acknowledge the point Mr Ardern made that people who push the limit of the exemption for personal consumption over a few years would not be around for long to enjoy it! Dare I say it that is a point I note. 
The bill tightens up a few things. It amends the Customs and Excise Act in relation to appeal and review rights under the statutory forfeiture and seizure regime ad hoc arrivals and departures and the illegal manufacture of tobacco—which has been talked about. I thank the select committee and the officials for their work. This legislation is a good step in the right direction and tidies up what have been a few anomalies in the past. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 I still have not quite got used to the idea of getting up in rapid succession and making essentially the same points. It is an added problem of course when one does it under urgency as there is not even the grace of time to separate the points. Nevertheless it is part of our duty and I will discharge it but in a very brief and expeditious way. The key point is that the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) is first-class legislation and a first-class example of cooperation among political parties at the select committee process. Frankly that is a rare jewel and we should celebrate it. We should celebrate it because if we could adopt the same common-sense and practical approach across other areas of policy I am sure we would still find room for the political contest to proceed but I think the country would be better for it.  
We have something that involves Draconian powers of the State. They have to be exercised by customs officers on behalf of I think 15 agencies. They perform vital functions in keeping our society as safe as they can. But equally there have to be very strong controls over the appeal process over the rights of citizens to challenge the forfeiture of goods and so on and so forth. But the point that particularly impressed me about the common-sense approach to lawmaking relates to the personal exemption issue of home-grown tobacco. It is such an important point for lawmakers to bear in mind that our front-line police and our front-line officials in other areas of enforcement will always be very thinly stretched. We know that. We know how much better it is if they focus on the real problem rather than frankly wasting their time with minor or technical infringements.  
There was a huge debate on the 15 kilogram limit. My recollection was that the difference of view between Labour and National was actually not so much over the limit as such but simply over whether it should be enshrined in legislation or left open to the officials to change the regulations. As members know National has a view that that is generally the wrong approach. We like Parliament to set clear laws and stick to them and if they have to be changed they should come back through the parliamentary process. I do not believe that there was a fundamental difference between the two parties on the underlying philosophy of setting the limit relatively high—at 15 kilograms which is the same as Canada—precisely to ensure that the thin blue line is actually focused on the real problem. The real problem here because of the literally millions of dollars that one can make from selling illegal cigarettes on which excise tax has not been paid is the link to organised crime and in other countries—I am unaware of this being an issue in New Zealand—the link to terrorism.  
So there are big issues behind this legislation. It is a nice simple law and there are nice procedures for the chief executive to move expeditiously without needing to consult a dozen different departments and somebody like me who has been in the system knows how much this consultation costs. Everyone says yes to consultation without thinking about the costs of consultation. When one often needs officials to act on their hunches on their instincts and sometimes of course on intelligence that will never be all that accurate—it is never all that clear I am sure to some of our people on the front line just how solid the intelligence is that they are operating on—one has to give them wide powers to move brutally and quickly to deal with the problem. Yes there will be mistakes. We have a procedure in place giving responsibility to the chief executive of the Customs Service and no doubt he or she will use delegated powers to handle that responsibility in a sensible and pragmatic way to look at the overall facts when there are mistakes or the public thinks it has been badly treated. It is good legislation and the House should be very pleased to see it pass into law. 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I say to Tim Groser—I know he is relatively new; he has been here for only a couple of years—that there is no law that says members have to say the same thing twice. One does not have to get up in the first reading and then say exactly the same thing in the third reading. I thought he might be interested to know that. I say to the next National Party member to take a call that there is actually no law that members have to take 10 minutes on a bill such as the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3). It is straightforward it is nice it is tidy and it has gone through this House with a very significant majority.  
The only concern I have with this bill is that the Maori Party has put it on record that it is opposed to it—it has opposed just about every part of the bill—yet the Maori Party members have not taken a call as yet to explain why. I think there is a responsibility on all MPs that if they are opposing something and insist on having that put on the record they should at least stand in this House and say why. There is no problem with New Zealand First. We are totally in support of this bill. I hope the Maori Party takes a call and explains its position. I think it owes it to the House and it owes it to listeners out there who might be listening or watching on TV. New Zealand First supports this bill. 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 The Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) is about border control. A good bit of my electorate covers the borders of this country. It stretches from Turakirae Head across on the other side of Wellington Harbour almost up to Cape Kidnappers. It is very important for the people in my electorate that we have good sound border control and it is very important for the well-being of the people in my electorate that we have good common-sense Government. If we do not New Zealand is left with a choice of becoming either a retirement village or an educational institution for other countries. More than 80000 people a year leave this country because of bad governance because taxes are too high and because wages are not high enough—as reinforced in this morning’s  
Dominion Post 
 by the headline “Kiwis get half the pay of Aussies in same jobs”. 
That is why I support this legislation. It is good legislation. It is not the theatre of the emissions trading legislation it is not the theatre of the Real Estate Agents Bill and it is not the theatre of the legislation that we were discussing this morning the Affordable Housing: Enabling Territorial Authorities Bill which the Government pretends will provide affordable homes to people in my electorate. That will not happen. 
It is really interesting what one can learn when one trawls through the impact of this bill on other legislation. In particular I have some comments that I would like to point in the direction of my colleague from New Zealand First Peter Brown. I draw his attention to sections 10A and 10B of the Protected Objects Act 1975. They are about the importation of protected foreign objects. One is not allowed to bring them into the country. This is the point: if a protected foreign object is in this country a foreign Government has 3 years from the time it knew about it to instigate court proceedings to reclaim that item or 50 years from the date that it was brought into this country. I make that point because I think we need to revisit the issues around our own electoral funding arrangements. Where political parties try to mislead the public of this country a law that gives only 6 months for them to be fined for their actions is patently not strong enough. I think the next Parliament needs to come back and look at the Protected Objects Act and work out how we can have laws in this country that protect the integrity of our electoral process and the funding thereof—something that we have not seen recently in the case of our colleagues in New Zealand First. 
Coming back to the legislation before us this morning I would really like to reinforce the point that we need to put far more effort into improving our legislation across the board. Only by having good legislation and good governance in this community will we keep people in this country. From the perspective of people in the Wairarapa where I live I think the first thing our people want to see is reduced taxes. That also applies to excise tax because our winegrowers around Martinborough Bideford Matahiwi Valley and north into Hawke’s Bay are paying far too much excise tax which is targeted to the inflation rate. In years of low production—and we have had a couple of bad droughts—it puts a huge imposition on our winegrowers. When I see that happening and when I think about it in the context of the excise tax on tobacco that we are collecting through the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) I think there is room for tidying up our act on behalf of our winegrowers. 
We need to reduce the quantity of Government intrusion into the lives of people every day. This legislation will do that. At one level we are doing it by allowing the Comptroller of Customs to make sensible decisions about the disposition of the service’s resources in order to quickly protect our border. On the other hand we are also being very straightforward in putting into this legislation the penalties that will apply to people who infringe the law. As I pointed out in the House earlier today that approach does not apply to our alcohol legislation where penalties can be fixed very quickly by bureaucratic fiat. That has to be stopped. Our next Parliament needs to tidy up the legislation in terms of the penalties that apply to people who infringe our law as it applies to alcohol. We must get rid of the nanny State because if we do not we will find that people will continue to vote with their feet as they have been doing. I think this legislation is a very good example of how we can do something sensibly. We need to apply this model to many other sections of our legislation. 
With those comments I thank my colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee for the way that this legislation was considered and put together. I also thank the officials who did a very good job in answering the many questions that our select committee raised in our consideration of this legislation. I commend the bill not only to the House but to the people of New Zealand as an excellent example of good law.  
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is supporting the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3). We were actively engaged in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee’s consideration of all the various matters including the personal exemption limit for home-grown tobacco. We heard quite detailed submissions from the Customs Service that an 8-kilogram limit would be the most appropriate. Unfortunately the majority of the committee went with 15 kilograms but we think an 8-kilogram limit would have led perhaps to less abuse and trading and more of a reality of home-grown production being only for personal use. We are disappointed with that 15-kilogram provision but as for the rest of the bill we are satisfied that it does improve the ability of the Customs Service to clamp down on the illegal importation and trading of tobacco which is a harmful drug.  
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker i tenei ata. There is always a risk that with the rush of urgency some minor technical amendments will slip under the radar as it were—and that has wide-ranging repercussions. We have seen this in the last 24 hours with the reaction from employers about the changes made regarding KiwiSaver and the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. Employers are saying that the amendments to the Employment Relations Act introduced yesterday represent a major change to employment law which means they will now have to review their pay arrangements to ensure they are not in breach of the law and potentially exposed to a personal grievance claim from one of their staff members. We need to be far more careful when the bill under examination has received as in this case only one submission at the select committee hearing. So with all these warnings in place we have examined carefully the potential impact that the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) could have.  
As far as the Maori Party is concerned the bill makes a number of amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to enhance the statutory appeal and review rights in relation to the forfeit and seizure regime. A particular issue of interest to us in the Maori Party in the examination of this bill was the personal use exemption on the growth and manufacture of tobacco. The amendments in this bill will give customs better control over the illegal tobacco manufacturing operations and that is all good. However the bigger picture is one of banning the sale manufacture and importation of cigarettes so that there is no industry or Government incentive for smoking.  
The Maori Party has stood strong in its vision to end the sale of cigarettes and smoking tobacco. We say that vision without action is but a dream and in our case it is more like a nightmare. Smoking kills one in three Maori for goodness’ sake. Why the heck would we support a bill that kills Maori? Is this first-class legislation? I do not think so. Perhaps the Minister should have broken up the bill a little in order to separate out the part in respect of the issues we are raising at the moment. The tyranny of tobacco over the lives of tangata whenua has a long history in Aotearoa. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: The tyranny of tobacco! 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: Mr Tau Henare knows about this as he used to be a smoker. Any knowledgable historian will point out that tobacco was gifted from Pakeha settlers as a tradable commodity to purchase food and land. We are told that some of our tupuna rangatira who signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi were treated to tobacco. The archives are bursting with picture cards and postcards of our men women and to our horror even our children being shot—with a camera I had better add—with a cigarette in their hand. I was also shocked recently to find that during the passage of defending the nation in war that Maori and Pakeha were routinely allocated cigarettes and tobacco along with their food rations. So does the Crown bear any responsibility to take action to end sales of cigarettes and smoking tobacco? Hell yeah of course it should. A ban on cigarette sales would save 4000 lives and $22 billion annually. [ 
Interruption 
] That is why Tau Henare finished smoking.  
Of course we welcome the graphic health warnings that now appear on all tobacco products. If anyone could be persuaded to give up surely one would think that the prospect of ending up with gangrenous toes diseased lungs smoking damaged hearts rotting teeth big pukus and damaged gums must have some— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Smoking gives you a big puku? How long have you been smoking? 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: The member should ask himself. Although it is early days yet in the course of the campaign to get rid of smoking we are mindful that the number of cigarettes available for sale has not changed in 3 years. In fact even worse the number of cigarettes available for sale has actually risen 2.8 percent over the previous year. And here is the horror statistic—the number of cigarettes available for sale has risen an astronomical 83.3 percent since 1985.  
We say that it is a weak excuse to say that these figures are rising just because there are more outlets for sale. The figures are rising because cigarettes are being sold and cigarettes are being smoked. The other issue to bear in mind is that although the officials tell us that smoking rates have been steadily decreasing the importation and sale of cigarettes is actually increasing. So the tobacco industry remains rich. In effect then the proportion of smokers is not decreasing as the population grows.  
Does this bill do much to address the bigger picture? From our perspective no it does not. We see a new clause that was recommended by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee so that the personal use exemption being introduced by the bill is now part of primary and not delegated legislation. This means that rather than illegal tobacco manufacture coming under the stronger regulation-making powers that were originally suggested there is less flexibility to be able to control the black market tobacco trade. Putting the personal use exemption into this bill is as the Labour minority report itself acknowledged inconsistent with the other control arrangements. We believe with Labour that the stronger regulation-making powers are more effective in controlling the illegal tobacco trade. The flexibility and speed with which delegated legislation can be amended is we believe likely to be more effective in addressing the growth of the tobacco industry. 
We should not be we say fiddling around passing laws that allow the Government and industry to collect revenue from tobacco when the bigger picture of tobacco use and abuse is still prevalent. If there is one thing that really put the nail in the coffin of this bill it was the very fact that the only submission received was the support of British American Tobacco New Zealand Ltd. The company supported the bill particularly in respect of amending the Customs and Excise Act 1996 in relation to the illegal manufacture of tobacco.  
Let me make it clear that all this bill will really do is to ensure that Governments get their excise duty payments. Over the 11-month period to May 2008 the Government received an incredible $775 million in customs tax on tobacco and there is a forecast of $144 million in tobacco excise duty over the year to June 2008. Although the Government is happily receiving the princely sum of $919 million there is another group of figures I want to leave with this House. This morning I was presented with a table of figures showing the prevalence of cigarette smoking by New Zealanders 15 years and over from 1996 to 2005. Although there has been a decline in the all-out-high of 58 percent in 1996 the results for Maori have been consistently alarming. Over the last two decades the number of Maori smokers over 15 years of age has hovered steadily on or around the 50 percent mark—50 percent for goodness’ sake! These figures provide a compelling reason to do everything we can to stem the tobacco tidal wave that our people are submerged under and for that reason we will not be supporting this bill. 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I seek leave of the House to table an excerpt from this morning’s  
Dominion Post  
headed “Kiwis get half the pay of Aussies in same jobs”. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member has sought leave to table. Is there any objection to that course of action being taken? There is. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) be now read a third time. 
Ayes 113 
New Zealand Labour 49; New Zealand National 47; New Zealand First 7; Green Party 5; United Future 2; Progressive 1; Independents: Copeland Field.  
Noes 6 
Maori Party 4; ACT New Zealand 2. 
Bill read a third time.