Carter Chris: Border (Customs Excise and Tariff) Processing Bill — First Reading 
Carter Chris: Border (Customs Excise and Tariff) Processing Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:658;Page:7115] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 I rise to speak on behalf of the Labour Party and to say that we will be supporting the Border (Customs Excise and Tariff) Processing Bill to go to a select committee. We hope that through that process we will see some smoothing out of some of the issues that members of our party sitting on the select committee will undoubtedly focus on. 
As the Minister of Customs Maurice Williamson has just said this bill amends the Customs and Excise Act of 1996 and the Tariff Act of 1988. It allows as Mr Williamson has just said the introduction of an automatic passenger processing system the so-called SmartGate and ensures that automatic systems can be used in place of customs officers. On the one hand I guess that the challenge of the Customs Service is particularly as New Zealand is a leading agricultural nation that is largely pest-free to keep our borders safe from certain agricultural diseases. Foot-and-mouth disease comes immediately to mind but a whole host of other nasty things like fruit fly and so on could impact on our horticultural beef and dairy industries. So customs is there to keep the borders safe. It is also there as Mr Gerry Brownlee mentioned when he said we want something— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: He’s not a fruit fly. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: No he is not a pest and I tell Mr Cosgrove he is far too large to be a fruit fly. He talked about the need for our luggage to come through quickly. I think we all had an image of Gerry standing by the turnstile as the bags came through. But in a sort of facetious way he is right. With our growing tourism industry we want the Customs Service to have processes and technology that make landing at and departing from an airport a positive experience. SmartGate will come in and technology will replace customs officers who will then be in the second line of defence. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Doesn’t this member have an interest in this bill? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I am pleased that a former Minister of Education has complimented me on the sterling work I did in promoting New Zealand as a destination for international students. I thank Mr Mallard; I was very pleased to do that and proud to be a representative of our country. 
One of the things I was always impressed with when I landed at Auckland Airport especially our international terminal was the efficiency and friendliness of our customs officers. Now they will be replaced in the front line by this SmartGate technology and we will see the processing hopefully as an efficient fast service that is also safe. The bill also creates new opportunities to deal with new offences to amend existing legislation to make it up to date and modern and to deal with issues as they come up in the policing of the Customs Service. 
However we are concerned about some issues around biosecurity. Although we applaud the move to improve technology to make a more effective and efficient Customs Service we note that one of the first decisions of the new National-ACT Government was to make 50 workers redundant in our Customs Service. It seems a strange paradox and contradiction that on the one hand we are getting lectured about the importance of keeping New Zealand safe and on the other hand 50 workers are being laid off from the Customs Service. Also the Labour Opposition feels that the National Government took a rather token approach to consultation particularly around these redundancies in the Customs Service. The cuts were very arbitrary. I guess they were very similar to the cuts that have taken place in education—not just in adult and community education but in the wider education sector. You know I can remember as Minister of Education before the election going around the hustings and hearing from National candidates that we would not see any redundancies in front-line services we would see no civil servants laid off and we would just see a sinking lid on retirements and people leaving. In the Customs Service 50 have just been laid off and they are the tip of the iceberg of the many redundancies that are taking place within the civil service. We are not talking about policy analysts or those back in the depths of the main offices of the Customs Service; these are front-line officers trying to keep New Zealand safe keeping out those horrible agricultural diseases and other things that can come in stopping people smuggling and doing all of the other fine jobs that customs officers do. Last year New Zealand’s biosecurity staff dealt with 86 incursions of unwanted pests and organisms. Now fewer staff will be charged with protecting our borders. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: What did Gilb say when he was trying to use the word “organisms”? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: I am not going to go there I say to Mr Mallard. He might be more familiar with that than I am. 
Last week I was in Samoa with my colleague Luamanuvao Winnie Laban visiting the tsunami-ravaged villages. We of course went to every village. We were there for 4 days and we provided real support to the people. I met a customs officer while I was there—I will not name her—and she said that they had done a sample test of containers coming in because they had been instructed that under this new regime of ours they would look at fewer containers. Indeed at the port of Tauranga I understand that they are looking at hardly any. Looking at these containers they did a sample to see how many coming in from Australia had agricultural pests in. Something like 40 percent contained unwarranted organisms—an astonishing number. That was just a sample. That is an indication of the practical consequences of reducing front-line staff. Sure SmartGate might be great but if our containers are not being looked in if agricultural pests are coming in that are not being picked up then New Zealand—not just our agricultural sector but the whole of our country—will be the poorer for it. 
Opening up borders means that we should be increasing surveillance at the borders; we should not be reducing it. One of the things that Mr Key said on  
Q+A 
 I think the week before last was that $3.57 million was being removed from the budget of border control. Again it comes back to the question of border security. Nothing is more important than the protection of our agricultural industries. In the 5 years that I spent as Minister of Conservation I knew that one of the issues that Department of Conservation staff constantly dealt with was the impact on our natural environment of alien pests. I can remember for example fire ants coming in from Australia. Two colonies were discovered one in Auckland and the other in Napier and both of these colonies had successfully established themselves. They were eradicated by Department of Conservation staff but they were nevertheless examples of some of the organisms that can come in. 
It is not just terrestrial organisms that can be a problem. We have already had issues of marine pests coming into our ports;  
Undaria 
 is an extremely invasive seaweed that has entered some of the harbours in the southern part of the South Island. It is a considerable pest in North America. It is an endemic species from east Asia. That pest will be just the tip of the iceberg with increased shipping and the increased number of containers being brought to New Zealand. We will face the problem both of insect and plant pests and also of marine organisms being brought in and not being dealt with appropriately. 
To sum up we are in favour of this legislation. We think it should go to select committee. We are not in favour of cuts to front-line services in the Customs Service. We see the Customs Service as the front-line defence of our country. We want effective and efficient systems at our ports and airports so that the tourists can be facilitated through with ease but also with safety. Primarily the issue is not just about making it easier to get in and out of New Zealand and making it a pleasant experience; it is about first and foremost making our country a safe place. Technology can help but reducing the number of customs officers certainly does not help.