Tirikatene Rino: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTirikatene Rino: Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 20 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:16227. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to add my contribution to the second reading of this—Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry. I am informed that this is not a split call. Is that correct?RINO TIRIKATENE: No it is not.Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. Ten minutes.RINO TIRIKATENE: I will give it a bit extra. As the speakers from this side of the House have said in this debate we support the Border Processing (Trade Single Window and Duties) Bill. We supported it at the first reading. Indeed the genesis of this IT system came about when we were last in Government so we are supporting the bill.It is an IT system. It is a very important IT system because it helps facilitate the trading of our goods in and out over our borders. That trade with our trading partners is the lifeblood really of our economy. It is a very important IT system and we commendthe Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries for following through on this massive project. I say “massive” because that is the word that Mr Hayes used. It is a massive IT system roll-out. It is a bespoke system so it is a tailor-made system that the Customs Service has spent the last 3 years—Iain Lees-Galloway: It’s custom made.RINO TIRIKATENE: —custom made absolutely—a custom tailor-made bespoke made-to-measure IT border management system. And it comes with a hefty price tag. It is an $89 million system.Su’a William Sio: How much?RINO TIRIKATENE: It is $89 million but that was not the initial cost of the system. In I believe the 2010 Budget the initial estimated budget of this system was $76 million.Su’a William Sio: How much?RINO TIRIKATENE: It was $76 million. What has happened over this 3-year period—and granted it is a massive made-to-measure system that has been built—is that the cost has actually blown out to close to $90 million. That is a significant cost blowout increase where additional money had to be found by both the Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries within their capital budget expenditures to actually meet that shortfall. The revised cost of this system is in round figures $90 million.Su’a William Sio: How does that compare to Novopay?RINO TIRIKATENE: I do not know about Novopay but I know that it is a dud. But in terms of this system there is hope for this system we on this side of the House hope—we do. It has had a 3-year development period. As Mr Browning mentioned I had the pleasure of accompanying the members of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee to the Customs Service premises down on the waterfront where we could get an actual real-time demonstration of how the system worked. It certainly was very glossy it was very slick and by all accounts it was doing a good job.The good thing I guess in terms of how this 3-year project has been implemented is that it has been done in phases or stages. There has been a lot of building of the system I would imagine testing it with major industry players ironing out any bugs and then moving it to the next level. Obviously it is not perfect because the actual public roll-out of the system was due to take place in April last year. But it did not happen because the Customs Service felt that it needed an extra 3 months to iron out a few bugs and make sure that everything was just right before it actually went live with registered importers and exporters interacting with the system. But the system has gradually been phased in in this implementation phase.I guess the concerns from this side of the House that have come through in the contributions so far are how robust the system is whether there are any problems with the system and what assurances we can get from the Government that the system is fit for purpose and will not turn into another lemon like Novopay which is just an ongoing saga and the likes of INCIS. As I was saying there has been this implementation of the system and I guess the key to it will be in 3 months’ time because in 3 months’ time we understand that all going to plan there will be an evaluation of the system and that evaluation will be presented to Cabinet. So we would hope I would imagine that that evaluation is probably going on right now because the Customs Service wants to make sure that everything is OK and it is checking that. Remember that it is a $90 million system so certainly we hope to get payback. We hope to get payback from the greater ease of business that our importers and exporters will be able to achieve through their use of the system and also the increased levies hopefully that will flow back to the Customs Service through businesses’ use of the system. But I think that the evaluationin 3 months’ time is going to be very important and here on this side of the House we will be seeking more information around that evaluation.I want to return to the point around the cost of this system. It is $90 million. That is not small change. That is a significant investment in an IT system a border management system. I am always curious about the fact that budgets are set for these big projects and then the money is all spent. In this case it was overspent by $14 million. I do not come from the IT world but $90 million is some serious dough. I came from—a few years back anyway—a legal practice. In legal practices we were talking about maybe up to $1 million in terms of billings for a partner.Andrew Little: Really?RINO TIRIKATENE: Around about that. This was a few years ago I must say but it was getting up there. Actually it was a bit lower than that. However $90 million—that is a lot of capital spend. Just looking at the actual list of companies that have received—basically eaten through—all of that money the lion’s share of it has gone to IBM. Forty million dollars has gone to IBM in terms of the build of this system just in the past 2 years alone. That is one single company charging a huge amount of fees—a huge amount of fees—for the work that it is doing on the system. So we would hope that certainly the taxpayer the Customs Service and the Ministry for Primary Industries are absolutely getting the best value for money from that $90 million system.We know that the costs have not stopped. We are into a new financial year and no doubt the Joint Border Management System is still going to be incurring more expense. So we hope that the implementation of this IT system and a successful evaluation will result in it hopefully being put up as best practice—best practice from among the Government sector on how to roll out an IT system because we have certainly had some huge failures in the past.That concludes my contribution. We support this bill but we will be keeping a very close eye on things and we will be asking to see what the evaluation of the service will be when it comes out in June.