O'Connor Damien: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — First Reading 
O'Connor Damien: Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:666;Page:14053] 
Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour) 
: 
 My my my—even National can learn. The Minister for Biosecurity David Carter said he would be very keen to hear industry views. Do members know when the Airports (Cost Recovery for Processing of International Travellers) Bill started? It was not back in 2004. It was back in 1997-98 if I recall matters correctly that the then National Government in its wisdom thought it should impose border cost recovery on the tourism industry so that everyone would pay when they came into this country. Mr Carter remembers that and so does Mr Williamson. Do members know what happened? In its usual arrogant way that Government introduced a bill like the current Government is doing now and thought it could ram it through. Do members know what happened? The industry took out an injunction. It took out an injunction and it won. The tourism industry beat the National Government then because its proposals to introduce border cost recovery were unconstitutional. There had been no consultation. That Government was simply going to—as National does so often—impose a tax on tourists who were coming into this country. 
Well time moved on. We said to the tourism industry prior to the 1999 election that that was a stupid move by the National Government and indeed it was. We accepted that there should be cost sharing. We then committed to go through a proper process of consultation—[ 
Interruption 
]—Mr Williamson knows this is true—and we did. We arrived at a deal whereby the Crown would cover the costs of biosecurity and customs and the industry would cover other costs of customer clearance which was a fair deal. There was an issue about how that should be applied to new airports. Since that time Rotorua Regional Airport and Invercargill Airport have been opened up to international flights and they will not be covered by this bill as Mr Williamson says. I guess the question is how many airports this legislation may apply to. I think most sensible people would say—and I have been an advocate for a long time of the tourism industry—we probably do not need to have any more international airports because we are starting to spread out a bit. Even at Rotorua—my good colleague Steve Chadwick and I have advocated for Rotorua because it is a key tourism destination—there are issues about the level of biosecurity protection and a whole lot of other things. We do not need to have a proliferation of international airports. 
National finally figured out that it has to talk to the industry if it is to impose a tax on the industry; otherwise it will be taken to the cleaners taken to the court and the tax will be thrown out. The question I have is why is the National Government having learnt that lesson demanding that this bill be rammed through the select committee? The previous National Government did not learn the lesson about ramming a bill through Parliament and getting stopped. This Government now wants to ram this bill through a select committee. It has taken 10 years to get the bill here. 
Debate interrupted.