Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3)

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.

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.