Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

It gives me great pleasure to stand and speak very briefly to the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. Once again, very little needs to be said in this reading, simply because, as all those who have read the amended version of the bill and the report accompanying it will see, this bill has been reported back to the House with the unanimous support of the Justice and Electoral Committee. Given that that is the case, I have nothing further to say. Thank you.

Mr Speaker—

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: What a speech! That’s amazing.

Absolutely! I think I would give Mr Quinn’s speech 1 or 1½ out of 10.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Give it 1.

I would give that speech 1 out of 10. Thank goodness Mr Quinn was here to kick us off this morning with an energetic speech on the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill! On this fine Wellington Saturday morning I am thrilled to be here speaking about this bill.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: He’s off home.

Paul Quinn has done his day’s work; he has gone. Gerry has done his day’s work; he is off home. But we are happy to be here.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Is Paul Quinn your constituent or Annette’s in Roseneath?

He is in Annette King’s electorate.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: The first Saturday’s work he’s done in his entire political career so far.

No, I do not think so, I say to Mr Brownlee.

The Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill has been improved by the Justice and Electoral Committee. That committee is chaired by Chester Borrows, who I do not think is appreciated on that side of the House for the full extent of his abilities. The committee did some excellent work.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: He should have got Pansy’s job.

That has actually been discussed—whether Chester Borrows should be in Cabinet, and who is keeping him out of Cabinet on that side of the House. I am not sure; it could be Mr Quinn’s work in the background yet again.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: No. “Mr Quinn” and “work” in one sentence? Wrong.

Yes, that is true; sorry. It is impossible.

This bill has come back to the House in a significantly improved form. I have to say that my very good colleague Su’a William Sio, who is the Labour Party’s spokesperson on customs, actually came to some caucus members about this bill, because he had some very particular concerns about the question of information sharing. A number of us in the caucus, when we actually looked at the bill, shared those concerns with him.

Before the bill was referred to the select committee it seemed to have a very open approach around the question of information sharing. If we refer to new section 282B, “Access by accessing agency to border information”, which is inserted by clause 24 of the bill, we see that it says: “(1) The purpose of this section is to facilitate the exchange of information between agencies at the border to enable them to co-ordinate their border protection functions.” I think everybody in the House would want to see a well-coordinated, well-organised border system. There obviously are multiple agencies involved here: MAF Biosecurity New Zealand, the Customs Service, the police, and so on. They need to be able to work together well.

But if we move to new section 282B(2), in clause 24, we see that it states: “An accessing agency may, for the purpose of this section, access any border information held by a holder agency if the access is authorised by regulations made under this Act.” That is a very open provision. That provision says that agencies that have access as defined under this bill can have any information whatsoever held by those other agencies. The caveats on this provision are included in new section 286A, “Regulations relating to information sharing”, inserted by clause 25. The first of those caveats is that the Governor-General may, by Order in Council made on the recommendation of the Minister, make regulations specifying who those agencies are. In effect, we were setting up a process by which information could be shared among these agencies simply by Order in Council—simply by the Minister saying: “I think this should happen.”

As has been spoken about already in the debate on this reading, Auckland International Airport, as an agency involved in this bill, began to think this provision was interesting and began to wonder what it might be able to do with it. It came to the select committee, as I understand it, and talked about the fact that it was very interested in sharing information about who might be arriving on a flight so that it could perhaps tailor what products were available in the shops at Auckland International Airport. That seems to be a somewhat unusual approach to sharing border information.

💬 Hon Darren Hughes: It would assist some members of the Government.

It may be quite easy. They could make sure there was a large display of chocolates at the door—which might be of some interest to some members on the other side of the House—or possibly a large display of interesting drinks that people might like to buy when they come in to the airport. Auckland International Airport was very keen to get that information and use it as a commercial opportunity.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Sammy Wong is on the way again.

That is right—they may have been able to see which members and their spouses and so on were finding their way into the country, and tailor the goods available.

From the point of view of this side of the House, that provision raised some alarm bells, and obviously it also did for the rest of the select committee. When Chester Borrows spoke last night he made the point that the committee members not only took on board the advice of officials that there was a need to tighten up but also put in some additional matters themselves. Those additional matters are now provided in new section 286A(2), which states: “Before recommending the making of regulations under this section, the Minister must consider the following matters”, and there are a large number of matters that the Minister needs to consider.

One point that is raised is whether personal information is included within the information that is being shared. I think that highlights some of the key concerns, which are that privacy would be heavily compromised, and that people who had given information in good faith to a border agency—perhaps the Immigration Service, perhaps the Customs Service—could find that information being given out to another agency in a way that they would personally not approve of. That is the first consideration the Minister must have.

The Minister also has to consider the amount of personal information that is being made available, whether it is appropriate for the needs of the accessing agency, whether it represents a significant proportion of the border information, whether it is everything the agency needs to know, how sensitive the information might be, and the level of accuracy of the information. There is no particular test on these agencies ensuring that the information is strictly accurate, yet it is being shared. That could have some consequences for people whose information is at hand there.

Perhaps more important is that fact that in subsection (3) of new section 286A there is a series of things that the Minister must do before recommending the making of regulations. I know that the current Minister of Customs, Maurice Williamson, is not a man who likes any kind of compulsion. He does not like to be told what to do, particularly by his own leadership. But now, under subsection (3), there are some things he must do.

The first of the things he must do is consult the Privacy Commissioner. The select committee has put that very important check and balance in place. The Privacy Commissioner has an independent status and role—and we will be talking shortly, in a debate on another bill, about the importance of independence for core and important officers who work on behalf of us through the Public Service. But, as I said, the Privacy Commissioner has that independence. The Minister must consult the Privacy Commissioner if information is to be shared in this way. The agencies affected have to be consulted, as well as organisations considered by the Minister to be representative of interests likely to be substantially affected by the regulations. So the Minister must consult quite a wide ambit of people when these regulations are being put in place.

Members of the public are named in their own right as a category, and the Minister must give public notice of the consultation being undertaken. Then the Minister must take the results of that consultation into account. So the select committee has, I believe, done a very good job of ensuring that we now have a provision that enables border agencies to share information with each other within a framework that gives me confidence. It gives me, and, I hope, other members of the House, confidence that the process will not compromise personal privacy issues, will not compromise the overall security of New Zealand, and will not result in information being unreasonably shared—for instance, for a highly commercial purpose that might not be appropriate in terms of where that information came from.

That is only one part of this bill, but I have focused on it because it was the part that alarmed me at the bill’s first reading, when it was drawn to my attention by Su’a William Sio. I think that the Justice and Electoral Committee has improved it, and I think it is a testament to the excellent members of the committee.

The select committee has made changes in terms of biofuels, and they have already been discussed by my colleague Nanaia Mahuta. They too are an improvement. I think, therefore, that the legislation that has returned to the House for a second reading is an example of why we should send bills to a select committee and should not use the urgency process to bypass proper scrutiny. What if this bill had gone through all stages, as other bills have in this process, had not had the scrutiny it needed, and had not been improved? That would have been a shame, and that has been seen far too often from this Government. But at least with this bill we have a process that has worked and much-improved legislation that, hopefully, most parties in this House will be able to support.

It is my privilege to participate in the second reading of the Customs and Excise (Joint Border Management Information Sharing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, which deals with a number of issues related to customs and excise. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.