Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Minister of Customs: I present a legislative statement on the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill amends the Customs and Excise Act 2018 to provide clear arrival information obligations to help with customs-related border management matters. This bill sets out an explicit obligation on arriving passengers to provide their required arrival information that is set out in the chief executive’s rules. This will improve the transparency of the system because the public will be able to see in one place the requirements in law that they need to follow when they travel to Aotearoa.

The bill also improves the enforcement of the arrival information requirement by introducing two new offences: for failing to provide prescribed arrival information, and for providing erroneous information of a material particular—in simple terms, that means that the offence won’t apply if a person just makes a minor error. As part of the offence of failing to provide arrival information, it is also an offence to fail to provide it in the time and way required.

In practice, most people want to comply with the customs requirement and complete their arrival information. Making these into infringement offences will provide a way to further encourage compliance.

Other changes include regulation-making powers to set the timing for when arrival information can be required and to exempt categories of travellers from providing arrival information.

The work that Customs does at our borders is a critical part of managing our border system. Customs has several core functions, such as preventing prohibited goods from crossing our border and collecting revenue. Customs also aims to provide a streamlined border-processing experience for travellers coming into Aotearoa.

The changes in the bill will support digitising the New Zealand passenger arrival card through the New Zealand traveller declaration. The New Zealand traveller declaration is expected to improve border management, integrate intelligence and risk assessment for border agencies, and provide a more streamlined experience for travellers. This contributes to wider work under way to build a safer, smarter, and agile border.

A digital arrival card could be implemented using existing customs legislation. However, this bill is an opportunity to improve transparency around collecting and providing arrival information. These changes will also improve the way the system works and the enforcement of the system.

The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee considered the bill and reported back to the House on 20 April this year. I want to thank the committee and the chair, the Hon Jenny Salesa, for its careful consideration of the bill, and I appreciate its deliberation on the bill over the April adjournment period. I also want to acknowledge all those who have submitted on the bill.

The committee recommended that the bill be passed, and it agreed to some amendments unanimously. In its report, the committee noted that it initially had some concerns in relation to the collection of personal information and the sharing of information.

In relation to the collection of personal information, the committee report noted it was initially concerned that the bill would expand the range of personal information required under the bill. After receiving advice, the committee noted it was satisfied that the bill did not expand the personal information that may be collected. I thank the committee for its thorough consideration of the collection of personal information. It’s important that Customs is able to collect the personal information it requires for its role, but there are also safeguards in place to ensure the appropriate collection of personal information.

In terms of data sharing, the committee noted that some members were concerned that the travel movement information that Customs collects could impact on superannuitants and beneficiaries. As the committee noted, the Customs and Excise Act 2018 already provides for Customs to share information with the Ministry of Social Development to verify eligibility for a benefit, but there are a range of safeguards in place around this sharing.

This bill does not include specific, stand-alone provisions relating to the protection of arrival information collectives. This is because information collected under the new arrival obligation is covered by the existing robust information-sharing framework and protections in the Customs and Excise Act.

The committee also looked at a number of other issues such as digital access, the management of Māori data, and how exemptions would be applied. Concerns were also raised by the Privacy Commissioner and by the committee about using the chief executive’s rules to specify the arrival information required or the way that arrival information must be provided. I consider that it is appropriate that the chief executive’s rules are used in this context as this aligns with the framework of the Customs and Excise Act—that is, where matters of detail are set out in rules. This approach also allows for timely updates to what arrival information is collected, such as when a concession changes—for example, the amount of alcohol that is duty-free.

The chief executive’s rules are secondary legislation, which means that they are also subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Also, section 53 of the Customs and Excise Act sets out the broad purposes for which Customs can collect arrival information. These remain as key safeguards for specifying this type of information in the chief executive’s rules.

The committee has recommended unanimously—and I agree with its recommendations—a number of changes to the bill that will be addressed during the committee of the whole House. One change is to allow for the phased implementation of the arrival information requirements for maritime. This would allow the arrival information obligation to come into force on or after 31 October 2023 for Defence Force vessels and cruise ships. More time is needed in these areas to work on how to operationalise the digital arrival card.

Another minor change has been to where regulations could provide for a requirement to provide information offshore. This provision has been changed to make it clearer. There is also a minor amendment to one of the offence provisions to ensure all relevant offending is captured by the new offence.

I acknowledge that the implementation of a digital arrival card may be difficult for some people. That is why there is a range of measures under way that will be in place for when the New Zealand traveller declaration is implemented this year, such as a call centre to help people complete their arrival information requirements. At some international ports, there will be airport liaison officers and also on-ground support for travellers on arrival in New Zealand. If a person cannot complete arrival information in the New Zealand traveller declaration—for example, they don’t have a device—they can complete a paper arrival form.

In summary, this bill clarifies arrival information requirements and approves the enforcement of those requirements. The amendments will ensure Customs can fulfil its important border management role and support the shift to the digital arrival card through the New Zealand traveller declaration. Ultimately, this contributes to building a safer, smarter, and agile border.

Again, I thank the committee for its considered work, and those who took the time to provide a submission on the bill. I look forward to the passage of this bill through its remaining stages, and I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, a few introductory comments, but before I get to that, because I’m sure the Minister and the Government’s at bated breath: National will be supporting this bill. So everyone can just chill and relax. I mentioned in my first reading speech how excited I was that we are dealing with a customs bill, and I just want to put on the record that on the second reading, I’m still excited. It’s very good to have a customs bill here. I’m going to go through why this side of the House supports it. The second, though, very quick and general comment, is to thank those on the front line of Customs. As the Minister knows, they are working incredibly hard, with some amazing drug busts of late. But one encouragement, too, because I know—and Barbara Edmonds, the Minister, will know—they’ve just finished training two dogs for Fiji, which is brilliant; Customs dogs, which is excellent. And just an encouragement to the Customs team that they should follow the line of the Fire Service and the Police and get themselves involved with the Friday floof. It’s incredibly popular in the social media space; it genuinely is.

National supports this bill because it’s a sensible set of changes. We all know intuitively, anecdotally and otherwise, that the world is changing to a digital platform and the days of filling out pieces of paper or card are changing. And so for those at home wondering what this amendment bill is all about, fundamentally there are several elements, and they would have heard that from the Minister, but as I understand them, the fundamental change is that people are now going to be asked to fill out their arrival information online. In a similar way, for those who have travelled in recent months, they had to do—granted, it was the health declaration and I know there’s some controversy around that, and so forth. But, actually, you went online and you filled it out and that’s what’s going to happen here. So in many ways, the same questions which New Zealanders and others are familiar with in filling out that blue declaration card is now going to be online.

A little element towards that which people need to understand—I think they need to understand, they can choose not to of course, it’s a free world, but, actually the arrival card is a mixture of information from multiple Government departments. Customs asks a series of questions, the Ministry for Primary Industry is asking a number of questions, Immigration’s asking a number of questions. And so that is pulled together into one card, one piece of paper at the moment. Now that’s going to be manifest online. And that was certainly where a lot of the committee work—and I was pleased to be there—debating and trying to understand first and foremost who is getting to set these questions. And there was a concern—at one level, academic—going, you know, well actually, could a whole series of questions which in some ways breach privacy or are unnecessary, could that be asked? There was concern that actually in this primary piece of legislation, this amendment bill, it does not specify what exact questions should be on the card. A lot of time was spent debating that, and it was quite generally one of my concerns as well. And that’s not a reflection on those who run our ministries, but it’s just, you know, when you pass a piece of legislation, you want it to be as tight as possible.

We were assured time and time again—and it made sense to this side of the House and hence why you have a unanimous report—that actually the existing Customs and Excise Act of 2018 already gives powers to the chief executive, first and foremost, to set what the questions are, but also sets some parameters. They do already set parameters of what can and cannot be asked, and the Minister in her own contribution noted that trying to, if you will, change that aspect through this amendment bill would not make sense. And a good example, in fact it was also used by the Minister—if tomorrow it was the decision to change how much alcohol or tobacco or whatever else you are to bring into the country, that would naturally affect the questions and we’d have to come back into this House to pass primary legislation to make that change, where it seems to be a good principle and subsidiarity to actually allow that to be with the chief executive. So that makes sense to us. And the assurances we’ve been given helps. We also know we can turn up to the Regulations Review Committee, and elsewhere, if there were challenges as well. And I suppose also—quickly, to phrase it in the positive—I think on this side of the House, and I assume it’s the same with the Government, we understand that questions will naturally change over time. There will be other requirements which arise where you go, “You know what? It’s good that the chief executive can quickly introduce those.”

There was also questioning in a similar vein around data sharing. It’s no surprise that, you know, you are giving away quite a bit of information when you come into the country. How is that being used? Posed in the positive, we know from submissions from the tourism industry they are very keen to get hold of that data swiftly and quickly so they can understand who is coming to New Zealand, which countries they are coming from, and so forth. And Customs and our advisers were very, very quick to assure us that access to data is important in an aggregated sense, but also really keen to stress that while this data now is being collected in the more efficient form, it will be shared only by agreement. And really importantly, which I think put a lot of members—well, certainly, I should personalise it, it put my mind at ease that Customs already has a number of memorandums of understanding and agreements with a number of Government departments to share information. So again, I suppose the long and the short of it is it doesn’t matter if it’s the data privacy side or the data-sharing side, the setting of questions—these are already mandated. The way these are operated or operationalised is already current under the excise Act. So, again, the amendment’s not changing any of that.

The fact that there are new penalty offences does make sense. But the committee also spent a little bit of time debating that. And look, I’m not a lawyer—I know you hear me say that all the time—so I’m very happy to be corrected.

💬 Andrew Bayly: Thank God for that!

I know, thank God for that. Unfortunately, I’m a philosopher, which probably makes things worse; I don’t know. That’s off the topic.

At the moment, you fill out your arrival card on the plane as you are coming to New Zealand, as you are arriving. This traveller declaration requires you to fill out the form, arguably before you’ve arrived. You are going to be filling this out hours if not days prior to leaving. So you are doing an arrival card before you are arriving. And so the bill had to tweak some of the language, and thank you to PCO and others who helped—so that’s the Parliamentary Counsel Office, our internal lawyers—just to make sure the wording of the legislation as proposed is rather tight, to say it’s not just in the act of arriving but in anticipation of it. So I myself found that quite interesting. And consequently, too, there’s liability offences for those who do not fill out these forms.

The transitional arrangements which the Minister alluded to also make sense. These arrival documents will need to apply to our military vessels and to those coming from the maritime vector. Making sure that that is done correctly is important. It’s been one of my little bugbears over the years, how we correctly police, for want of a better word, those coming through on seagoing vessels, particularly the cruise ships. Again, for most of us who travel on airlines, you can only come in via one port. You’ve all got to go through those e-gates and hand over your documents and passport. It’s slightly different, when there are the thousands disembarking from the various cruise ships, about how things are done. And I’m very keen to see that travel vector clearly policed and tightened. So it makes sense that time is going to be given there. And again, for people just to intuitively think—I mean, I’m an Auckland MP—how are you going to fill out these forms easily and swiftly online? You can imagine, for want of a thought experiment, if you’re running late at Auckland Airport as you are arriving, you’ll be able to access a terminal. Are they going to roll out said terminals at the Auckland maritime border? Maybe they will. We will see. But it just takes a little bit of time.

And that then leads me to my last thought, and I’m pleased with what the Minister said, which is support will be in place. That’s National’s only concern. But I just want to signal that’s a low-level concern; it’s just to make sure that there is sufficient support in place for those New Zealanders who are struggling to use the online systems. Mum and Dad, I might be looking at you, but I’ll try to be a dutiful son and help them out. But there is actually a group of New Zealanders who will find it difficult to use online systems. And so from the National Party side, we’re just hoping there will be sufficient support in place from those call centres, liaison officers, and just people at the arrival gates to assist those people who need help obviously to use the online system. But really pleased to hear the Minister confirm that there will still be the option of these paper copies.

And so with that, just to thank—well, to the extent that I can—the select committee. Jenny Salesa is a fantastic chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee and helped guide this through. We didn’t have a lot of submissions. I think we had five in total, but they were five good ones and actually really got to the core of what needed to be done. And so with that I am happy to commend the bill with the House with the proviso that Customs, as I say, Minister, engages itself along with Police and the Fire Service, putting those amazing detector dogs up on a Friday.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think at the heart of this bill is the safer and smarter passenger experience that will make the border more agile. As we’ve heard from the Minister, actually, the digital services identity card could have been done under the existing legislation. I think it’s a testament to the Hon Meka Whaitiri that she has chosen instead to go through the House, because it does raise the spectre of digital information-gathering and sharing, which are areas that are increasingly in the media, areas that cause anxiety for people, and areas that need significant transparency in order for human rights to be safeguarded. So I think absolutely the right approach has been taken, even though it could have been done under the existing legislation.

As the previous member, Simon O’Connor, has spoken about, those requirements need to be explicit, and particularly around the powers of the Customs officers to be able to share information. We’ve heard that those information-sharing powers are the same or very similar to what are in place now, but people need to know that. So this is about transparency and assuring people of a transparent process.

There are two new offences around not providing information and also providing erroneous information. They are to incentivise people to take this process seriously, to do it correctly. Of course, going into a digital world, I guess a shift to an incoming card that is digital is inevitable, and there are privacy things to take into account, so having a select committee process has been really good.

My final comment is just to say how reassured I am around the fact that there will still be support for people who can’t access the digital service, and that there will still be paper cards available. That’s really good, because like the previous member, I acknowledge those who may never be able to work in the digital space, and I’m sure that the Customs service will performance manage itself to make sure that those facilities are there, that they’re being used, and that support is there. So it seems that there’s a lot of support for this, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak on the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill this afternoon around arrival information. Any time we simplify something into digital these days has got to be a good thing. Everyone is getting largely used to digital—with the exception of a few—and I’m pleased to see, like everyone else, that there will be some support for those people who haven’t quite reached that digital phase. But I think a lot of travellers now are certainly in that space.

Customs is one of those areas where often people are very critical of the process because at times it can be slow. You know, when you’re coming back from a holiday and you’re tired—and you do hear people often talking about the different lanes and how long it takes. And part of the paperwork is part of what’s slowing it down. But I think the important thing about it is—from the perspective of the country that we come from, where our main exporter is primary production—a little bit of slowness actually doesn’t hurt, because we don’t want the wrong things to go through. So anything we can do to make sure that the focus is clearly and sharply on looking for the right things rather than people faffing around with paperwork has got to be a good thing. And obviously if it’s digital it’ll be much easier to collate, because it does need to be thorough.

I think back to partway through last year when there was a foot-and-mouth scare in Australia. Albeit, it was a benign scare, but it did come through in a piece of pork and we do import a lot of pork into this country and the stuff that we’re importing through the proper channels is well and truly checked out. But the biggest fear is that somebody is going to come through customs and they’re going to end up having a piece of meat or something in their bag, or a source of plant material that’s going to decimate either our livestock industries or our horticulture industries. That’s the last thing we want and the last thing we can afford. Because many people would have seen the awful happenings over the Mycoplasma bovis incident when many cows were culled and many farmers were under stress. Yes, that was a terrible time in and of itself, and something like foot-and-mouth would be far worse—because Mycoplasma bovis was not ever an issue for trade because there is only one other country in the world that doesn’t have Mycoplasma bovis.

If we were to get foot-and-mouth into this country, we would see many of the same things going on out in our farm base in terms of having to destroy animals. But what’s worse than that is we would have to renegotiate all of our trade deals because we actually have foot-and-mouth disease - free trade deals at the moment. And I understand that even if we were to be able to get it under control through vaccination—and those vaccinations change, a bit like the COVID ones do; because you get different strains and it moves, as anything like that does—even if that was the case and we did get it under control through vaccination, we would still end up having to renegotiate our trade deals because we’d be foot-and-mouth vaccinated, not foot-and-mouth - free like we currently are now.

I thank the House for bearing with me as I worked my way through that, but I think often when people think about customs, they don’t think about the relevance of why we are doing so much checking in a country like ours where food production is so important.

It is of note that it is possible, with the current bill that we have, that we are able to digitise. I wasn’t on the select committee that did this, but it is important to note that the reasons for changing this legislation now are to be able to give clearer obligations and make sure that the penalties are fitting what is going on. Many of us might have heard of a person who’s accidentally turned up and forgotten there was an apple in the bottom of their bag—sometimes there’s an accident, but oftentimes people try to bring things in because they simply don’t understand the dangers to this country of doing so. I can’t stand watching those border control programmes because it totally annoys me, the sort of things that people try to bring in. And so we wouldn’t want to see anybody deliberately having plant material, meat, or anything in their suitcases. I know those detector dogs are very smart and very accurate and have the ability to be able to sniff out lots of things these days as people are walking through the airport, but, you know, we can’t afford to have something coming through that shouldn’t be there.

So it’s good to see these new liability offences that are being put in place. One is for failing to provide prescribed arrival information. It’s really important that people are brought to the fact that filling out either currently a paper form or in future a digital form—so they’re actually really going through it bit by bit and clearly in their mind, recognising the sort of things that it’s not OK to bring in.

The second one is for providing erroneous information. Again it’s just showing people that they really do need to be taking this seriously. I do share some of the concerns around—Simon O’Connor brought it up before—the cruise ships. I’m sure the Defence Force have all their systems in place, but, as Simon said, when you fly into this country: one point, one airport, you get checked, you fill the forms out, everything’s checked then you move on. I’ve been on cruise ships and I’ve actually been on ships that cruise around New Zealand, and you get off at multiple ports on multiple days and there is a lot of food on cruise ships and everyone’s told to do the right thing. And we hope that they do. But it is that multiple-entry nature of cruise ships—and I really do hope that something can be sorted out quite soon in terms of being able to make sure that those ships are really checked when they come in, because they could be quite a source. People actually do get off and they’re in the streets quite quickly, out and about, off on tours. They all try to sell you different tours. I went on one once where we were stopped at Tauranga and you went on this food basket tour—so you could be in a kiwifruit orchard or you could be in a place where there’s fish or butchery or whatever. There’s quite a risk that actually goes on with those cruise ships. And now that they’re back—and we welcome they’re back because they’re a great tourism opportunity—we just need to make sure that this system is put in place as soon as possible so that we can monitor what goes on more carefully with those ships.

I also hope—I’ve seen a lot of digital things being planned in the past and attempted to be implemented that don’t quite work as well as they’re supposed to right from day one. So I really hope that the system, before customers are exposed to it or people travelling in and out of the country—I hope that it’s been critically tested and tested and tested just to make sure that it’s not going to fall over. Because the last thing we want to do is have people lined up at the border for hours on end for a system that’s not working, because that could be extremely frustrating.

So with that, I would reiterate the point that National does support this bill. It’s one that’s actually building this into the new phase of technology, but also just adding those extra couple of penalties that we talked about. And I do hope that whatever we do in this space keeps our New Zealand primary industries as disease-free as they currently are. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to begin my contribution this afternoon by thanking the Minister for bringing this bill to the House, and thanking members of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. I wish I could have joined you for this one but, alas, I’m not on the committee. But it looks like you’ve done some incredible work over the last wee while. Thank you to everybody who has submitted. It sounds like there have been some very robust and considered submissions made on the bill.

I do just want to begin by acknowledging the difference between the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and their biosecurity function and New Zealand Customs functions. Biosecurity is a function of MPI. It’s their role to try and prevent those apples in the bag from coming through. Customs’ core role is to facilitate travellers through the border. Once they go through Customs, it’s then at the MPI checkpoint that travellers will engage around the biosecurity risks, and it ceases to be a Customs process and begins to be an MPI process.

So I think it’s really important that we make sure that credit is given where credit’s due and really acknowledge the work that New Zealand Customs do as well, in particular, around catching prohibited items at the border. So what we’re talking about in that instance is making sure that firearms, illegal firearms, aren’t coming across the border; making sure that drugs aren’t coming across the border. So that’s the role they play in that space around prohibited items, less so in terms of catching those apples or food in the backpacks of travellers. They also play a crucial role in collecting duties and levies from people bringing alcohol and tobacco and other products across the border to make sure that we are collecting that revenue.

I also want to acknowledge the questions that have been raised about the collection of personal information. So under the Privacy Act, you can only collect information for which you have a lawful purpose that’s connected with your function and activity as an agency. Customs have long-established robust practices in that space and they work very closely with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and with the other border agencies—the Ministry for Primary Industries, Immigration New Zealand—and I know that for a fact, having worked at both New Zealand Customs and at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.

I also want to acknowledge that I’m actually quite excited to see Customs move into that digital space. This isn’t a new process. This has been a long road to move into that digital space—one that began beyond five years ago, even, because it was five years ago that I was sitting at Customs drafting the privacy impact assessment to do our first trial of a digital arrival card, where the goal was to get a one-touch process for travellers through the border. So they would scan their passport and their digital QR code from their digital arrival card at the e-gate, and unless that raised any flags, they would be able to progress right through, including through MPI, without further contact from officials. So I am very excited to see the progress on this bill and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Greens to take a call on the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill, second reading. I do want to acknowledge the wealth of knowledge around the House tonight—this afternoon, as well. I don’t sit on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, so I want to thank the members for doing the due diligence on all of our behalf.

It makes perfect sense to actually move the system to a digital system. I think we can all agree on that. I was just reflecting on the chaos that that was created by COVID, and the amount of work that that had created for our front-line workers. So I also support the calls to acknowledge our front-line workers at Customs who would have had a very challenging—challenging—job over the last couple of years with COVID as well. So acknowledging that when you move things to the digital sphere, that if you have a really changing set of international circumstances which will impact your border as well, that being able to change that digitally is really, really, really helpful. I’ve been to a few places and I’ve met a few people as well, and the amount of data that different countries collect is different no matter where you go. I think one of the last time I was in—I think it was in the States, they would still ask a question about whether you knew anybody that was involved in World War II and had Nazi sympathies or something like that. Is that—I see a nod around the House that that still is in play over in that particular regime as well. So situations change, so making sure that when we move to the digital sphere as well, being able to move and actually meet those changes as well is also very, very important.

The issue of data sharing was, I see, brought up in the select committee. It’s something that not only impacts upon Customs but it impacts upon every single sphere of life in terms of the way that data is shared as well. So it’s good to see that there are some restrictions or some guidelines, if I can put it that way, that will be put in place to make sure that we retain some of those privacy measures, which is really, really, really important, particularly when we’re living in a world where basically everything on your phone is through multinational corporations. Most of us don’t want to have our private details shared far and wide, because that is really personal to ourselves as well, but I trust a lot of the officials more than I would trust Facebook or Twitter or TikTok or whatever. So just acknowledging that that is a very, very real concern, and good to see that the select committee had gotten into there as well.

I see that the select committee also made some recommendations, and it was good to hear from some of the members of the select committee because I hadn’t thought about it. Right, so you’re on the plane; you’re coming over; you haven’t actually arrived, but you’re in anticipation of arriving as well—making sure that that is considered in terms of the way that that wording has been made in the legislation. So good to see that that recommendation has been picked up as well.

I did have one question—and if there are other members from the select committee here who might be able to enlighten me—around the penalties that could be put on people that breach one of these new offences as to what those amounts might be. Is it a thousand bucks, 600 bucks, is it $400, is it more? And what is the rationale behind those different costs, if the select committee got into that more specific detail? Because for me, I’m thinking, if you’re going to ping someone for a particular offence, what is the rationale for that amount of money and why, and so on and so forth. And will it actually help to curtail that sort of behaviour? So I would be interested to hear views on that particular point, and maybe that’s something we can also bring up and the committee of the whole. On that note, the Greens will be supporting this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT this evening to support this bill—to continue to support it. It’s one of those odd situations where Parliament is legislating technological change, but it is what it is.

I think we all agree that Customs do an incredibly important job protecting our borders, and ACT certainly supports the modernisation and the digitisation of this Customs declaration. It enables agility to be built into the system, and changes can be made in a cost-effective manner if they are necessary. It’s going from sort of a slow-changing environment to the more agile environment where this can be more responsive. So these are all good things.

I do have maybe an unpopular opinion, which is, personally, myself, I quite like the paper forms. Whenever I suggest that to someone, they think I’m out of my mind, but on a long eight-hour flight, it can give you something to do. The main gripe would be nobody seems to have a pen! Hopefully this will solve that problem.

The data sharing was something that I raised at the first reading, and, certainly, it’s been talked about in this reading and also in the select committee process regarding the scope of that data, how that may change, but, ultimately, it would seem that there’s assurance that the powers aren’t changing too significantly and that while the platform itself will change, the powers will just be kind of as they are.

The new infringement regime—I think we’ve had some assurance around how that can be responsive to how this rolls out, because while the questions may be the same, the circumstances of the person filling it out are quite different. They’re going to be doing it at a very different time; it could be days beforehand and circumstances may change, and so what happens in that case? Can there be a bit of allowance in the system or the ability to update and so on?

I think, separate to that, also, the paper form—it’s good that they’re going to stick around for people like me but also as a redundancy. I think as this system rolls out, like all IT systems done on a large scale, it could be a bit of a kerfuffle. We certainly hope they’re on to it. There will be complexities.

One little thought is: I hope there isn’t a mismatch between the digital form that someone signed—their declaration—and specific individuals. Someone coming off a plane holding a piece of paper that they’ve just filled out is very obviously—they say, yes, they filled this out, this is all true and it could be a bit different to a situation where someone maybe got some help from someone else or someone else did their form entirely for them. So there could be some teething issues there, but I’m sure—these are not reasons to not do something when it comes to technological progress, but they are things to be mindful of. Overall, the ACT Party is perfectly pleased to continue to support this to third reading.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s always an honour and a privilege to take just a short call tonight in the House. And it’s good to be back after three weeks of recess in the beautiful Ōtaki electorate, for me anyway.

While I didn’t sit on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, it’s obvious to me that this bill, the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill, absolutely makes sense. It supports the fantastic work that Customs and their team were already doing to make sure that we keep the borders of Aotearoa New Zealand safe—so a no-brainer for us.

As people have already spoken to tonight, we’ve heard that this bill provides an explicit obligation on arriving passengers to provide prescribed arrival information. The bill also includes two new offences, as we’ve heard tonight. One is for failing to provide prescribed arrival information, and the second is for providing information that is wrong or incorrect.

This bill creates a new regulation-making power to set the time by which arrival information must be provided to the New Zealand Customs Service and exempt persons from the requirement to complete arrival information. This also provides the power for Customs to collect certain information about persons arriving in Aotearoa New Zealand to verify compliance with traveller requirements set out in the legislation administrated by other agencies.

Again, as I said, this is just a short call to say, again, this is a no-brainer. This is a great piece of legislation to make sure that we support our Customs team that are already doing a fantastic job to keep Aotearoa New Zealand’s borders safe. Kia ora.

The Hon David Bennett—five-minute call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it is a very short speaking list from the Labour Party, isn’t it? And it just shows that they’re not really doing anything to keep this country from the economic decline that it’s facing at the moment, and small bills like this are all that they can put up at this stage. We need to keep our borders safe; there’s no doubt about that, and it’s important that we are up to date technologically and that offences do reciprocate for the nature of the issue that can happen—and New Zealand, being an agricultural country that relies heavily on biosecurity, needs to make sure that the customs and excise system is something that is effective.

However, in saying that, the Labour Party really should be looking at—and the Government should be looking at how it keeps those borders safe at a time where travel is starting to open up again, the risks are starting to come through for incursions, and we know that there’s a greater risk at a period of time when probably our infrastructure hasn’t been as tested during COVID, and now it is back to being tested and is slightly stretched. And everyone can talk about the queues they hear about at Auckland Airport and the inefficiency they see there, and that no doubt will lead to potential mistakes at our borders due to the stress that this Government has put on the system and not being ready for an open border as the rest of the world has been for some time.

So it’s important that we do keep up to date in this area, but really what we do want to see is actually the Government invest some serious money and resources into our biosecurity. They talked about it over the last two election campaigns and really tried to promise everything but haven’t done anything, and there’s been no significant increase in biosecurity that I can see. And the nature of what’s happened under Labour is that we’ve got a very strong risk profile building up. Imagine the stress on those Customs officers that are at our borders now because of the queues that are being created; the inefficiency in the system that’s there at the moment. And it’s no doubt that there will actually be a breach at some point, and that’s to the detriment of our New Zealand economy.

So it’s important that we do update, but at the same time, there were hollow promises by the Labour Party in the last two campaigns around biosecurity; their Minister hasn’t delivered. They are just hoping nothing comes up before the election to demonstrate the inefficiency and incompetence that they have shown in most of the areas of Government, and it’s no doubt that you’ll see the same in the biosecurity—and they may shake their heads, but we all know what they’ve done, and anybody that’s talked to somebody that’s been through the borders at the Auckland Airport will know how inefficient it is at the moment, and that anecdotal evidence is something the Government should be acting on because it’s going to be a precursor to something happening. Bills like this are important, but the real obligations that are out there haven’t been dealt with, and we look forward to the Government actually doing the proper thing in this area.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the chair for the dinner break, and the House will resume at 7 p.m. this evening.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Kia ora koutou, members. Before we went to the dinner break, we were debating the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill. This next call is a five-minute call to the Labour Party.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak in favour of the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill. I was not a member of the select committee who considered this bill, the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. However, it is an extremely important bill as we reopen our borders to the external world. This is a bill that amends the Customs and Excise Act 2018 to provide for clearer arrival information obligations, to improve the enforcement and functionality of the system, and improve border management and passenger experience by supporting a safer and smarter border. It’s also a bill that supports modernising our border by making improvements to support the implementation of a digital arrival card.

A few specifics about the bill are that it provides an explicit obligation on arriving passengers to provide prescribed arrival information, and it includes two new offences in the bill, one for failing to provide prescribed arrival information and one for providing arrival information that is “erroneous in a material particular”. It also creates new regulation, and as a member of the Regulations Review Committee I will be keeping a close eye on the utilisation of these regulation powers. The new regulation-making powers set the time by which arrival information must be provided to the New Zealand Customs Service and exempt persons from the requirement to complete arrival information. Interestingly, there are a number of exemption provisions within regulations and rules that guide when you can and should, and how you should, be making those exemptions provisions.

So this is a very practical bill. It will help us keep up with modernising our requirements at the border, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m standing up slightly earlier than expected, but I will take the call anyway. This is a solid bill, and the National Party supports it, but there has been a bit of a pedestrian debate, frankly, from the Government, as they have slowly stepped through the merits or otherwise of this piece of legislation. It, frankly, talks to their inability to crack on with things that need to be done and actually focus on the larger issues that are befalling this country—be it cost of living or, frankly, any of their portfolios that they’re struggling to deliver on.

The guts of this, for those at home who are wanting to know what this is all about, is that the New Zealand Customs Service have said, “Look, we’d like to move to a digital model”—which you’d think, in 2023, is about time—“and, by the way, as we do that, we’d like to have some tweaks with respect to the liabilities that currently exist if you do not fill out the Customs form appropriately, and some technical amendments that we will need to make to the legislation to ensure that we are following the law when we move to a digital model.” So here we are, spending, you know, close to two hours debating what is a simple, concise change to enable the modernisation, frankly, of Customs and the accumulation of data.

The select committee has gone through it well—I’ve only just joined the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee; I turned up, essentially, as they were concluding this. They had a handful of submitters, one oral submission, and—as you would understand, Madam Speaker—there are a couple of clauses that have been suggested to just tighten the definition. Apart from that, we’re all in fierce agreement.

So rather than spending 10 minutes stepping through the ins and outs of Customs, I’m going to repeat that the National Party thinks this is sensible. We support it. Crack on with it, and, in the next six months before this Government runs out of time, actually focus on something that matters to the rest of the country. How about cost of living, housing, law and order, education, health—the list goes on. Thank you.

Very good of the member from the Bay of Plenty to recite the Government’s work programme and the many achievements that this Labour Government has racked up over the last three years.

I’m going to lament the demise of the blue arrival card, just as I grieve—I grieve—for the demise of the men who walked up and down the aisles of arriving aircraft with aerosol cans, spraying aerosol through the cabin of the airplane.

💬 Simon O’Connor: You’re not that old, surely!

That was Simon O’Connor in his job before he became a politician. Good to have something to fall back on, Mr O’Connor. And I was thinking, actually—contemplating the debate tonight—one of my favourite Tom Scott cartoons—is there anybody in the House who’s old enough to remember Tom Scott? [Interruption] Sounds like there are a few people—yes, yes. So this particular cartoon—which is highly relevant to this bill, Madam Speaker—depicted, actually, a version of the famous Goldie painting, called “The arrival of the Māori”, but it was an allusion to classical paintings. And it showed the sort of emaciated and starving bodies, leaning forward in the bow of the waka as it crashed on to the rocks, in one of the first arrivals in this country. And there in the Tom Scott cartoon was a Pākehā man in a shirt and walk shorts and long socks, holding a clipboard saying, “Have you got anything to declare?” So that’s one of my favourite Tom Scott cartoons, and it speaks to the great contribution that Customs have made to the history of this great nation.

I’m very pleased to take a call in this debate, however briefly. The bill’s been considered by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee—a very well-chaired committee, as is known. And as the previous speaker, Todd Muller, noted, there’s broad support across the House for this bill, which will allow the digitalisation of the gathering of information off people arriving in this country. Like SmartGate, that will actually make the process of arriving in this country by sea or by air a much better, more streamlined experience for people. So I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Customs and Excise (Arrival Information) Amendment Bill. It’s always a joy on a Tuesday evening when peace and love break out in the House and everyone can agree that the Government is putting forward an excellent bill tonight to help protect the borders of our wonderful country Aotearoa New Zealand.

Many of us have now been able to travel since we’ve come out of the most difficult parts of the pandemic. Can I just comment that our teams at the border do a fantastic job. They process thousands of passengers every week and they do a fantastic job guiding people through the process and ensuring that they are doing everything they can to track down anything coming into the country that could harm New Zealanders or our country.

Others have mentioned tonight that one of the main things that this bill achieves is the ability to move to a digital declaration. We saw recently with a temporary measure that was used following the borders reopening that, as well as using your declaration card, travellers leaving New Zealand before they left had to actually complete a declaration for an electronic measure as well. That was the very beginning to this process so that we can make it more efficient and easier for people to be able to enter the country but still declare the information that they need to declare.

I just note from the select committee report that there were some queries there around privacy. It’s important that privacy considerations are always given due diligence by a select committee to ensure that we are protecting people’s privacy. The challenge in this type of setting is that not only do we need to consider the privacy of individuals entering New Zealand, we do have obligations to ensure that people who are entering are giving us the correct information, are coming in for the right reasons, that they’re compliant with immigration purposes, and that they’re not bringing anything in that may cause harm to New Zealanders such as drugs, for example, or anything that could harm our biodiversity. So we have these requirements to protect our country. But I do note from the select committee report that the advice received by the committee was that the bill wouldn’t expand any of the privacy obligations, but it would make it more transparent in terms of being aware of the information that was required to be provided. It’s an excellent bill. I’m pleased to hear that other parties will be supporting this bill and I commend it to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Forests (Legal Harvest Assurance) Amendment Bill, the Counter-Terrorism Acts (Designations and Control Orders) Amendment Bill, and the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill.