Import News from the Importers Institute:
Briefing to Incoming Ministers

The Importers Institute provides a briefing to new Ministers Maurice
Williamson (Customs) and David Carter (Bisosecurity).

The good news is that you have inherited a top-notch Customs department.
That is not just flannel produced by the department's PR, it is a fact
established by reputable international surveys and it is also our
observation. Customs protects the border and collects duties efficiently
and with minimum disruption to trade.

The bad news is that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF)
continues to encroach on the border protection work of Customs. Other
agencies, like Immigration, are quite happy to delegate front-line
duties to border protection professionals. But not MAF.

Have you noticed that, these days, after going through the Customs queue
and waiting for your baggage to come out of the belt, you have to go
through another lengthy queue? You hand out a form to a MAF official who
then decides, based largely on intuition, whether or not to screen you.
The people from Customs upstairs, whose job is to detect drug smugglers
and illegal immigrants are apparently not to be trusted with figuring
out whether you are likely to be trying to smuggle apples.

When MAF officials find bugs in containers, they promise to stop every
shipment for the importer in question (or for other companies importing
from the same supplier) for the next five shipments or the next twelve
months, whichever occurs first. These stops are to be accompanied by
charges of $100 an hour and the intention appears to be clearly
punitive. Notice that they are not punishing an accredited operator for
failing to detect risks and to alert MAF, they are punishing importers
whose suppliers may not have done the right thing.

In reality, this is not going to work. They just don't have the manpower
to inspect so many low-risk containers - a typical case of bureaucratic
over-reach. Some importers will be put through a lot of inconvenience
and expense and MAF will, no doubt, be asking you for more 'resources'
(a.k.a. money). This tactic seemed to work a treat with the last
government: just have a look at MAF staffing levels in 1999 and in 2009.
We suspect that you and your colleagues aren't quite so gullible.

Now, this has been going on for a very long time. About twenty years
ago, Sir Jeffrey Palmer asked Gerald Hensley to look at border
protection agencies and he recommended setting up a single agency. Ten
years later, a National government asked Sir Ron Carter to do a similar
review and his recommendation was essentially the same: form a single
border protection agency.

The government changed before a decision was made and the new Labour
ministers, Phillida Bunkle and Marion Hobbs, dismissed the
recommendation on the grounds that Labour had promised the Greens that
it would maintain a border agency dedicated to 'biosecurity'. The
Ministers said that they would get Customs and MAF to work better
together.

Ten years on, the departments have come up with a proposal for something
called a "Trade Single Window". All they need is $120 million, more or
less. We consider this proposal to be an answer in search of a question.
You really should dust up the old reports. A single organisation will,
of necessity, provide a single window. Customs use a modern relational
database and we see no need to spend huge amounts of money on another
big computer project.

There is also some unfinished business that you may want to turn your
attention to: (1) a Law Commission report to do away with excessive
departmental powers of seizure was dismissed by the previous government
on spurious grounds; (2) Customs gave a monopoly to an outfit called ECN
to clip the ticket on every import and export and, despite Ministerial
promises to the contrary, this profitable contract was never put up for
public tender; and (3) New Zealand importers still have to go through
the absurdity of paying GST to Customs only to claim it back from the
Inland Revenue a month or two later, while in Australia they are treated
as a simple balancing debit and credit on the same statement.

The current recession means that you need to raise the bar on the
quality of government's spending. Importers expect our border protection
agencies to continue to improve services and reduce red tape. The only
significant change in this area that the last government managed to make
during the nine years that it was in power was the creation of an import
transaction tax. We expect much better from you. Let us know if we can
help.

ENDS

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