4. A High Performing Customs Service
Value Delivered by Customs
High quality Customs services make a very significant contribution to New Zealand’s economic performance, safety and security of our citizens, communities and culture and to securing the government’s revenue stream. Major determinants of our service ‘quality’ are the integrity of our staff and the ‘fitness for purpose’ - including future purpose - of our systems.
Balancing Facilitation and Risk Management
We manage our risk management activities to minimise the impact on legitimate traders and travellers. We seek to minimise harm to our national interest by ensuring that our interventions are smart and appropriately targeted while managing and facilitating changing volumes and a growing diversity of trade and travel.
The Changing Concept of "the Border"
Increasingly, significant efficiency gains can be obtained through "pushing the border out" and undertaking more risk assessment work offshore.
The gains are realised where the person, good or service can arrive pre-screened at New Zealand’s border, saving real-time delays in undertaking on-the-spot inspections.
Border Intervention Role
As New Zealand’s only agency specialising in managing cross-border trade and travel flows, Customs has a broad mandate to implement the Government’s border legislation and any policies affecting goods, people and craft.
Currently, we are responsible for various provisions of 46 Acts and support a wide range of other agencies’ legislative responsibilities and as Customs-related requirements change, we need to implement these promptly and effectively.
Core Responsibilities
Core Customs’ responsibilities include the exercise of controls over the movement of goods, people, craft, organisms, prohibited goods and services and cultural properties and revenue collection.
The cross border movements of goods, people and craft are linked, and the breadth of Customs’ core responsibilities means synergies are realised.
Working With Others
The confidence that other nations have in the integrity of Customs’ border management capability is demonstrated, for example, through the range of formal Customs cooperative arrangements that have been established in recent years. Some are a result of our active participation in the negotiation of free trade agreements eg. China and Thailand. To contribute to our international relationships in support of trade and law enforcement activities, Customs has 5 overseas posts (Bangkok, Beijing, Brussels, Canberra, Washington) and a Wellington-based officer responsible for the Pacific region.
Successful Customs operations also depend on working closely with other operational groups such as the National Drug Intelligence Bureau on drug related matters; the National Maritime Coordination Centre on shipping and coastal surveillance; and the Wildlife Enforcement Group on preventing international trading in wildlife and flora.
We maintain wide-ranging relationships with business stakeholders and aim to improve and develop these. We recognise the importance of achieving mutual confidence in each other’s efficiency and integrity. Both parties stand to face additional costs through unnecessary screening. A significant indicator that justified trust exists, is the two-way supply of relevant, and often commercially sensitive, information.
Being an Agile Organisation
Customs needs to be capable of quickly adopting and applying international "good practice" in border sector management. We seek to be an agile organisation that can identify and readily implement better ways of operating. In many areas this means being a close follower of international best practice ideas, and being an early adopter of good ideas, systems and technology.
We can, and do, provide leadership in fields such as applying and developing risk management techniques and in contributing to the work of the World Customs Organisation.