Border agency faces ‘significant shortfall’

Customs and other border agencies will seek a bailout from the $50 billion Covid response fund to plug a funding shortfall and prepare for any transTasman travel bubble.

Customs was allocated $227 million in the Budget, but Customs Minister Jenny Salesa told Parliament’s foreign affairs defence and trade select committee yesterday that it faced a ‘‘significant revenue shortfall’’ in 2020-21.

About 60 per cent of Customs revenue normally came from fees, but that income has been reduced as a result of travel restrictions and a decline in imports, she said.

Salesa said all New Zealand’s border agencies were working out what their funding requirements would be, and a paper was likely to go to Cabinet in July.

That paper could also consider funding for any extra equipment that might be required to support a trans-Tasman travel bubble, she said.

Customs’ regular Budget bid had been finalised in March, which meant the impact of Covid could not be fully factored into the May Budget, she indicated.

Customs chief executive Christine Stevenson said Customs had ‘‘plenty of work on’’ despite Covid-19.

Its 1400 staff were undertaking a range of new duties that included meeting the few passengers that were still entering the country at their planes and guiding them out to buses for quarantine.

Thirty-nine staff had been redeployed to help contact tracing, and some Customs officers had been deployed to hotels where people were selfisolating, she said.

Salesa said Customs had been very involved in the work being overseen by the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum (ANZLF) to consider how a transTasman travel bubble could be implemented.