General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. It has been a great week for New Zealand and a terrible week for the Labour Party—because New Zealand got the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a surplus, and the Labour Party got the best advice Grant Robertson could give it. I will tell you why that was bad.

Let us just look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership: 800 million potential customers; 40 percent of total world trade covered by the Trans-Pacific Partnership; and small and medium sized businesses all around New Zealand welcoming the prospect of being able to sell their products into large, wealthy markets where we could not sell them before without the tariffs. So what did Labour members do? Well, they have spent a week trying to work out how to snatch jobs and growth and better incomes from small businesses and regions all around New Zealand. But now it is even more cunning. Now they are working out how to look like they meant to, even if they do not succeed. So now they want to look like they failed to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and actually support it. Only Grant Robertson could have thought of such a stupid, damaging short-term strategy—and that is just the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Let us talk about the surplus—let us talk about the surplus. Well, the most vulnerable New Zealanders know that because the Government’s books are stable they can expect ongoing and increasing support and better public services. That is the best thing about the surplus. You would think that the Labour Party would be happy about that, but what did it do? Under “Genius Grant” it decided to pick the one point on which New Zealanders knew that Labour is absolutely wrong and unreliable; that is, saying that the thing that is wrong with the surplus is that you have got too much debt—because everyone knows that the Labour Party would do a much better job of reducing the debt because what Labour would do is cut expenditure and manage it more tightly than the National Government! That is the one thing that no one in New Zealand believes about the Labour Party.

There are a lot of other things that they believe. They believe that Labour is opposed to the environmental benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I think that some New Zealanders would believe that. They believe that Labour was opposed to our tax package in 2010 that actually boosted revenue in a way that enabled us to get to surplus. They believe that Labour was opposed to the welfare reforms that have reduced the welfare bill by upwards of about a billion dollars less than we thought just 5 years ago, but no one in New Zealand believes that the Labour Party cares more about debt and would have, in these circumstances, reduced it more quickly.

The New Zealand economy has had a great week: access to bigger, stronger, richer markets by our more resilient, adaptable, and innovative businesses—that has got to be a plus. In fact, the only people apart from Jane Kelsey who think that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is wrong are the Labour Party members—an apparently middle-of-the-road pro-business party opposing the one thing that business is most united on supporting.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: What will they talk about at the next cocktail party?

Well, they will talk about what a genius Grant Robertson is—that is what they will talk about.

Maintaining a surplus—of course it is going to be a challenge, but the best thing about the surplus is not so much the number but the management of effective public services at its core. I want to acknowledge again the Ministers of our large-spending portfolios in particular, and the chief executives of our departments, but particularly the front-line public servants who, in the end, carry the weight of the decisions made by Government. They have done a fantastic job and that is why in 2017 they will be voting for National and not Labour.

The arrogance of it all—it defies the mind. What Mr English failed to mention to this House was that most of those trade gains were on our trajectory anyway. We were going to get there anyway. He is talking about removing trade barriers. What a joke. What an absolute joke. The joke is that if it was just about trade, we would be laughing at the incompetence of certain members on this side of the House and saying what a sad deal. But it is not just about trade, it goes well beyond that. It goes into non-trade issues, and it is those issues—it is those very important issues—that are never spoken about and never get mentioned in the media sound bites. It is just unbelievable and it is arrogant.

This Government—all of those loud members over there—promised New Zealanders that this would be a gold-standard trade deal. Those members said it would absolutely be in the best interests of all New Zealanders. I hate to break it to them, but this is not the case.

Instead, what we have seen, for example, are years of secret discussions behind closed doors, and we have a Minister openly admitting to all New Zealanders that he has yet to see the full text of the trade document. He is about to sign a blank cheque. It just does not make sense. If that is not the height of arrogance, I do not know what is. The public has not been permitted to see it, and yet 480, or 85 percent, of US authors of this trade agreement were senior corporate executives or representatives from industry lobby groups. The Minister of Trade and the Prime Minister have been taken for a ride by big corporates.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh! Here we go.

I think to be fair, Mr Brownlee, I think the Prime Minister wanted to be taken for that ride—he was on the bus from the start, no worries whatsoever. But to be fair to Mr Groser, I do not think that he wanted to be on that bus. I think that Mr Groser was outsmarted by people who had agendas bigger than him. They had agendas bigger than this country, and certainly bigger than individual New Zealanders within it.

And, yet, has anyone noticed today that any dissent and any words suggesting that the world is not flat are to be scoffed at. I can see in Mr Groser’s head now: “These people are the unwashed! The intelligentsia know what they are doing. Trust us.”—he is saying—“Trust us.” Even now, we are expected to trust this Minister—the man who has agreed to sign something he has not seen. He is literally signing a blank cheque on behalf of us all.

I cannot let these backbench members forget the investor-State dispute settlement clause. [Interruption] They scoff, but they seem to forget that it is a secret tribunal run by corporate lawyers with no ability to appeal. Workers, environmentalists, human rights advocates, and even Governments themselves do not get that special privilege, so why do big corporates need it? Top experts from around the world in law and economics are pushing to drop the investor-State dispute settlement provision, and so are other Governments, and New Zealand First is at the charge of that call in this country today.

This Minister has signed a trade deal that is about so much more than just trade. Many of the numbers that we have been given would have come to pass anyway. They are undermining Pharmac, they are undermining homeownership in New Zealand, and they are undermining this nation’s sovereignty. Thank you very much.

As the country starts a process of sifting through from nonsense to reality—and it will take some time; we have just had an outstanding illustration of encyclopaedic ignorance—I would just like to thank, at this early stage, the many, many New Zealand officials who have gone just about to the ends of the earth to defend New Zealand’s interests. I will mention only two of them: the two chief negotiators who have been advising me since I held the Minister of Trade title. They are two outstanding New Zealanders: Mark Sinclair, our current ambassador in Tokyo, and Dr David Walker. But through them, of course, I want to extend our thanks to the many, many New Zealand officials from numerous agencies—the Ministry of Health, Te Puni Kōkiri, the Attorney-General, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Ministry for Primary Industries, and many others—for their incredible personal dedication to this.

Having said that, it did cost a pretty penny to do it. I do not think we have ever had as many New Zealand officials go to as many meetings. I can tell you, thanks to a question that Dr Russel Norman provided me—I have given him the written answer this morning—we can actually tell the House how much it cost. The figure for 3 years of all travel, accommodation, and airfares was $3,655,163.18.

So the question is: how are we going to pay for this? And the answer is: béchamel sauce is going to pay for this. You see—I just need to get some body language from you, Mr Speaker, because I do not know whether you are—when you are in gay Paris, parlez-vous Franҫais? But—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Order! The member needs to be very careful not to bring the Speaker into this debate. My French—

Actually, it is white sauce. White sauce is what it is, in English. It is from tariff line HS2103.90.13, and that does not include the big kahunas of mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise. But the beautiful thing about white sauce—which I did not even know we produced, let alone exported, until yesterday, because we did not start this negotiation thinking “We have got to do something for white sauce makers in New Zealand.”—is that in the first year alone the tariff savings on white sauce to one country, Japan, are $3.96 million. They are doing God’s work here in Aotearoa, our white sauce manufacturers, whoever they are.

But, of course, there is a lot more than just: “So is this $4 million for corporate greed?”. Well, hang on a minute—how will we make white sauce? According to my understanding, what you do is you need some flour. If it is farmers in New Zealand producing the flour at the margin, this is going to create—as we expand our white sauce exports to Japan—more jobs and more income. And if it does not produce more jobs, it will be higher productivity. But if it is imported, there will be truck drivers driving more flour to wherever it is that this is made. There will be people inside the factory who have to put it into containers. There will be accountants in Hamilton, or wherever, who will have increased demand for their services. This is how the real economy of New Zealand creates wealth, creates jobs, and creates opportunities for our country.

I will give you another example: apples to Mexico. We export a rather pathetically small total of apples to Mexico—500 tonnes—and the reason why our exports are very, very small to Mexico has got nothing to do with the quality of New Zealand apples. I do not want to start a diplomatic incident by describing what I think of American apples, but anyone who has ever eaten one will have their own view. The apples from Hawke’s Bay and Nelson are the finest apples in the world, but they have not been able to compete in the Mexican market—a market of 118 million people—because the United States has had a preference, and the United States exports 300,000 tonnes of apples to Mexico. So I do not know what our guys will do, but if we are still exporting only 500 tonnes in 5 years’ time, I will be astonished.

Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, and now our ambassador in Washington, Mike Moore, once said that the problem with Tim Groser is that he did not get enough credit for splitting the atom. I think that with Mr Groser’s approach today we are still looking to know whether or not the $3 million that he says was the cost of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement was just his minibar bill—or was it the whole thing? That is what we want to know from Tim Groser.

Today the National Government and Bill English announced his first surplus—one out of seven. Meat Loaf used to say that two out of three ain’t bad. I am not sure what he would make of one out of seven, but Bill English did it today. At this point in the economic cycle New Zealanders should expect a Government to post a surplus. We are talking about a period of time, covered by these annual accounts, when dairy payouts were over the $8 mark. There is 3 percent growth. The last time we had 3 percent growth in New Zealand, there was a $7 billion surplus and unemployment was under 4 percent. That was under a Labour Government.

Fast forward to a National Government, and we have 3 percent growth, a $441 million surplus—and we will come back to how that has been created—and unemployment nudging up against 6 percent. The question the National Government has to answer is: who is the economy for in this situation? Who is benefiting from this so-called surplus? Is it the 305,000 New Zealand children growing up in poverty? Should they be thrilled today that Bill English has manufactured a surplus by bodgying around with the figures? Is it the 148,000 New Zealanders who are unemployed today? Should they be pleased that Bill English managed to cut a bit of spending here, to not pay out on the earthquake there, and to overcharge ACC by $350 million? Should they be happy about that? It seems to me that what we heard today from the National Party is that the political target of a surplus was more important than what we should as a country be trying to achieve with the economy. Time after time with this National Government it has been about what it thinks it can get away with—what it thinks it can hide from the New Zealand public instead of what it can actually do to use the economy to improve people’s lives, to reduce inequality, and to give opportunities to children who need special education support.

There is an underspend in these accounts that have been released today of $235 million in education. Part of that is the Ministry of Education’s failed experiment to try to force “super-principals” on schools. Another part of it is special education funding that has not been spent, and there is not an electorate member in this House who has not had a visit from a parent whose child has been denied the special education support they need. That is what the Government celebrates today: $50 million - odd underspent in health, underspending in housing, and underspending in law and order. It is making up a surplus while $350 million is overcharged to New Zealand individuals and businesses for their ACC.

This surplus today means Bill English will be able to put his hand up and say: “I got one. I got one out of seven.” Interestingly, he would not commit today to anything more than that. He was asked whether there would be more. In fact, I nearly raised a point of order. I would have stretched your patience, Mr Speaker. I nearly raised a point of order during question No. 1 today—the patsy question—because the second half of it was not answered. He was asked whether there would be surpluses into the future, and the answer he gave in his press conference today was no. He knows that it will not happen, because the New Zealand economy today is in trouble, and it is partly in trouble because of the failure of this Government over 7 years to rebalance the economy. There has been a failure to diversify, to support diversification, to support added value, and to actually do something to create opportunities in our regions, and the failure to do that means that this surplus is a one-off blip. It is not going to be repeated.

Yes, Bill English will be able to say he got one out of seven. He can look back at Michael Cullen and see a surplus year after year after year, and he will never achieve that, because as the Minister of Finance he has not acted to create the economy that can deliver sustainable surpluses. But, in the end, surpluses mean nothing if the economy is not giving opportunity to all New Zealanders and if the economy is not addressing the inequalities that exist. There was outrage when Bill English stood up today and told us that the tax cuts of 2010 somehow or other improved equality in New Zealand. They did not. They widened the gap. It is a pitiful surplus that has been announced today, but the more pitiful thing is that there is no plan in this economy to grow sustainable jobs and reduce inequality.

What a disappointing speech that was from Grant Robertson, where he did not even mention anything to do with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He did not mention this Government’s plan of growing jobs in the region, and what he did not even mention, also, was that this is a day of celebration. We should be patting the Minister of Finance on the back and saying “Well done for getting the Government’s books back into surplus.”—$414 million back into surplus. A target that was set right back in 2011 has been achieved today. Of course, Grant Robertson could not even stand up in the House—because he did not have the dignity—to say well done to this side of the House.

What Grant Robertson did not say is what an awful caucus the Labour Party had on Tuesday—what an awful caucus. You know, the big debate it had in there upstairs this week was the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Andrew Little, missing in action all of last week, left it to Annette King. She was out to lunch. She did not even know what she was talking about with trade. Then, of course, we have had other contributions—anyone with an economic bone in the Labour caucus knows that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is huge for the New Zealand economy. I am looking at David Parker. He is there, nodding. He knows how important the Trans-Pacific Partnership is for the New Zealand Government. Then if you think about the person who sits next to him, David Shearer—I was down here a few weeks ago in the last few days of the last sitting when we were debating the Korean free-trade agreement, and David Shearer gave an amazing speech in support of the Korean free-trade agreement. It was a fantastic speech. It was like it was delivered by someone on this side of the House.

So you know why Labour’s caucus this week was so fascinating? It was because anyone with an economic bone in its caucus—and I admit there are not too many of them: David Parker, David Shearer, Phil Goff—even a guy who we do not know much about, Peeni Henare, who is actually an Auckland-based MP—said that Labour is all about free trade. So there you have it. On that side of the House some of those members are out there supporting free trade, but they cannot decide whether to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so they are out there confusing the public, saying: “Oh, well, we do not think this is good enough. We should have gotten a better deal on dairy. Oh, well, they should have done more here.”

I will tell you what, here is my prediction this afternoon: Labour will vote for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Damien O’Connor, “Stewie” Nash, David Parker, David Shearer, and Phil Goff will push this through, because they know it is good for regional New Zealand. They know it is good for jobs. They know, ultimately, it is good for the New Zealand economy. We are talking about 800 million people who are potential consumers of New Zealand products. We are talking about over a third of the world’s economy. We are talking about New Zealand pushing hard for 25 years to get free-trade access into the US and Japan, finally achieved. The US is the No. 1 economy, Japan is the third-biggest, Mexico is the 11th—we had to be there. I am delighted that Tim Groser has managed to achieve what he has done—and his officials. I think it is right that he acknowledges officials across the whole of Government who have been working really hard for a number of years to get this important free-trade agreement where it is today. We are talking about tariff savings of around $260 million and the potential to earn $2.7 billion by 2030.

What I also want to talk about is more good news for our primary sector. When you look at what has been happening in beef and lamb, they have just released the financial report for the last 12 months. Beef exports, for the first time in 20 years, are higher than lamb and mutton. It has broken through the $3 billion mark to about $3.2 billion, and lamb and mutton exports are about $3 billion—fantastic. So, actually, farmers up and down the country are celebrating the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We never got what we wanted completely on dairy, but it is hugely beneficial for our meat exporters, for our farmers, for our growers, for our horticultural growers, and also for our viticulture guys who are exporting wine. So, a very good week for the Government, and a terrible disaster week for the Labour Party.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. No one else to take the call; I will. Can I address, firstly, the issue of the Government squeaking back into surplus. It is a good thing. It is a good thing. We agree that Government books should be in surplus, and, indeed, the Labour Party produced our own financials at the time of the last election to show that we would have been in surplus this year too. There are a number of points that need to be made in respect of it. They have been well made by Grant Robertson.

To get to surplus this year the Government, effectively, used the ACC system as a source of taxation. It took more in ACC levies from registration fees and taxes on petrol and road-user charges than it needed to fund ACC in order to construct a surplus. We also know, contrary to what the Minister of Finance said in his answers at question time today, that the tax cuts that the National Government implemented after the election in 2008, when it gave 40 percent of the income tax to the top 10 percent of income earners, most clearly increased income equality in New Zealand. The Minister of Finance today in question time had the gall to pretend that it did not. He said it reduced income inequality. That is a patent error and one that the Minister of Finance ought not to have made.

I want to turn to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. I agree it is a significant deal and I want to record its history. It started under the Labour Government with what was called the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, which involved New Zealand, Singapore, Chile—and I forget what the fourth country was. The Minister of Trade at the time was the Hon Phil Goff. The Hon Phil Goff had numerous meetings with Susan Schwab, who was the trade representative from the United States, and encouraged the Americans to join into the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement process, which turned into the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

There have been some intemperate comments coming from the National Party members in the last week. They have tried to criticise Annette King and the Labour Party members for asking questions that the Opposition parties ought to be asking, such as: “What is the underlying effect on things like Pharmac?”. We already know and accept that the Pharmac model is not going to be fundamentally broken by the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement despite ambitions earlier in the process from some of the American interest groups to actually break up the Pharmac model. It is a good thing that Pharmac has been protected in its fundamental model, but it is important that New Zealanders transparently have answers from the Government as to what will be the effect of changes directly or indirectly in respect of patent laws to the costs of Pharmac. It may well be that those questions satisfy the Labour Party members. It may be that they do not. But it is absolutely our duty to ask those questions, and I thank Annette King for bringing those questions to the House.

I want to say that some of the opposition that there is in civil society to the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been caused by the way Minister Groser and the National Party members have addressed these issues. Indeed, just yesterday the New Zealand High Court found Minister Groser’s actions in refusing to provide public information to be a breach of the Official Information Act, quashed his decisions in a way that is quite unusual, and said that he had to make more disclosures to civil society. It is that somewhat arrogant approach that has caused some of the backlash against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which does no credit to the National Party.

Other members in the National Party have said that somehow the Labour Party members questioning aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership means that we are opposed to free trade. That is not so. We are a party that is proudly in favour of free trade. We know that as a small nation at the bottom of the Pacific we benefit from lower tariffs in respect of the countries to whom we sell goods—and of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership covers a very significant proportion of world economic output and trade.

In the short time I have got left I want to make one further reference. That is that I think the Government has sold us out on the ability of future Governments to control who buys New Zealand residential land.

💬 David Bennett: Who signed the Chinese agreement?

The National Government does not want to do that. Actually, the Chinese free-trade agreement allows us to control the sale of residential land to overseas people.

💬 David Bennett: Oh, it does not.

It does, Mr Bennett. You are ignorant. You should read the agreement. It has been well publicised. Just because the National Government does not think that that was appropriate does not mean it should not have argued for that freedom for New Zealand, as experienced in Australia, Viet Nam, and various other countries.

It is a great pleasure to participate in this general debate. I begin by saying how disappointed I am at the contribution of the member who just sat down. I expected Mr Parker’s contribution to be a little bit more focused on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, considering the fact that he is a proponent of free-trade agreements.

As previous speakers have said, this Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is a historic event for New Zealand. It is bringing together one-third of the world, 40 percent of the economy, and 800 million people. The market is humungous for a tiny country at the bottom of the South Pacific, and that is following a major deal with my former motherland, Korea. The free-trade agreement with Korea was signed earlier this year, in March, and I have to congratulate the Minister of Trade, Tim Groser. I had the pleasure of being there at the signing. What that free-trade agreement with my motherland actually brings is a total of $229 million a year in savings in duties alone.

What happened in Korea was that New Zealand manufacturers who were exporting New Zealand products, whether they were wine, cheese, milk, or agricultural products, were paying in excess of 187 percent in duty for some. It ranged from 36 percent, I think it was, for some of the products; for cheese it was 89 percent, and for butter and milk powder. It was a major disappointment when a baby food manufacturer in Korea wanted to import New Zealand baby milk powders but it found that its deal in Australia was much, much better because it could access those products much cheaper.

So not signing a deal with Korea would have actually meant that New Zealand manufacturers and New Zealand producers could not compete with their counterparts. Those are the countries that already had a free-trade agreement with Korea, and so this Trans-Pacific Partnership deal is also another thing. We had to be part of the deal, because if we did not sign the deal we would have been left behind. Our producers could not access those markets and our producers could not access that money. These wealthy countries are willing to spend a fortune on the proteins that we actually produce, and we do such a great job.

After signing the free-trade agreement—we have actually ratified our free-trade agreement but Korea has yet so do so, and the agreement is that it will do so by the end of this year. I have an opportunity to visit my motherland next week and I shall be impressing upon the Korean counterparts that they actually have to get on with it, but it is immediately possible. Sixty-five million dollars will come off in the first year and if they, in fact, ratify it by the end of the year, 1 January 2016 becomes year 2. That is the benefit that only New Zealand producers will take great benefit from because there are humungous savings immediately.

The free-trade agreements and the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that this Government has actually signed with our partners are something to be celebrated by not just this Government, not just this Parliament, but all of New Zealand. It means that it is the growth of this country’s economy; the growth of New Zealand as a whole nation. It means we have a better standard of living, and we have better incomes. I am very proud to stand on this side of the House and say we are doing our very best, and shame on Opposition members for opposing—well, what seems like opposition—free-trade agreements. I believe that they will probably will come to the party and say yes, and celebrate the Trans-Pacific Partnership as well. Thank you.

The National Government has indeed achieved its priority of a surplus, and I suppose it should be congratulated, because it is important to live within our means. But I think the Government is selling New Zealand a little bit short, and, frankly, the target of a surplus is a bit of a distraction from the issues that are really important to New Zealanders. And that is where National is falling behind. It is failing to take action on the issues that are most important to New Zealanders—the two biggest challenges, which are climate change and inequality. We have to respond to these eventually, and it would be better if we responded sooner rather than later. The Green Party has made these two big issues our priorities for this year.

Implementing the solutions to climate change and inequality is not only a challenge; it is actually an opportunity to create a better New Zealand. Imagine a New Zealand where every child has a warm, dry, secure place to call home; where every child can walk or cycle safely to school; and where not only are they challenged and educated but they are nourished, because they have a nutritious and tasty lunch—every child, not just those whose parents have the means to provide it. It is entirely possible, and affordable, and good for our long-term economic health to invest directly in our kids, and that is a priority for the Green Party, not just achieving a couple of hundred million dollars in surplus. We can do that—we can balance the books—but also ensure that our kids have everything they need to be successful in life. Likewise, we have the ability to invest in the long-term future of our kids by responding to climate change and reducing our carbon pollution. This is not rocket science, and it is not optional; it is something we have to do if we want to live good lives in the future, if we want New Zealand to be there for our kids to enjoy in the future.

There are practical policies that will not only reduce our carbon pollution and fossil fuel use, but actually have wider benefits. I will take just one example: investing in electrified rail across the North Island. That is an infrastructure project that is entirely affordable within the means of the transport budget. Not only would it reduce carbon pollution from moving freight around the country, it would actually reduce costs for a great number of exporters. There is a growing amount of freight that is moved by rail in this country. The more efficient we make the service and the more reliable we make the service the more people can use it. And it takes trucks off the road, which saves us money, makes the roads easier to maintain, and makes them safer for people who are trying to drive around. It makes the air cleaner. It makes the trains quieter. It creates jobs in our regions. This is something the National Party could be investing in but is failing to because of its blind, ideological opposition to rail.

Other examples where we could get these win-win benefits include investing in public transport in our towns and cities, like rail in Auckland. We got the electrification, finally, thanks to the campaigning of the Green Party, despite the wishes of the National Party. They actually have seen the enormous benefits that has brought to Auckland. The next step is the City Rail Link, and the sooner we do it the less it will cost us and the sooner we achieve the benefits, not only for those people who take the train but for the people who live in Auckland who are getting around on the roads that will be less congested because there are fewer cars on the roads at peak time. So it makes sense. It makes economic sense and it is good for our people, it is good for our climate, and it is good for our economy.

We could have cheaper and cleaner power by facilitating the uptake of solar panels. Unfortunately, this Government is not going to support my colleague’s member’s bill, which is giving a fair go for solar. It is not about subsidies but it is about ensuring that there are the opportunities, more opportunities, for households, businesses, and schools to get solar panels, which reduces the amount of money they have to pay for electricity and reduces our greenhouse gas pollution. This is the vision of a smart economy that works for everyone in the long term that the Green Party is championing.

The National Government, although it has managed to finally, after 7 years, achieve its target of surplus, is selling us short because it does not believe that we can afford to ensure that kids have enough to eat at school or that we can reduce inequality. It does not believe that we can afford to respond to climate change. The truth is not only can we not afford not to do it, we cannot afford not to respond to climate change and inequality.

This year there have been two main political issues that have dominated the course of the political environment. The first has been the movement towards getting a surplus, and the second has been the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. In both cases the Government has been vindicated this week for the work that we have done in this area, and the Opposition has been shown to be false, misleading, and taking the public down the wrong track in regard to both of these issues.

Let us start with some quotes in regard to the Opposition parties looking at, first of all, the surplus that has been achieved today—a great surplus of $414 million. I think we should thank the Hon Bill English and his team for achieving such a good surplus. But let us have a look at what Andrew Little said on the Budget statement: “A lot of effort … has gone into glossing over the broken promise, but I see it for what it is—one of the biggest political deceptions in a lifetime.” “One of the biggest political deceptions in a lifetime”, is what the Labour leader said. And he said: “When the Government wilfully and deliberately makes a promise they know they cannot keep in a general election campaign, that is a huge deception.” Well, today we have delivered on that promise. We have delivered that surplus. There was no deception. There was delivery to the New Zealand public of what we promised.

Let us have a look at what Mr Winston Peters said about the surplus “I will make this prediction right now …”—this is the person who can make predictions about anything—“I will make this prediction right now: Bill English will never, ever deliver a surplus.” Well, Bill English has delivered a surplus. Where is the infamous leader of the New Zealand First Party? He said more: “This is the political test he set himself and he has failed.” He has succeeded in that test and he has delivered a surplus for New Zealand.

Let us look at free trade. When we come to free trade we all know the opposition of the Labour Party. Labour members were out protesting at all these meetings around free trade. They sent their apologies if they could not make it. Even Mr Winston Peters said this to the protesters in Kerikeri: “Trust me. I know what we are going to do here. We’ll stop them passing this law.” That is what the New Zealand First Party is saying about free trade and about the regions.

But let us have a look. There is a voice of reason on the left when it comes to free trade, and that comes from the former Prime Minister Helen Clark, who said: “What always haunts one as New Zealand Prime Minister is, will there be a series of trade blocs develop that you are not part of? Because it is unthinkable for New Zealand as an export-oriented small trading nation to miss out on that. So of course it is in New Zealand’s best interests to be in the TPPA and we should go for the best deal we can get.” That was the immortal Helen Clark from the Labour Party, who said that.

This is the illustration of the conflicts of interest you have seen through the political debate in the last year. On that side of the House, members have been against free trade. They have been against getting New Zealand into surplus. On this side, we have been for free trade and we have got New Zealand into surplus. I say to the public of New Zealand: that side of the House has never been right. Those members have never been right, and I say they should say sorry for what they have been saying over the last year to the New Zealand public. They should say sorry for the scaremongering that they put out to the New Zealand public over the last year about finance and about trade.

They should start backing New Zealand. They should actually go out there and support New Zealand getting free-trade agreements and support New Zealand getting into a good economic position, and they need to start being positive. They need to start being positive for New Zealand and looking for a direction that is forward-thinking. They need to start being honest with New Zealand, and not try to mislead the public of this country. They need to stop being controlled by their union mates, who do not want trade agreements. That is what they need to do on that side of the House. They need to start advocating for the regional economy. They need to stop going on TV saying they represent farmers, and then coming into this House and voting against farmers, producers, and manufacturers, and stopping free-trade agreements. They need to be honest with New Zealanders for once. They need to actually stand up for what would deliver for this country, and they need to stop being the scaremongering, negative, bad people that they are who are taking this country down.

Ā, tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. E ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātau katoa. Can I preface my contribution today by saying iwi were successful traders, domestically and internationally, pre and post the arrival of the European settlers. So we are no strangers to good fair trading opportunities.

Labour has five key principles that form our bottom line to protect New Zealand’s interests when the Trans-Pacific Partnership finally makes its way to Parliament. The five are that Pharmac must be protected, that corporates cannot sue the Government for regulating in the public interest, that New Zealand maintains the right to restrict sales of farmland and housing to non-resident foreign buyers, that the Treaty of Waitangi must be upheld, and that meaningful gains are made for our farmers in tariff reductions and market access.

It is the fourth principle that I wish to speak on in the short time I have available. May I make this point as clearly and as unambiguously as possible. The authority to address or speak on whether or not the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi under the Trans-Pacific Partnership have been protected, compromised, or challenged rests solely with whānau, hapū, and iwi, and the Treaty partner. The political mandate of the Treaty partner does not sit with the Crown. It does not sit with the Crown agencies—the Ministry of Māori Development, Te Puni Kōkiri, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, or the superministry of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. It does not sit with the Federation of Māori Authorities, and it certainly does not sit with the Māori Party.

With humility, I hold the political mandate for the whānau, hapū, and iwi of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, as do my colleagues Kelvin Davis, Peeni Henare, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, Adrian Rurawhe, and Rino Tirikatene, and their respective whānau, hapū, and iwi of their electorates. We take that political mandate and responsibility seriously.

On 2 July this year I put a question to the Minister of Trade seeking who or which iwi or Māori organisations he had consulted over the Trans-Pacific Partnership. On behalf of the Minister of Trade the Hon Chris Finlayson replied saying that one of those five groups was Ngāti Kahungunu in 2010. For full disclosure, I was the chief executive of that organisation at the time when the consultation, apparently, took place. In fact, the Hon Chris Finlayson enjoyed repeating, through replies to my supplementary questions, that Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporation was wrong and that they were consulted on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

For the House’s benefit, according to his own officials’ minutes of that meeting, the meeting was actually over intellectual property rights, not the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, as he stated. Ngāti Kahungunu, along with Ngāti Kuri, Ngāti Wai, Te Rarawa, Ngati Porou, and Ngāti Kōata are the original six applicants for Wai 262, a Treaty claim against the protection of indigenous knowledge, fauna, and flora. The protection of intellectual property rights had been a continuous battle for Ngāti Kahungunu, hence the meeting with the Minister’s officials back in 2010.

In the time remaining, let me say that in my travels across Ikaroa-Rāwhiti and the country, whānau and hapū and iwi have major concerns with the agreement. They oppose the lack of transparency. They oppose the lack of public scrutiny. They oppose, yet again, that the protection of the Treaty may be used as a trade-off for other gains without first talking to them. As members of this House, we all need to meet our collective responsibility under the Treaty—that is to talk to the right people, in the right manner, and to do the right thing. Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker.

What a week this has been for rural, provincial New Zealand. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is bringing some $2.7 billion worth of tariff relief to New Zealand over the next 15 years, much of which—over 70 percent, in fact—will benefit the agricultural sector, thus filtering into our small towns and provincial cities. We have a surplus, which is fantastic for the morale of the country. As a farmer, I say that surpluses are always nice to achieve.

We also see tourism continuing to grow in regional New Zealand, with over 3 million people arriving here this year for longer and spending more money. We have an arrest in the woeful 1080 scare, which is a great credit to our police and must also give confidence to our food safety authorities. Hopefully, once the courts have given this very strong message, it will give a strong message to anyone else considering such a heinous crime. Finally, we have some positivity in the meat industry. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is a triumph for all who have worked so hard, under Tim Groser’s leadership. The results will no doubt contribute significantly to calculations in future Bill English Budgets, as will the great result our tourism industry is achieving.

The benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement cannot be understated. In all other free-trade agreements that we have signed to date, initial calculations have been well and truly exceeded. In fact, in the Chinese free-trade agreement trade quadrupled in the following 9 years. Consequently, you would assume that the tariff benefit quadrupled in that same period. So the predictions made early in that agreement have been well and truly exceeded. Reduced tariffs are just the beginning. There are many other barriers that inhibit our export efforts, and these will now be able to be addressed as the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement creates a special relationship, enabling those discussions to take place. Every sector of our rural economy will benefit from this agreement.

There is significant potential for processed timber, as tariffs are torn down, to a tune initially of $9 million. This is borne out by comments made by Bill McCallum, chair of The Wood Council of New Zealand, when he said: “These lost opportunities are not included in the $9 million saving, because current tariffs make exports unprofitable.” What he effectively meant by that was that the market has not been supplied because there is no incentive at all for New Zealand manufacturers to involve themselves in that market. For the Rangitīkei electorate, with very large forestry holdings, the opportunity is enormous and exciting. We have large processing plants in Tangiwai, two of them—Taihape and Santoft. These are all areas in need of jobs and opportunities.

Another quote that I think reflects the opinions of New Zealanders came from the chair of the Federation of Māori Authorities Inc., Traci Houpapa, who welcomed the signed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement as a new approach to strategic and political partnerships. “New Zealand is a trading nation, we must optimise our exports and trade relationships for the wealth and prosperity of all New Zealanders.”

How interesting that those sitting opposite, who claim to be such profound supporters and such champions, in fact, of rural and provincial New Zealand, cannot, in Labour’s case, decide where they sit on this extraordinary opportunity. In the case of New Zealand First and the Greens, they totally oppose it. So much for their interest in provincial New Zealand.

Imagine how the people of Northland must feel, as they note their fresh, new MP opposing an initiative that will bring many millions of dollars into that province. Napier is the home of large timber and agricultural interests, and they are seeing their member sitting firmly on a picket fence. Of course, those Greens, who have no home—as their supporters listen to the member from Marlborough banging on about the dangers of Roundup, when his local fishing and wine industries stand to gain massively from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The member from New Zealand First accused Minister Groser of writing a blank cheque. He effectively has given rural New Zealand a blank cheque. Rural New Zealand now just has to fill in the numbers. I think this is a spectacular result for New Zealand—very exciting.

Finally, I want to make brief mention of a presentation that will take place in Parliament tonight. A small rural trust from Taumarunui is coming to present their efforts around whānau ora and the welfare of the Taumarunui community. I think that will be well worth attending. Thank you.

I am the lucky last. It is a great honour to stand up here as the last speaker in today’s general debate. I have to say that we have heard a lot of comments today about the puffery of the surplus. The Government is giving itself a big pat on the back. But the reality is that if this were a mortgage that we were paying on a house, we would have made only one mortgage payment for the whole year—once in 12 months we would have managed to create enough money to pay our mortgage. And you think that that is good enough for this Government, this country, to be congratulating itself on? Is there something wrong, Mr Bishop? You have got a face like a twisted sandshoe. Did you not quite get those numbers? A $414 million surplus, and yet it costs us nearly $500 million a month just in interest payments.

The policies of this Government are going down like a cup of cold sick with New Zealanders, and they have had it to the back teeth with what is going on around this country. Just yesterday, in question time, it was quite interesting to see the body language of Steven Joyce when he was being asked questions about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He was almost like a small child hovering with his head down because he was so guilty, caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. He wanted to pull his trousers over his head and vanish down his trouser leg because he did not want to get the questions asked to him by the honourable member Fletcher Tabuteau. His response, though, was that everything is good in the provinces and in regional New Zealand, and I think he said to one of our members that if you just had a chance to go out there and speak to them, you would find that they are very happy with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Well, “delusional” sort of rings a bell in my head. He is either in denial or suffering from serious delusion.

We did go out and ask the provinces of New Zealand, and they spoke strongly against what was going on with the Trans-Pacific Partnership and many of the other policies that this Government is ramming down our throats with regard to the wholesale sell-off of our nation’s State enterprises, which we have been building up over generations. Just to go through that, New Zealanders came out and they voted this Government out of an electorate that it had held for over 70 years. That is the provinces and the people speaking about how disgusted they are with the direction of this Government.

The big sell-off started back in 1992 when the Government sold off the BNZ bank—a bank that we are proud of, that we grew as a country, and that 60 percent of New Zealanders were using, putting their money in, feeling safe, and being looked after. It sold off energy back in 1988—floated it out there on the stock exchange market for anybody to have a little bit of a fill in there. It sold off the Auckland Airport, and it has handed over corrections—things that it should be looking after itself. The Government has been selling off to Serco. Now it is talking about social welfare and selling off our State houses for the most vulnerable people in our society, who are living in substandard conditions. If this Government, which can hardly get itself a surplus, is congratulating itself for paying one mortgage payment in a year, looking after the best interests of this country, then the question has really got to be had.

I have to say that Keith Holyoake would be rolling over in his grave if he knew what this Government was actually doing now—the National Party that stood so strong for nationalistic pride and for looking after the best interests of all New Zealanders. There is a quote by Keith Holyoake that he wanted to make a country that cherishes the opportunity and ability of homeownership, and a place—a New Zealand and a nation—where everybody can have the ability and the affordability to own their own home. Well, we are far from that. We cannot even get our people who are living in State houses to be looked after, because we are selling the State houses off for foreign-national corporates to get their greedy mitts into.

I have to say, though, as far as the National Party goes, that what it is delivering on is corporate support. I mean, it is hardly a party. Actually, it could be considered to be a foreign controlled corporation. The “National Foreign Controlled Corporation” may be a more apt name for this so-called party that sits opposite us. That rings true, particularly when a few months ago we had the displeasure of seeing the Cheshire grin on the Prime Minister’s face when he was high-fiving his Cabinet Ministers because—wait for it—we got dollar parity with Australia. What an absolute sublime outcome that is if, for one thing, you are a foreign-currency trader. But for provincial New Zealanders—the ones who are selling our primary exports around the world—that is the worst thing that we would want to see happen, and here we have our Cabinet from this Government across the side here high-fiving each other and saying that this a good thing. Of course, we know what happened quickly afterwards. The price of our dollar got shafted back down to where it should be and, of course, a lot of money was made by those people trading in currency, which, I can tell you right now, the rank and file New Zealanders were not the receivers of.

New Zealand First is a party that looks after the best interests of this country and these people, and it is about time this Government, the “National Corporate Controlled Organisation”, put New Zealanders first. Thank you.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.