Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill

I move, That the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill be now read a third time. New Zealand has shown leadership on the liberalisation of trade for the last 30 years. We do so because our livelihood as an exporter of goods and services depends on this. Trade is essential to the New Zealand way of life, our standard of living, and our potential to become a more prosperous country. Other countries do not owe New Zealand a living. Our success in the international market place, whether it is selling butter, financial and digital services, education services, or high-end manufactured goods, is not always recognised. However, we have achieved this only because New Zealand Governments have made the objective of liberalising international trade, providing access for innovative New Zealand companies to the international markets and overseas customers, at the very heart of our foreign and trade policies. Now, more than ever before, New Zealand needs to continue to work towards bringing down barriers to international trade. New Zealand needs to trade. We will not become prosperous by selling to ourselves. The rest of the world needs to hold up New Zealand as an example of the benefits of an open and liberal approach.

Improving access to international markets is part of the Government’s wider plan to create a stronger economy with more jobs and higher incomes for New Zealanders. We can be proud of the achievements of successive Governments to date to achieve this through trade. New Zealand’s future lies in being an open, confident country on the world stage. We need others to be open and confident too. The OECD suggested that a 10 percentage point increase in trade openness lifts GDP per capita by 4 percent, and this is important to underline. It must be a doctrine that is widely adopted for global growth and economic welfare.

New Zealand knows this lesson well. Trade is driving our economy. It is no coincidence that New Zealand has the fourth-strongest economic growth in the OECD. For these reasons, New Zealand has been at the forefront of trade liberalisation, and successive New Zealand Governments have pursued free-trade agreements (FTAs) where they can. As I travel the world, people continue to remind me that New Zealand’s first FTA, our groundbreaking Closer Economic Relations with Australia to establish the single economic market, remains an aspiration to many.

New Zealand was China’s first FTA with a developed country. This new opportunity for our businesses and innovators has been phenomenal, lifting sectors in regions across the country. Before the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement, New Zealand exports to China were estimated to grow to reach NZ$5.6 billion by 2015. New Zealand exports to China were $3 billion larger than estimated—$8.6 billion. We now trade with China in 5 hours what we did in 1 year in 1972. This is a result of a high-quality free-trade agreement—no other reason.

There is our bilateral FTA with Singapore, which expanded into the P4 agreement, the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, to include Chile and Brunei, and formed the basis for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. We have a number of FTAs with ASEAN members that sit alongside our FTA with ASEAN as a whole. In turn, this is being developed into the ASEAN Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which would include over half the world’s population. This job is not complete. New Zealand’s active FTA agenda continues to lock in opportunities for our exporters, wherever they may find them.

We have also seen a deepening of issues that we need to address to ensure that our exporters get decent treatment in markets. As tariffs come down, non-tariff barriers (NTBs) often emerge as presenting unfair obstacles to New Zealand exporters competing on a level playing field. The Government tackles these NTBs in a number of areas, through FTAs, in the World Trade Organization, and on a case by case basis. The passage of this bill today will be a signal of the continued commitment that New Zealand has to the continued liberalisation of international trade. At times when there is uncertainty in the rest of the world, New Zealand’s consistent and trusted voice of negotiating trade outcomes that are good for our economy and good for the world’s economy needs to be heard. Our role is as a champion of trade liberalisation.

In this role today this Parliament must too show leadership. Our vision for a mechanism to enhance trade between four countries grew into the largest trade agreement to date, which places us in the middle of a region encompassing nearly 40 percent of the global GDP. We can be proud of that. We must continue to push for new trading opportunities and to continue to push for trade liberalisation wherever we can. Other countries want to trade with us. They regard New Zealand internationally as easy to deal with. We are upfront with our objectives, we produce high-quality products and services, and we are governed by our rule of law and respect of our obligations. In turn, New Zealand companies are respected by their customers. But that reputation means little when we are trying to access markets where we are not permitted to sell our goods and services. It is only through continued improved market access and boldly confronting barriers to trade that our exporters can continue to thrive. We must continue to be outward-looking and to show leadership.

I want to touch briefly on global events overnight. I want to congratulate President-Elect Trump. It is important that we give the new President a chance to put his team in place and consider his trade agenda. I think this will, obviously, take some time. But we will be able to work with America on trade. The passage of this bill will put New Zealand, as a TPP depository and the first to have passed implementing legislation, in a stronger position. Now more than ever we need to be championing the cause of openness and inclusiveness. This remains the only way to secure prosperity for our economy and for generations to come.

That motion was moved by the new patron saint of lost causes, the Hon Todd McClay. He made an earnest plea to this House to support an agreement that will not be ratified, that will not enter into force. This is a bill that his own Prime Minister, his own leader, has pretty much said is dead in the water. Yet poor old Mr McClay was sent here to the House today to try to defend the indefensible. I think there are a number of us around the House who actually felt a little sorry for him.

💬 Hon Members: No.

I am hearing protests. Maybe I have gone too far. But Mr McClay is over there now, defending a bill that his own Prime Minister says has no future. The real question then becomes: what is the Government’s plan? This bill, it has repetitively said, is critical to New Zealand’s economic future. I look forward to the research coming out of the Parliamentary Library and elsewhere around the country, and to the journalists going back and looking to see how many times members of that Government have said that the passage of this bill is critical to New Zealand’s economic future.

When this bill does not succeed—when this Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) is not enacted—the Government is left without a plan. It was asked today what its plan is. There was no answer. We heard nothing. We heard absolutely nothing from Mr McClay there. “Does it leave a hole?”, the Prime Minister was asked in the House today—does this bill not going through, does the TPP agreement not going through, leave a hole—and the Prime Minister, or Steven Joyce as his surrogate, could not answer that question. He could not do anything but bluff and bluster. That is what we have come to expect from them across there. They are arrogant and out of touch.

The Government would not listen to the people. The people said: “We do not want the TPPA. We do not think the TPPA is a good agreement for New Zealand.” It is more than just a trade deal. There is too much in this. The benefits are not being shared from trade deals, and certainly not in this one. The people have been left out in the cold by this out-of-touch, arrogant Government. But it has no other plan. It has no other plan, and it has not yet even focus-grouped what this means for it. The Government members did not know how to answer the questions in the House today. They do not know how to speak on it in the House. I will listen to the rest of the speeches, because I think they will be entertaining, at the very least, as the members go off in different directions before they have got their marching orders as to how they are going to defend the indefensible.

Labour did listen. We listened to what the people were saying about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). We laid out a principled position that said: “We cannot support the TPP because it does some terrible things to our housing market.” It allows non-resident foreign speculators into our housing market, which is causing a huge distortion, and future Governments cannot block this from happening under this agreement if it goes through. Other countries—Vietnam, Australia, Singapore, the Philippines—sought an exemption so that they could stop non-resident foreign speculators in their housing market, because they knew it was causing a distortion. Tim Groser did not even ask for it in the negotiations. Tim Groser did not even ask for it, and I have heard no member opposite defend him on that score, I have to say.

Then they slipped in a little tax thing. They said: “Well, let’s just charge people who want to speculate in our housing market extra tax.” Then, subsequently, Ernst & Young pointed out that they cannot do that—that would negate the double tax agreements that we already have. Those members have been trying to defend the indefensible in this House for some time, and they will go on, I have no doubt, trying to defend it. But I do look forward to the barrage of questions that ask: “If this was so critical to the Government’s economic plan, what is plan B?”. Government members do not have one. They have said they want to grow exports as a percentage of GDP up to 40 percent. That has been their war cry as a Government—up to 40 percent. We know that exports, as a percentage of GDP, have dropped under this Government. They are now down below 30 percent and dropping. They are failing by their own measures to grow our economy, to grow exports, and here again they are failing.

Whilst they were busy defending this deal, they were not out negotiating other deals. They put all their resources into this deal rather than going out and doing deals that were really in New Zealand’s interest. We have seen the dairy aspect of this deal equate to about nine extra jobs by 2030—that is what it amounts to—or three large dairy farms. Three large dairy farms—not the profit from three large dairy farms; the output from three large dairy farms—is all the access they got on dairy. Their modelling said a whole lot more than that. Their modelling was terrible. One of the factors in the modelling was out by 300 percent, for goodness’ sake.

💬 Hon Todd McClay: Sounds like one of your polls.

That is Mr McClay interjecting again—the patron saint of lost causes, across the House there. You have got to give him a little bit of credit for trying, but this is not his day, I am afraid. The people are speaking and the people have spoken, and they have said that this Government here—the National Government—is increasingly arrogant and out of touch. It is not listening to where the public are, and the public want nothing more to do with it. The public do like trade, the public do like coffee, the public do like bananas, and the public do like other things like iPhones and so on, but we have deals in place that get us those things already. When we sign new deals, they have to bring new benefits to the whole citizenry, not just to the mega-rich, not just to the corporate interests that negotiate behind closed doors for a 6,000-page agreement, Mr McClay.

Mr McClay, I think, knows that this deal was not in the interests of New Zealanders. That is why he is quiet, and that is why it is not his day—because the deal is falling over as people around the world say this is not just a trade deal. There are too many fishhooks in this deal. It is not good for our country. Of course, we know it interfered with the Pharmac model. There were going to be increased costs imposed on New Zealand if it succeeded. We know that, in fact, small businesses were not really in support of the deal, ironically. We also know that the time frames were rushed as the Government tried to ram it through the House.

This legislation is going through the House now because the Government members curtailed the examination of the treaty in the first part of the year up to May. They curtailed the examination process to cut off the public feedback, because they did not like the public feedback they were getting. They did not like the public feedback, so they shortened the feedback process for the treaty examination, and it was all to get this deal through by Christmas because they wanted it out of the way. They did not want to be facing this deal in an election year. They know that it signals to the public that they are out of touch, but they were arrogant enough to think they could get it through this House without the public noticing. Well, they will notice. They are waking up and saying today that they can see that this bill will not be enacted, that the TPPA will not happen, and that the people of the world will not face the fishhooks of this deal because too many of them oppose it around the world.

The Labour Party has always been the party of free trade. It was the Labour Party that pushed for increased access to Britain for our exports. It was the first Labour Government that built State houses, made public education affordable, made public secondary education free, brought in free public healthcare, and gave New Zealand State housing. That first Labour Government pushed for market access, and Labour on this side of the House has supported every single free-trade agreement that has gone through because we believe in trade. But we do not believe in this kind of deal, which is more than a trade deal. This is a deal with fishhooks that harm New Zealand and so it is rejected by the public, and yet the Government still arrogantly pushes ahead—it still arrogantly pushes ahead.

I bet several Government members will try to defend it today—I bet they will still try to defend what they are doing today. Even though they have seen Mr McClay attempt to defend the indefensible, they will still try. We will not support the ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We have said it before. It is not a good deal as it stands, it does not benefit our exporters as it should, and it introduces big distortions into our housing market and locks them in. It locks in distortions in our housing market.

If we want our exporters to get ahead, we have got to make sure the incentives are right for money to flow to the productive sector so that we grow our complex manufacturing, which has been dropping under this Government, so that we grow our exports as a proportion of GDP, which have been dropping under this Government, and so that we put our energies into trade deals that actually bring growth for New Zealand and mean that we can continue to afford the social services that we all rely on and come to expect as New Zealand citizens—in the healthcare sector, the education sector, the roads, and so on.

We do believe that we need good-quality trade deals to afford those social services. In fact, that is what New Zealand is all about—making sure everybody has equal and affordable access to those basic services. They will not be afforded by this deal, which was not a good trade deal for New Zealand, and that Government still will try to defend it. That Government is so arrogant and out of touch that it will keep trying to defend it until it fails completely.

It is this Government’s role to make sure that, as a small trading nation, we continue to investigate and deliver high-quality free-trade agreements. Along with a lot of other very good economic initiatives, that is what is driving the growth and the opportunities that exist in New Zealand, a small trading nation.

I find it actually quite disturbing to stand in this House and see the smiles and the gloats coming from across the other side of the House because they feel like they have had a cheap political win. I do find that disturbing, and I will tell you why. I sat there and I chaired the committee that heard the submissions, and the submissions that we heard from the small businesses, from the medium business owners, and from our big industries and our primary industries were that this was a good agreement for them—that they supported it.

I am telling you right now, Mr Clark, you do not have any employees. You are not exporting anything overseas. You are not creating any wealth in this country. The people who are, the people who every day worry about their cash flow, the people who every day worry about making payroll at the end of the month, the people who are every day working hard to be innovative and growing their businesses and growing the opportunities for New Zealand, are the people whom we should be thinking about, the people whom we should be governing for, and the people whom we should be opening opportunities for. That is what this Government will remain focused on and that is what this Government will continue to do.

We will continue to be outward-looking and we will actually advance this free-trade agreement through the House and we will wait and see what happens in America. They have a new President, and the Republicans have got the Senate, and they have got the Congress. They are a party that historically has recognised the value of free trade, so I feel that we are being a bit presumptive in assuming that, actually, this Trans-Pacific Partnership will not advance. Let us wait and see. I remain an eternal optimist and hope that we can continue to advance this agreement. It is an important one. If it does not work out, I can assure you of this: the Government is working under a new trade Minister, and Todd McClay is working constantly to identify and develop other trading opportunities for New Zealand as a small trading nation. Thank you.

I can see the National Government’s problem today, which is that—

💬 Hon Member: Really?

Yes, for today the problem is this: there is no plan B. That is the problem. So plan A was sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA); plan B, refer to plan A. That was as good as it got for the National Party when it came to something approximating an economic plan or an economic strategy. So what I have been hoping that I would hear from National Party members today when they got up and spoke on this bill was to say: “Plan A has failed.”—and their leader, John Key, went on the radio this morning and said “It’s over. It’s dead.” So I was hoping what we would hear today is the National Party members get up and say: “Well, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not going to happen, so here’s what we are going to do to support those small businesses and those exporters that Mr Mitchell just talked about.”

But, instead, the National Party continues to live in a state of denial. So, once and for all, for the National Party’s benefit, it is over, it is finished, move on, find something new. That is the truth. It is not a matter of political cynicism, Mr Mitchell, it is the reality. What New Zealanders need is a Government that actually gets alongside them and does not put its faith in one single thing—does not put its eggs or its cows, or whatever it is, into one basket—because that is what, unfortunately, the National Government has done when it comes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

In earlier stages of this bill we raised time and again with the Government members the futility of what they were doing—the fact that we even have a bill that has got a commencement date for something that will now never happen. So this legislation will pass and then it will sit there in suspended animation for ever. That is some kind of legacy of the National Party’s trade policy of the last couple of years.

I said in earlier readings that I do want to give Mr McClay this piece of credit: once he became the trade Minister he worked out that he actually needed to go and engage with New Zealanders about trade. If that is one thing that I would have liked to hear a bit more about from the National Party members today it is that they will now take the opportunity of the collapse of the TPPA to get back to the basics of what New Zealanders are looking for when it comes to trade policy. I think what New Zealanders are looking for when it comes to trade policy is a Government that is out there looking for opportunities for our businesses and our exporters to sell their goods and services to the world. That is what we have done historically as New Zealanders from the very beginning—from the very first peoples who came here who were trading people, all the way through to the Governments of the last century or so, particularly the fifth Labour Government that made such great strides with things like the China free-trade deal. That is what we have been—a trading nation.

But we do it on the basis of principles. We do it on the basis of fairness. We do it on the basis that this Parliament has a sovereign right to decide how we make regulations in this country, how we decide who it is who gets the privilege of being able to buy a house in this country. It is this Parliament’s job to do that. Let us set those principles. Let us make sure we sign trade agreements that are good for the environment, that have good labour standards, and that protect the Treaty of Waitangi. Let us go right back to the beginning and go back to New Zealanders and engage in getting a social contract and a social mandate around trade.

That is what we now need to do because trade matters. Trade agreements matter—but not where we get sucked into an agreement like the TPPA, which ended up being one that actually perpetuates all of the things that are wrong with the economic model in the world today. We actually need an economic model that values building wealth from the ground up, that actually says that all those small businesses—and bear in mind that only about one-third of small businesses in the Mind Your Own Business survey actually supported the TPPA, because they could see the risks. So let us get alongside those small businesses and build an economic model that is about decent work and decent jobs. It is about jobs that are going to be sustainable into the future, that are not reliant upon these kinds of agreements that go so much further than what an ordinary trade agreement is.

This was not just a trade agreement, and New Zealanders saw through the Government’s rhetoric in that regard. What New Zealanders saw was an agreement where they felt like they did not matter, that the interests of corporations in other countries were somehow more important than the interests of the citizens inside New Zealand. That is what New Zealanders felt when they saw the TPPA. That is why they rejected it in such big numbers, but the Government did not want to listen.

Obviously, we have seen across the world in terms of the results of the US election what happens when the feelings of anxiety and dispossession in the economy get exploited. I have no interest in that; what I want us to do as a House is recognise the people who have not benefited from globalisation, recognise the people who feel that there is not a future for them in these kinds of agreements, and work with those people to say: “There’s a better way. We can build up trading relationships. We can build up agreements that do not exploit people, that don’t take away rights from Parliament, but actually empower countries to trade with one another.”

I read during the US election a passage from somebody who was talking about what was wrong with the approach that Mr Trump was taking to these issues. That person said that there was an exploitation, or an imposition, of the belief that if I put out my neighbour’s candle, somehow mine will burn brighter. That is the exploitation here. The feeling of anxiety and dispossession is not solved by saying to somebody else “I don’t want you to succeed.”; it is solved by us working together to say: “There is a different economic model. There is a different way of doing this.”

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Oh yeah, he’ll defend us.

And there is Judith Collins—there is Judith Collins, a person who consistently in this House comes in here to tell us all the things that we on this side of the House are doing wrong. Well, I challenge Judith Collins to get up on her hind legs and tell this House what the new plan is—no, nothing! There is no plan on that side of the House. There is no plan on that side of the House for what we do next—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: Oh, you stupid man.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! The member will resume his seat. The Hon Judith Collins has been a member of this House for some time, and she knows that she must not address the Speaker in that manner.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: I apologise, but I would say to that member that he should not talk about me as though I am a dog on hind legs—he should apologise.

💬 Hon David Parker: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): No, I have not finished dealing with the member yet. The member will now withdraw without any reservation the comment that she made.

💬 Hon Judith Collins: I withdraw.

Judith Collins and the National Government need to finally front up to New Zealanders and say what the economic plan is that is actually going to lift the incomes and the spirits and opportunities of all New Zealanders—not just the very few at the top, not just those that the National Government cares about, but all New Zealanders.

That is what a good quality agreement would do. A good quality trade agreement would not be about scaring New Zealanders, it would not be about telling New Zealanders that their dream of owning a home is expendable to the National Government, it would not be about telling New Zealanders that the Government does not even know what the costs of medicines might be in the future, and it would not be about extending out copyright provisions that will actually prevent innovation inside New Zealand. Those are not the things that would be in a trade agreement being brought to this House that was about lifting the incomes of ordinary working New Zealanders.

The Government has completely failed over the last 2 years to actually bring New Zealanders with them on this agreement. A lot of the fault for that falls at the feet of the previous trade Minister, Tim Groser, who decided that he knew everything. His approach was symptomatic of an out-of-touch and arrogant Government that did not believe that it needed to listen to New Zealanders’ concerns and did not believe it needed to listen to small businesses’ concerns.

Now Minister Todd McClay has an opportunity. He has an opportunity to reset the clock on trade, to reset the bipartisan approach to trade, which we would welcome if it is based on those core principles and values of New Zealanders: that we will have agreements that allow us to trade fairly, that protect the environment, that support labour rights, that support the Treaty of Waitangi, and are based on a new economy where everybody gets a fair go. If the Government brings those kinds of agreements to this House that protect our sovereignty, that make sure that as New Zealanders we can make the laws that we want, then we can have a bipartisan agreement on trade. That is the opportunity that the Government currently has, and I hope it takes that up.

We have not heard that from it today. We have heard the cynical, nasty comments from people like Judith Collins. Let us hear from the National Party members the actual plan for the economy of the future where the whole of Parliament can support it. Today is a tragic, tragic day for the National Government because it has missed the beat. It has missed the point of the last 24 hours. It has not come up with a new plan. It is flat-footed, it is lost, it has missed an opportunity, and, unfortunately, that is the legacy of its economic policy.

I asked to speak on this bill, and I did not do that because I am some sort of a trade expert—I am not. In that regard I am a lot like the speakers we have heard from on the Labour Party benches. And I do not know the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA). I do not know what the short and medium terms hold, but I do have high hopes for it over the future. But what I do know is this: free trade works for New Zealand and has made New Zealand a fundamentally much more prosperous nation than it ever would have been otherwise, and in the TPPA we have a massive opportunity in this country and we are much more prosperous as a result of the free-trade agreements we have done and those that are coming.

Grant Robertson says: “What is the plan? What is the strategy?”. Well, it is the same strategy we have had for the entire life of this Government. It is the same one we saw under, actually, the Governments of Douglas and Caygill—and, actually, under the Governments of Clark and Goff for that matter—and that is to maximise our international free-trade opportunities. It is not complicated, as a strategy. Let me state the blindingly obvious in relation to this issue: we are not China, we are not the United States, we are not a big country with massive domestic markets that can sustain our economies; we are like a cork bobbing on the ocean and we need to trade. We need to be in these multilateral trade agreements to maximise the benefits for our country and to make us a freer and a more prosperous country.

Here is the thing about all of that that the others do not get. You heard it in David Clark’s speech, where he, effectively, said that there was nothing in this for anyone. This is not about the bankers, this is not about the fat cats whom Dr Clark likes to caricature, those who somehow stand to gain so much from all of this; this is about regional New Zealand. Regional New Zealand wants the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I know that. The member opposite said: “They don’t want this. They don’t—no, no.” But I know that it does, with all the people whom I have talked to in Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty. Todd McClay, the Minister of Trade and the MP for Rotorua, knows that. Todd Muller knows that, because we get out and talk to our constituents. We know that in regional New Zealand, across the value chains, whether it is in kiwifruit, avocados, services, or high-tech manufacturing, there are jobs, and higher-paying jobs, created as a result of free trade, and would certainly be created as a result of the TPP.

We have seen it in the other trade agreements that we have done. We have seen in the Korean free-trade agreement, where every kiwifruit grower in the Bay of Plenty is, on average, $14,000 wealthier, and the people under them in the chain are wealthier, with more job security as a result of that. Something like over $40 million per annum goes into the Bay of Plenty economy that we would not have had, just from the Korean free-trade agreement. We know that the opportunities with this free-trade agreement that we are here talking about in Parliament would be much, much more.

Although the other parties on the opposite side of the House have consistently voted against this bill, and have shown their opposition, on this side of the House we know that free trade works for New Zealand. It has made us a much more prosperous nation and will continue to do so. The real beneficiaries of this are in regional New Zealand, which is where the real benefits of bills like this, and free-trade agreements like this, come.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to talk on the third reading of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill, and I have to say, this is the story of a farce. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) has been a betrayal of us all—of exporters, of consumers, and of New Zealand citizens. It has been a waste of time and money, including this parliamentary session, where we are apparently doing the third reading of a bill for a treaty that will never come into force. It is abundantly clear after the US election that the TPPA is dead. We are not here to dance on its grave and celebrate. Actually, what I want to talk about is the lessons that we should be learning from this debacle. I want to get away from the free-trade blah-blah, actually, to look at the myths and the reality of the TPPA.

Firstly, it has been a shockingly bad process. There were 7 years of secret negotiations, when we were told: “Oh yes, it’s all in your interests. I’m not going to show you the agreement, but trust me, I am the Minister.” In fact, what we saw was a story of secrecy, arrogance, and patronising behaviour. There was a pretence of consultation. There was no parliamentary scrutiny. What we have seen through this process is the fact that the people of New Zealand have not bought the arguments for the TPPA. We saw in November 2015, in the most credible poll, the TV3 Reid Research poll, that 60 percent of people who had an opinion were against the TPPA. That is 60 percent of New Zealanders who did not buy the Government’s arguments for the TPPA.

💬 Darroch Ball: The Government’s not listening.

And the Government was not listening. Apparently, at that stage, the Minister said “Oh well, anyone who’s against the TPPA is just rabble who knows nothing.”, and that is 60 percent of the public.

So, what do we know about the TPPA? Well, we know that there are myths here. We know that there is a myth that it is an agreement about free trade and it is going to be good for us all. Actually, if you look at it, it is what we call a Trojan Horse treaty. The Trojan Horse is the apparently attractive outside, and the attractive outside is that it is going to reduce tariffs by $274 million by 2030. Actually, that is not a very big number in the context of the whole New Zealand economy, and the modelling that was done by the New Zealand Government was absolutely shoddy. It was criticised even by the US Government in the International Trade Commission report in the US, which directly refuted the assumptions that underlay the New Zealand economic model. So even the tiny benefits that New Zealand said were going to come from the TPPA, of less than 1 percent increase in gross national product by 2030, were illusory. That 1 percent, by the way, from the TPPA would compare with a 47 percent increase without the TPPA. So either you would get 47.9 percent or you would get 47 percent by 2030. What kind of benefit is that from an agreement, let alone the fact that even those benefits were illusory?

There was also the myth that the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism will not happen to us because we have got a few of these agreements and we have not been sued yet. Well, the countries that we have agreements with under the ISDS have taken, so far, 11 cases, of the 698 cases so far taken. But as soon as we sign up to the TPPA, we sign up to potentially being taken to court—to a shonky international tribunal—by the multinationals from countries that have accounted for 161 cases, including the most litigious corporations in the world. We would be opening ourselves up to very real risks under the investor-State dispute settlement mechanism. We are told, as a myth, that legitimate Government policy will not be undermined, but, in fact, what the phrase in the agreement says is that Governments have the right to regulate unless it is against the terms of this agreement. So what kind of exception is that? What kind of protection is that for a Government’s right to regulate? It is entirely an illusion.

We have been told that foreign investment is a path that we are going to benefit from and we are going to get rich. So the TPPA would have opened up foreign investment, and this bill would have actually taken the regulation of foreign investment out of the hands of Parliament and given it to an Order in Council—taken it out of the democratic mandate of this Parliament. So what the New Zealand people know is that our iconic places are being bought up. They know that our farmland is being bought up. They know that our value chains are being bought up. They know that we are being locked into a commodity economy that is unable to add value in our own land. We are told that the TPPA would actually be good for the environment and, lo and behold, if you look through the 6,000 pages of the TPPA, there is not a single mention of climate change—not one single mention in 6,000 pages. This agreement would have been a major block in the way of countries taking action on climate change as well as countries trying to protect their environment.

We are told that there is market access for agriculture, and then it turns out that we did not get the gold standard agreement after all. What we got was something that accounted for about 3 percent of US agricultural markets—the equivalent of three large dairy farms—and what the TPPA would have done is lock in that bad deal through this agreement in ways that would have made it even harder in the future, and it would not have touched the agricultural subsidies that our farmers most struggle to compete with internationally.

So is this a good deal for New Zealand business? No. Most New Zealand businesses, including small companies, know that what is happening under the TPPA is that rights are being given to foreign companies. Those foreign companies include companies that do not pay tax around the world. They benefit from tax havens. What is happening under the TPPA is they would be given even more rights, and they are the ones that are competing with New Zealand business. So New Zealand business is in fact potentially losing out under agreements like the TPPA. Finally, we are told that without the TPPA we will actually be really badly off, but when the Australian Productivity Commission looked at the Australia - US free-trade agreement it found that Australia had derived no benefit from it.

So what we need is to applaud the people of New Zealand. Sixty percent of those people who were against the TPPA—they were right. This is a bad deal. It is not good for New Zealand and, thankfully, it looks like this agreement is now dead for ever. But the tide has turned against these agreements. Also, these agreements are not only dead in the United States, they are dead in Europe as well. So what we are seeing is that instead the Government is going around desperately seeking free-trade agreements anywhere in the world, even paying dodgy deals with Saudi businessmen in order to try to get a free-trade agreement in the Middle East. This desperate searching for free-trade agreements has taken over from all of our other foreign policy priorities.

It is time that we had a new kind of agreement—an agreement that is good for the local economy and good for local business, an agreement that respects democracy, that is about sustainability for our country, that is fair and equitable and respects human rights and the Treaty of Waitangi. Those are the kinds of agreements we need. We can have those agreements. Instead, we have been wasting our time with this TPPA.

This third reading is a complete farce. We need to stop chasing these deals that are pretending to be about trade, but are actually about the rights of foreign corporations. We, as the Green Party, have been fighting this agreement for 7 years. We will not support the TPPA. We will not support the ASEAN Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which is the parallel agreement, with China, we will not support the Trade in Services Agreement, and we do not support this bill. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

It is my pleasure to stand up in opposition to this enabling legislation and to take this opportunity to tell the Minister of Trade to tell the Minister of Transport, who for some reason wanted to make some comment here this afternoon, to wake up—just wake up. You guys have brought us to this debate today knowing that you are wasting the House’s time. You are wasting the money of the people of New Zealand bringing this debate to the House today.

Minister, you asked what the future of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) was. I tell you that the future of the TPPA is nothing about what it looks like right now. What you sold the country as a trade deal will not be brought back to New Zealand resembling anything like it does now. Years from now, years from now, when the US gets around to creating some kind of trade deal—it might be called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); I doubt that very much—it would look nothing like it does now. So the enabling legislation that is being debated this afternoon will contribute nothing to the enabling of whatever that trade agreement might look like in the future.

So it was earlier today that the leader of New Zealand First, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, stood up in this House and asked for the House to discard this bill from the Order Paper. It was a genuine request, because we know how valuable our time is and how much the public pay for us to be here to debate legislation and to debate enabling legislation like we have here today. What happened? National voted against it. ACT voted against it. United Future voted against it.

So here we are with the patron saint of failed causes pitching trade to New Zealand, not the TPP. The purpose of the briefing notes to the members on that side of the House seemed to be to tell us how wonderful trade is. I could not agree more with that argument. New Zealand First agrees wholeheartedly that trade is vital to the future of this country. In opposition to the TPP, at every step we offered up solutions and we offered up alternatives so that we could move forward as a country and actually trade with countries overseas. But at every step we were blocked. Government members did not want to hear. They were selling us their spin on how wonderful the TPP was. It is not even called a trade deal; it is enabling legislation that locks in corporate power. It locks in corporate privilege at the cost of democracy.

As the previous speaker noted, in observing the language of the trade deal itself, the country has the right to make legislation for its benefit, basically unless it contravenes the terms of the TPP, which were onerous and went well beyond trade itself. In fact, the trade deal was sold to the New Zealand public as a golden deal that would increase our GDP by less than 1 percent. That was the National Party’s own analysis—0.8 percent. When it gave that number—and I cannot remember how ridiculous it was, the actual number; it was tiny and in 20 years from now—what it failed to tell the public was that the gains that were formulated for that number were only a third to do with the reduction of actual trade tariffs. Two-thirds of that number were supposedly gained from non-tariff barriers, or the removal of them.

For example, one of those supposed non-tariff barriers is our banking system. I do not know how that can be calculated as a non-tariff barrier, because it is already predominantly foreign owned and is already expert at raking billions of dollars out of the New Zealand economy. One of the other non-tariff barriers that the National Government failed to mention in its pitch to sell the supposed trade agreement to New Zealanders was around the reduction of customs and border legislation. It said: “That will save millions of dollars in lowering our customs’ standard.”

That is genuinely part of that TPPA that was supposedly going to make everyone millions of dollars. Never mind the issues that we have had with seeds sprouting across the country that are compromising our agriculture. Never mind the issues that we have had with moths and pests coming into this country in a customs programme that is already compromised. That was an advantage sold to New Zealand and given a dollar value.

It is absolutely unacceptable, which is why it is a privilege to stand up in opposition to this enabling legislation today. The National Government members over there I do not think realise the irony of their situation. Today they put a motion to the House to congratulate Donald Trump on becoming the new President-Elect of the United States, yet here they are now trying to fast track legislation that would enable a supposed trade agreement with a man and a country who have said that they do not want it—the arrogance of it. Fifty million - plus people voted for President-Elect Trump, like that or not. The main reason for their voting was opposition to the elitist agreements that have enabled corporate privilege over the last 35 years, and the TPP is one of those agreements, on steroids.

That is the reality of the situation and that is the arrogance of the National Government in congratulating Trump this afternoon, and then in the very next hour doing everything it can to say “We don’t care what you think. We don’t care what 50 million Americans think. We’re gonna push this enabling legislation through.”, even though, as I pointed out to Mr Bridges earlier, it will have no bearing on future trade negotiations with the United States at any time in the future. Mr Bridges asked and questioned whether, moving forward, it could possibly happen. Mr Bridges, here is a quote: “In the US, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, said the TPP had no chance of going through under President Obama before Mr Trump takes office in January.”

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: No chance. No chance.

Absolutely no chance. Thank you for your serious demeanour, Mr Bridges.

I want to wrap up by saying that this was not a trade deal; this was an attempt to bypass democracy. Even the 0.8 percent gain on GDP was not a true figure for those supposed tariff reductions. I have said it before and I will say it again, even when New Zealand First presented legislation to the House on, for example, removing the investor-State dispute settlement provisions, we presented to the House at the same time what an alternative mechanism might look like, on how the House and the Parliament itself could have a more meaningful engagement in the conversation around trade and trade deals, rather than leaving it to the executive. There is legislation in the ballot box right now under my name aiming to achieve that.

Trump’s victory arose from the Establishment treating ordinary Americans as disposable units. That is exactly what the National Government is doing to New Zealanders now with the House’s time today—disposable units. It does not care about middle New Zealand, about the hard-working businesses. More than 60 percent of the public opposed the agreement. More than two-thirds—more than two-thirds—of small business opposed it. I went to many of the same places that Mr Bridges did when he talked about Tauranga and Rotorua and talking to small business. It was hard to find anyone who supported it. They were sold a line about trade, and this deal is not a trade agreement.

I conclude by saying that this is a waste of the House’s time. The public deserve better from that Government. New Zealand First will support any efforts to engage with countries in real trade deals, meaningful trade deals that benefit all New Zealanders.

It gives me great pleasure to speak on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. I first want to talk about the Labour Party and the absence of its trade spokesperson here today. Where is Mr Shearer—the one who sat through the committee hearings, who was part of this committee, and does not even come into this House—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! There is a convention in the House, it is not a Standing Order or a formal Speaker’s ruling, that the absence of members is not mentioned. It is actually for very good reasons and protects the Government much more than the Opposition. I suggest, unless the member wants the convention to break down, that he not breach it so blatantly.

💬 Grant Robertson: He is a new member. He’s only just arrived.

Mr Robertson is over there. Mr Robertson—the member of the union elite, who now thinks he can tell ordinary New Zealanders what to do. That is Mr Grant Robertson: the Grant Robertson who is the Hillary Clinton of New Zealand politics—the union elite. The true free traders in the Labour Party are not being represented here today in this debate. I disagree with Mr Robertson’s comments because he has been parachuted into this debate on behalf of the union movement and by the request of the leader.

Then we come to New Zealand First—the New Zealand First Party, which suddenly does not want free trade with America, does not want free trade with Canada, does not want free trade with Mexico, and does not want free trade with the ASEAN countries, but is quite happy to have free trade with Russia. It is not available to support a free-trade agreement with South Korea with this Parliament, it is not available to support a free-trade agreement with Taiwan in this Parliament, it is not able to support free trade—but suddenly, in those members’ supplementary questions today, they ask for a free-trade agreement with Russia. I say to New Zealand First: be consistent in your argument; be consistent in what you say in this House.

💬 Darroch Ball: What are you doing next year, David?

What is this member saying, this member whose name nobody knows, apart from being the angry version of the leader of the New Zealand First Party? But there is help coming. There is help coming for New Zealand First—and that is Gareth Morgan. He is the real Donald Trump of New Zealand, not Winston Peters. Mr Gareth Morgan will take your votes away. Mr Gareth Morgan is a true Donald Trump representative, not the pretender that is the New Zealand First leader, who wishes he was Donald Trump but has never made any money in business, who has spent 40 years as part of that political elite, and who will never be able to represent ordinary people because he represents the epitome of what is being talked about.

Then we go to the Green Party. When we look at the Green Party, it does not want any trade agreements—no trade agreements in the Green Party. At least those members are being honest about that. At least they do not want any trade agreements. What I say to this House is we have got potential to go to Mexico. We can go to Russia. We can go to England. We can go to India. We can go to the Gulf States. All those free-trade agreements are available for New Zealand going forward. That is what we need to work on—not listening to the Labour elite and the left, which think they know better than the public out there.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. Sometimes words just cannot convey the situation. All you can do is facepalm. Surely this is the definition of futility. The day after Trump is elected, National is passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. You could not write this stuff. It encapsulates what a failure and a farce this entire 7-year process has been. The Government never carried the public. It never carried Māoridom. It never got the significant tariff reductions it was promising. It never got the copyright balance, only the cost. It never got a guarantee on Pharmac. It never got a good deal on investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS). Then it did not get a President who could ratify the treaty.

What we did get, though, is a movement—a movement opposed to putting corporate rights above citizens’ rights, a movement standing up for the environment, a movement that said: “Yes, we must keep trading, but not at any cost and not in any deal that benefits corporate rights over citizens’ rights.” What we got was an alternative vision—a vision that rejects letting kids go hungry but buying Saudi sheep farms in the desert; a vision that rejects letting tens of thousands of people sleep rough on the streets and in cars and in garages but spends on expanding a casino; a movement that rejects letting people shiver in their homes, afraid to turn on the heating, so we can subsidise Rio Tinto, an oil company. It was a movement—a vision—a growing sense of hope. It was an affirmation that we can have a fair society—a country that gives everyone a fair go—and we can have a clean environment and a richer New Zealand.

This Government has spent 7 years invested in this trade deal and the secrecy of the process. It does not have any eggs in other baskets. We need to learn some lessons. Firstly, we need to tell our officials who negotiate these deals, and the politicians who try to negotiate them, that in 2016 we cannot do secrecy as a way to negotiate these global deals. We cannot put corporate rights above citizens’ rights. You cannot ignore things like climate change, which, as Barry Coates pointed out, was not mentioned once in the 6,000 pages.

If we are going to have these so-called modern trade deals, we cannot do them in secrecy, we cannot keep the people down, and we cannot ignore the environment—because what happens is the second lesson, which is what you see when you look at Trump and when you look at Brexit. Trump is an odious, hateful figure, but he is also a real vehicle for the real disaffection, the alienation, and the marginalisation that result from an economic system that has thrown people on the scrap heap, burdened a whole generation with debt, and locked them out of homeownership. These people are crying out for solutions, and, sadly, they are looking in some of the strangest places to find them. Surely this must be the lesson. We cannot keep running systems, of which the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) was perhaps the most symbolic vehicle for this neo-liberal revolution, which has not worked. It has not worked for the people, and it has been roundly rejected.

I hope that the Government can be a little introspective and look at what the failure was. The solutions are staring it in the face. We can house our people, we can feed our people, we can clean up our rivers, we can reduce pollution, and we can grow jobs, but it is going to happen by working together, not by putting the corporate rights above the rights of the citizens, and not by allowing corporations to sue Governments if they try to regulate to protect the environment. It is not going to happen that way. It is going to happen through working together, and that is what we saw on the streets.

The Green Party has been working for 7 years, since before it was popular—for 7 years we have had a clear position against this type of trade deal. We have set out an alternative process for what fair trade deals could look like. We know that New Zealand, as a country, cannot trade with just ourselves—as one of our Prime Ministers once said—but we have to do it fairly. We have to do it in the national interest. We have to do it in the public interest. That is what we will be articulating, because what we see in this farce of passing the TPPA law the day after Trump was elected is that we are crying out for a new way. We need to change the Government.

I am pleased to be able to continue my opposition to this bill at this third reading. We know that this is a “dead rubber” debate. This is a waste of time. We are wasting the House’s time.

I do not know where the National Government has been for the past 24 hours, but there has been an election in the United States and there is a new President-Elect, Trump, and he has outlined that in his first 100 days he is withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA)—a complete withdrawal. I do not know why we are here in some sort of deluded sense that by passing this legislation, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is miraculously going to come into force, because it will not. It is dead—over. Finito. Turn off the lights and go home. It is not coming into force. So why are we wasting the House’s time here? This is a dead rubber—this is a dead rubber.

I must give credit to the Minister of Trade. He has tried earnestly to consult—albeit in a rushed state—to get this bill to where it is at, but the people of the world have spoken. Fifty million US citizens have voted for a new direction for their country, and that means the end of the road for the TPP. It is over and it is done with. For those who want to know, this bill is now destined, upon its passage, to become a latent Act. It will be doing nothing. It will never, ever come to life. It will just sit there on the books, of no consequence whatsoever.

Why the rush from the Government? Why the rush, when it should have been coming up with a plan B? What have we heard? We have heard nothing. I think I have got a good idea. The Government should send Mr Bennett to Russia—send him to Russia. Give him one of those ushanka hats. Give him one of those Russian hats, and get him to try to do something. Send him via that new “Pūhoi to Tūhoe” highway.

This is farcical, this debate. It really is farcical, because the TPP is a dead duck. It is all over. As we all know, it is not going anywhere. The Government is really so patronising. It thinks it knows everything about business. It thinks it knows what drives small business and the primary sector, as if they know all. In fact, the sun will come up tomorrow and hard-working Kiwis will be out there, working hard, selling their goods and trading their goods to the world. They have been doing that—Māori have been doing that, right from the very beginning. Trade will continue. The world of commerce carries on. There is no TPP—accept that. But the world of commerce will carry on. Our goods will be sold. Our goods and our services will be sold, and we want to command a premium. Hey, look—the fridges are empty. Our fish is all sold. It gets sold all over the world. It is not like, oh, we are not going to be able to sell our goods any more—of course not.

The Government is so simplistic in the way it thinks. We know that our exporters are very sophisticated. They are world leaders in what they do. So do not patronise them by thinking that this dead-duck deal is going to be the be-all and end-all. We know it was a shonky deal. It had more holes in it than a West Coast whitebait net. It was giving more to transnational corporations. It was giving more to them than it would in terms of meaningful benefits to Kiwis.

It was going to stifle innovation for Kiwi companies, but add more protections to the big multinational corporations with copyright, biological patents, and the like. It was not really intended to break down the barriers for our dairy industry. Sure, there might have been paltry positives for other sectors, but in the great scheme of things it was a bad deal, an incredibly bad deal, and that is evidenced today by us passing a piece of legislation that will mean absolutely nothing—absolutely nothing. It is a dead deal, dead rubber, a dead duck, thanks to, I guess, the Don, the great Don, who has come in over in the US. They have been trumped, literally. They have been trumped on this. The TPP is dead, it is over; finito. Kia ora tātou.

It is a great to be able to take a very short call in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill and, particularly, to help out Grant Robertson. He was doing his best Chicken Little impersonation by running round in circles, going “What’s the plan? What’s the plan?”. Well, Grant, it is called this Government in action. It is delivering 3.6 percent GDP growth, 35,000 jobs in the last quarter, 144,000 jobs in the last year, the highest employment rate in the OECD, and an absolute commitment on this side to keep that going through enabling opportunities for our exporters to connect with the world. That is what the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is. It is $2.7 billion worth of benefits that on this side we are proud to support.

When people stand up on the other side and say that this is just a waste of time—well, it is never a waste of time to argue for our exporters on the world stage. It is never a waste of time to say we want more market access. It is never a waste of time to be there for our small businesses. And that defines this party. Next year when we are having the debate around the country, as I am sure we will do, I will be proud to be part of a John Key - led Government that is committed to trade, and that completely understands the value of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will always hold to the value of this agreement. It is a shame that members on the other side are too myopic in their anti-establishment views—it is going to bite them in the end. This is a great piece of legislation, and I am delighted to support it. I commend it to the House.

It is my pleasure to take a call on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. It feels a bit like we are taking part in a joint therapy session for the members opposite. Denial is the first stage of grief—I get that—but something happened yesterday and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is over. It is not going to happen, yet we are using this House’s time to go through and put legislation in place. What I have heard from members opposite is that they are proud to have fought for it and that it is not a waste of time. But what is this legislation going to do? The agreement is not going to be in place, so what exactly are we using the House’s time to do? I think it is about time that we had some acceptance from members opposite that this was going to happen.

Some of my colleagues have talked about what they would have liked to see this debate time used for today, which was to hear what it is that the Government has in place as a plan. All we have heard from the National Government for the last years and months is that the sky would fall in if we did not pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement—if this did not happen. Well, what is the economic plan now? What is going to happen? What is going to be in its place? What we have heard—[Interruption] So now we have Government members saying that it will all be OK and we never needed the TPP. I am loath to say this, Mr Bishop, but listen to Mr Bennett. He will tell you the internal logical—

I apologise for interrupting the member. This debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.