Motions — Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—Release of Text

I move, That this House note that the text of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership has been released, and will be signed on 8 March 2013.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! On what date?

8 March 2018.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Yes. You said 2013.

Oh, I’m sorry, sir. Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for that correction.

I want to, in my 10 minutes, refer first to the transparency with which the Government is trying to approach the signature of this agreement, and the engagement that we are already having up and down the country, before moving to some of the issues around trade that this agreement is relevant to. I want to cover the bottom lines that the Labour Party expounded before the election, and how we have, to the best of our ability, met them, and also respond to some of the accusations that are being made that the Government has been hypocritical somehow, backing this new Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (CPTPP).

First of all, I would say that since it became clear that we were making progress in the issues that were important to the Government at Vietnam last year, even before we came close to finalisation, we have been consulting with the public. We’ve had meetings up and down the country. We’ve had information about the increasing number of suspensions to the agreement that were agreed up on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website. As soon as we reached finalisation of the agreement in Japan about a month ago, we sought early release of the final text. That text had to be legally verified then translated, then translated back from Spanish and French into English, just to make sure that we didn’t have different versions of the agreement in different languages, which is the problem that we have with the Treaty of Waitangi versions in Māori and English. As soon as that was completed, New Zealand was at the forefront of calling for its early release, and it was then released. At the same time as we released that text, we released, in advance of signature, the national interest analysis, which is a long document that describes the effect of the agreement and the benefits and risks that are inherent in it.

In addition to that, we’ve had numerous outreach meetings. I’ve been involved in a number up and down the country. My officials have been in a lot more. They’re open to anyone. People who are in favour of or against the agreement are welcome to come along, and we seek to explain to people the effect of the agreement and address questions that are asked. This is a level of transparency and engagement that I think, if I could say of the last Minister, he also began with after he became trade Minister. I think he recognised that the Minister before him hadn’t been as open with the public, and one of the reasons why there has been this sort of increasing suspicion of trade agreements in society is that lack of engagement. I thank him for those efforts, and I would assure the public that we’re open to doing the same thing.

In addition, I’ve asked critics of the agreement to give us specifics, give us specific questions that they have about the agreement, and we’ve had lists of those questions that have been sent in by groups of civil society who are worried about the agreement, and we’ve endeavoured to give written answers to the questions. Where those written answers have been insufficient for those critics—they say, “Look, there’s another angle that we want you to address on this.”; we’ve expressed willingness to do that as well. There is a point beyond which we can’t go. We can’t do this forever, but we’re doing our utmost to address the issues that are raised.

In respect of trade, I think everyone in New Zealand knows that we are a small country that will never produce cars or computers or mobile phones or medicines. You know, we might produce the parts for magnetic resonance—we’ll never produce all of the medical equipment, even if we produce components for it. Therefore, we need to sell to the rest of the world things that we need to have a decent standard of living in New Zealand. I’ve made the point that trade agreements aren’t the be-all and end-all of that. We’ve got fantastic trade agreements already with our two largest trading partners, China and Australia—free-trade agreements that have been in place for a while now—and, despite that, exports in the last 10 years dropped from 30 percent of GDP to 27 percent of the GDP, to be contrasted by the last Government’s ambition to lift them from 30 to 40 percent of GDP. That proves that trade agreements are not the only thing that’s important to trade, and there are other settings in the economy, like research and development incentives and the tax signal that encourages people to invest in productive enterprise, which grows new points of comparative advantage, rather than bidding up house prices by investing ever-higher proportions of our investment capital and residential rental investments in Auckland.

In terms of the five points that we made clear before the election that we wanted to see were properly protected, the first I’ll mention is the Treaty clause. We’ve got fantastic Treaty protection clauses in all of our free-trade agreements. It’s the same clause as previously. It’s been to the Waitangi Tribunal. They gave it a very good pass. They said it protects the interests of the Government and Māoridom to do anything that’s necessary in the name of the Treaty. They said you could tickle it in one or two ways and make it even better, but our negotiators made the point that if we did that, we would reopen the text of that and we’d likely go backwards in respect of our Treaty clause rather than forward.

In respect of Pharmac, we said we wanted that better protected. It’s true that the prior agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), protected the form of Pharmac; it did, though, impose additional costs on Pharmac, being the cost of medicines on patent longer, particularly biologic drugs, and also some transparency costs. Those are fixed in CPTPP and no longer apply. In respect of the right to regulate, there is no doubt that New Zealand can regulate for public health, environment, we can run a public education system, we can fund our State-owned enterprises, and we can have appropriate environmental regulation or safety regulation. There is nowhere that the Government is prevented from properly regulating, whether it’s for plain packaging of cigarettes or it’s for climate change reasons.

In respect of land, which was our next provision, the last Government was saying that we had to choose between either controlling who owns New Zealand’s houses or trade agreements. They said you can’t have both. They said that to ban foreign buyers of our houses would breach lots of our free-trade agreements, and they said that that would cause tens of thousands of job losses. They were wrong—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Tell us about Singapore.

—and we’ve shown how you can do that, and we’ve got legislation that, if passed before the CPTPP comes into effect, protects New Zealand’s interest in that regard. We were told that the alternative was that you could do stamp duty by the Government and therefore we shouldn’t be worried about it. They were wrong on that too, because that would have breached the South Korean free-trade agreement.

💬 Hon Phil Twyford: How could they have got it so wrong?

How could they have got it so wrong? I do not know. It’s either incompetence or disingenuousness—maybe both. It was election time, and we’ve now shown those claims to be incorrect.

In respect of the one complication that we do have in earlier trade agreements, the interjection came in, “What about Singapore?” It is true that that issue remains unresolved, but we are in negotiations with Singapore in an endeavour to reach an acceptable conclusion there. So that leaves, in respect of all the issues that we raised, including at the protest meetings—I think I went to either one or two. The Opposition accuse me of hypocrisy for now voting for this vastly different agreement. I have to say, even when I went to those meetings and I read out the Labour Party’s five conditions, which are similar to those that are recommended by other parties, I was booed by some of the crowds because they didn’t think that I was tough enough for them.

It is my opinion that we have largely protected the sovereignty risk to New Zealand. The one area that we haven’t succeeded completely in is investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses. The new Government agrees that these international dispute tribunals are undesirable. We don’t think that a multinational should have a greater right to sue the New Zealand Government than a New Zealand company investing in New Zealand. We’ve moderated the effect of ISDS clauses in a number of ways. We’ve excluded commercial contracts with the Government, so multinational builds: the Waterview tunnel—previously, under the TPP agreement, they could have sued the New Zealand Government; under CPTPP they can’t. In respect of investment screening, they can’t bring claims either.

In respect of who can sue, we’ve got carve-outs with side agreements. We have a new side agreement with Australia. It’s similar to the one we had last time in respect of TPP, and that carves 80 percent of foreign direct investment into New Zealand from CPTPP countries so they can’t use those tribunals. We’ve got side letters with other countries that will become clear on 8 March.

There are trade benefits. The most obvious trade benefits are in respect of beef. We had no other route to a trade agreement with Japan—a free-trade agreement. Since Australia had their earlier free-trade agreement with Japan a couple of years ago, and they have a lower tariff rate for their beef exports into Japan, New Zealand’s beef exports have dropped 38 percent—38 percent.

This is a much better agreement. We have preserved the sovereignty of the New Zealand Parliament to act in the best interests of our people going further, whilst getting the trade benefits that were on offer. This is more important than it was before the World Trade Organization was under attack, and I’m proud to support this motion.

Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you. I want to congratulate the Minister for Trade and Export Growth for delivering, almost word for word, an identical speech to the one I gave in this House for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) just two years ago. The reason for that is that I agree with him. This is a high-quality agreement that is good for New Zealand. I agree with him absolutely. Where he waivers, however, from that great speech that was delivered to this House some time ago is on the significance of the changes that he says his Government and New Zealand First have delivered.

He sits there with a smile, but he knows, actually, the changes are nowhere near as significant as he suggests. We, too, will take a little bit of time talking about that. But, certainly, the reason that the Labour and New Zealand First Government feel anxious about this is that there are pictures of them up and down the country over a long period of time campaigning, protesting, against an agreement of 6,000 pages, and they turn up in this House today saying that they’ve fixed it, with about two pages’ worth of changes. The Minister knows that so very, very well.

But I will give credit where it is due. If you take the coalition agreement that was signed between New Zealand First and the Greens and you add to the front of that the words “Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement”, would it be a different agreement at all? Because, substantially, all that’s happened—at the behest of Canada, not this Government—is they have changed the name and so very, very little else. For New Zealanders who rely upon trade for their jobs, who have businesses that trade, who send things overseas, or who are productive, it’s very important that this Government didn’t change it very much, because it was a good trade agreement when it was called TPP and it remains a good trade agreement now that it’s called the revised TPP—or they’ve made it “Comprehensive and Progressive” by just adding those three words to the beginning of it.

The reason they’re so sensitive in many of these areas is that New Zealanders believed them when they were opposed to this. They didn’t see through the facade of the politics of Opposition—and I guess loud voices in Opposition often become quieter in Government. I do want to give the two Government coalition parties credit. They are doing what’s right for New Zealand—no question there. But there are so many tens of thousands of New Zealanders that are losing faith with them, because they believed them when they said, “Send us to Wellington, to that Parliament, and we will be one more vote against the TPP.”

Let’s look at a few of the things that they’ve said are important. We’ve had the Prime Minister, within a couple of weeks in the job, with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Export Growth in Vietnam proclaiming a deal that has the highest environmental and labour standards of any deal New Zealand has ever done and that protects the rights of Māori—the Government can still meet its obligation through the Treaty of Waitangi. So I challenge the Minister to tell us exactly what he did to change the labour provisions chapter of the TPP. If you go on the website and you download the labour chapter, it is 4,034 words long; go to the revised agreement—it’s 4,034 words long. To the Minister: can he explain to us, if it has changed significantly so that New Zealand workers are better protected, why does the revised agreement—the revised agreement that’s “Comprehensive and Progressive”—still talk about America? Why does it still talk about America, if they’re no longer members?

Now, of course, we’ve heard a lot about the Treaty of Waitangi clause, and there are members on the other side of this House—including Mr Tabuteau from Rotorua—who said Māori weren’t protected, they were being sold out. The text in the TPP agreement and the revised agreement for the Treaty of Waitangi exemption is word-for-word identical. But it’s “Comprehensive and Progressive” because they added it to the name.

There are members on the other side of this House in New Zealand First and in Labour and in the Greens who said the tariff gains for New Zealand were not good enough—we didn’t go far enough. Andrew Little, as the leader, said that it does nothing for dairy, it’s not good enough, it’s a failure. “We should vote against it,” they said in Opposition. Go and have a look at the revised agreement and compare it to the tariff schedules in the TPP agreement—word-for-word identical. Word-for-word identical except America is not in it, but in other parts of the agreement it still talks about America. When the current Minister for Trade and Export Growth and his colleagues said, at the time of the TPP, “It would only add 1 percent to New Zealand GDP, it’s not worth it; they haven’t done well enough.”, he goes off and claims to have fixed the TPP by making it “Comprehensive and Progressive”, and he’s come back with a 0.3 percent gain of GDP. And 0.3 percent is still important, because it levels the playing field and allows us to get in there, but somehow it’s comprehensive, it’s progressive, and it’s better, yet there are so very few changes to it.

Now I want to deal with the issue of the housing ban that they’ve spoken so very much about, because, of course, it’s not a ban that they’ve put in place. It’s more bureaucracy and it’s a process. So, yes, what they’ve done is they’ve said every single house in New Zealand is now a sensitive asset, and if a foreigner wants to come and can fit within the rules they get to buy that. But otherwise, as with every other process of the Overseas Investment Office (OIO), every single house that a foreigner may want to purchase—except, of course, for Australia, and except, of course, for Singapore; for everybody else, the British, for instance, the Minister will have to make the decision, because, finally, when an OIO decision is made, it’s not rubber-stamped. Just as in the case where, when we were in Government, we turned down the sale of Lochinver Station, in this case every single house sale to a foreigner will go to the Minister. That’s not a ban.

But, of course, go and have a look at the revised TPP and go and have a look at the original TPP and have a look and see how it’s changed around the housing ban. Where has this Government gone and put in there that they have the right to ban house sales? There’s not a single word of difference there. What they have is a workaround. I will give the Minister credit—it’s very smart, albeit very bureaucratic, and you wait and see the size of the holes in that legislation they’ll have to go and fix. And, by the way, go and talk to Singapore about what they’re doing to that relationship.

And then we have the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS). We have members in this House who have stood up against that, day in and day out. Those horrible, nasty corporations from overseas were coming to make the New Zealand Government do things it didn’t want to. And we’ve heard that they tried very hard and they carved out 80 percent of all foreign investment under the TPP and this agreement—by signing the very same side letter on the website that I signed two years ago in Auckland. So they gained nothing there at all.

The one area that I do give them credit for is they have carved out the ability for foreign companies to sue the New Zealand Government when the New Zealand Government is the contractor issuing a contract particularly overpriced. So when the Minister says we could have been sued by the people doing the Waterview tunnel, who were overseas, over a contract dispute—you could no longer do that. But any other legislation that’s passed that actually could call into question the commitment of the Government when it comes to the trade agreement, a foreign corporation can sue them. So when David Parker, Jacinda Ardern, and members of the New Zealand First Party stand up and say, “We’ve fixed this.”, what they actually said in this House is, “We don’t believe we will be sued successfully.” And guess what? Go and have a look at the notes that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave me to read out as the Minister of Trade on the TPP—word for word, the same.

Foreign national companies can still sue the New Zealand Government, even though New Zealand First gave promises to the New Zealand taxpayer that they would stop that. They’ll say they didn’t have enough time because we didn’t start the work. That Minister knows his officials said in committee a few weeks ago the work on changes to ISDS started in May of last year, long before the New Zealand election—in May of last year. All of these changes that they are taking credit for started long before they got there, and were worked on by this Opposition in Government because they were in the best interests of New Zealand. They are so very, very sensitive to claims that it’s not a different agreement, that it’s substantially the same, because they are worried that New Zealanders will see through the facade of the protest that they gave over all of those years the TPP was there, and now they have seen the light when they are in Government.

I do want to finish on a positive note. There are so very many people who have worked hard on the TPP agreement and the revised TPP agreement, from some of the best negotiators in the world, who are our officials. There have been thousands of New Zealanders who have had input and have worked hard to make sure this deal was delivered. It is not in New Zealand’s best interests that America has pulled out; it absolutely is in New Zealand’s best interests that the TPP, as a revised deal, is going ahead. I do congratulate the Government for deciding they will put the best interests of New Zealand ahead of the politics of a number of years, and I am glad that New Zealand is signing this deal. New Zealanders will have more jobs as a result of it. It is the same deal as was negotiated by the National Government.

New Zealanders will know that that speech, by the Hon Todd McClay, was both new and true. Sadly, that which was true was not new, and that which was new was definitely not true. For example, in February of 2016 at a casino in Auckland there was a sign-up by the United States. They left, didn’t they? Now they want back in. Why? Because we inherited an ugly duckling, and thanks to my colleague David Parker we’ve turned it into an elegant trading swan. That’s the difference. They say, for example, they stopped Lochinver. Right? Yes, that’s true. Did they stop 22 Crafar farm sales? No—22 Crafar farm sales off to a foreign company with no knowledge at all about farming, and they did absolutely nothing. So don’t come here and tell us this is the same deal they signed.

I can tell you, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s going through a renaissance of understanding. They’ve yet to realise, like around the rest of the world, that capitalism can have a human face. It can stand up for everybody in society, not just the few and very few. They know in foreign affairs now that we believe in promoting policies that help every New Zealander, not just some party’s rich mates that put a whole lot of money into their accounts when it comes to the election. We all know what’s happened in the past, and they have the audacity to tell me that the Americans who left left for no reason at all. Why did the Americans leave? Bernie Sanders wanted out, and even Hillary Clinton, who began by saying it was a gold standard deal, herself campaigned against it, because she was surrounded on the left and the right by Donald Trump and all who saw that this was a massive challenge to the sovereignty of the United States, as we, who were criticised at the time, said it was to us.

And we have turned it around. There have been 22 changes, and they are massively fundamental. I can say this: if we’d had people campaigning for us as a country before we got there, this deal could have been even better. But we’ve saved every part we possibly could, and this country owes a huge debt to David Parker and the insight of his colleagues as to why and how this had to change. So let’s not have any more humbug about that.

💬 Brett Hudson: Hey, Deputy Fletch, when are you taking Ron’s seat?

When am I taking Ron’s seat?

💬 Brett Hudson: I’m just talking to Deputy Fletch.

No, no, no. Unlike your party, we are the image of serene stability. We don’t go out there against the grindstone every night. I know they’ve been in a turmoil of anger and fury because they stand for nothing but their own personal promotion. I should have begun this speech by saying I want to congratulate Simon Bridges for becoming the leader of the National Party and the Leader of the Opposition, and I wish him a long, happy time in that job—a long, happy time in that job. And given who’s backing him, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. But we saw all the conniving fighting going on. Not in the national interest, not in the provincial interest—

💬 Brett Hudson: It was the backstabbing of Ron Mark.

—not in the farming interest—no, all a part of a massive ego programme best evinced by that member over there who’s shouting out. Can’t win a seat—can’t win a seat any time.

💬 Brett Hudson: That’s rich, coming from Winston Peters, who just got chucked out of Northland.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Could I encourage the member—[Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! Could I encourage you to come back to the motion.

Yes. I shall remind him that I do hold the record for the highest majority in this country’s history—

💬 Brett Hudson: And Simon Bridges kicked you out of Tauranga, too.

—90.28 percent—beat that. Beat that and open your mouth; otherwise keep quiet.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Please come back to the substance of the motion, please.

Look, I don’t want to be arguing with a junior like that member. Next election he’ll probably be gone.

Pharmac was jeopardised. Our economy was threatened. New Zealand’s ability to control and monitor its very land and housing was put in the control of international interests. Look, when we got there we were shocked to find out from negotiators that it had never even been raised. Don’t blame them. They offered on instructions, but you had people in this Parliament, and the previous Minister as well, telling everybody, like Groser, that we couldn’t do it—giving that view on high that it couldn’t be done—and we found out they’d never even raised a finger for their country or their countrymen and women. It’s a shame, it’s a disgrace, and I hope that this debate finishes now, because the next person needs to explain why we were sold down the drain.

The indications are that prominent critics of the former agreement, including the current administration in Washington, are considering bids to re-enter in light of these improvements. We picked up a non-progressive, non-comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership of what was 12 and then became 11, and we fixed it up, and I hope New Zealanders are for ever grateful. You’ll still get the critics, because they will listen to the merchants of misery from that side of the House running around saying that somehow we have sold them out. Oh, no, you don’t—quite the contrary. We went into battle for them in the most difficult and trying circumstances—a small country, out here in the South Pacific, of 4.8 million people—and we have been marvellously, unbelievably successful.

Go and ask the people offshore whether they think that or not. You’ve got other people replicating and duplicating our language now, talking about values, talking about the need to enhance the whole population. Where’d that language come from? The citadel of common sense, the coalition Government in New Zealand.

💬 Hon Todd McClay: From Canada.

That’s where it comes from—oh no it does not. Oh no it does not. No, no—I’ve read articles in the UK, all sorts of newspapers writing about the change in New Zealand. They can celebrate change because they realise it may be the harbinger for change in their country as well, and they hope for it around Europe at the same time.

Can I just say we have a comprehensive, progressive agreement that maximises New Zealand’s export opportunities. Over ⅛ of the world’s GDP will be opened up to New Zealand exporters. Now our beef farmers will have a chance in Japan. What chance did they have under that Government? What chance did they have, for example, when they went to Korea and they signed a trade deal with a 173 percent tariff? That’s their idea of success. No, no—we are a bit more hungry for change than that, and we’re a bit more demanding in terms of the people we represent. If we couldn’t get the best for the New Zealand people, we wouldn’t have signed up, unlike them—sell out at every point in time because there’s some magical mystery.

They are globalists; they’re the National Party with a small “n”, and it gets smaller as they start feuding and fighting, and as they fall below 40 percent, and then 35 percent. That’s why Judith Collins thought, “I know what I’ll do, I’ll guarantee that I can get 35 percent.” And the “Crusher” is not mad. The “Crusher” can see what’s happening, so she decided to give a benchmark that she knew in short time he could not achieve. And guess why? Because more and more New Zealanders are getting to understand the background of the National Party, which, as I say, was prepared to be globalist in their intent—to be the harbinger of so-called change that people didn’t want—and that’s what this election, after all, coming up in 2020 will be all about.

We have preserved the rules-based international order, we’ve got meaningful gains for exporters, we’ve got boosts for the economy, and guess what? More importantly, all those cheerleaders and clarion call merchants of the previous Government are celebrating the achievement of this Government.

💬 Hon Todd McClay: Same deal.

Oh no, it’s not the same deal. If it’s the same deal—can I speak to some common, ordinary, sensible, sane people? If it’s the same deal, why did the US leave? Slowly now—why did the US leave if it was the same deal?

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Why does it want to come back?

Because it was not. “Why does it want to come back?”—marvellous question, Mr Brownlee; I couldn’t have put it better myself. They want to come back because it’s not the same deal; it’s a massively improved deal that protects the rights of the American voters to determine their future, just like it protects ours. It’s a marvellous deal, and that’s why I’m very proud to be part of the arrangements led by David Parker, who went in to bat in the most trying circumstances—long hours in the morning, unlike these guys. Not out at the restaurant celebrating at half-past eight; no, going home at half-past three, four o’clock in the morning—because we’re used to it—and making sure that when we got on the plane to come home, we had something to come home with.

The only thing that Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, came home with when he had been to Vietnam and apparently convinced them that this wonderful deal, which David Parker, just a few weeks ago, was touting in the House as being exactly the same text as the 2016 text—Hansard will record that. The footage from the House will record him standing there holding up the document saying, “This is it, the text. Nothing’s changed, apart from these 26 suspensions that are in it.” Of course, when you read those 26, they are minor, small things. They are not major. When you, as my colleague said, take two pages out of over 4,500 pages, you could hardly say that this was major.

What we’ve got here—and we just heard it from the Rt Hon Winston Peters—is an absolute verbal contortion of the worst kind. Firstly, I congratulate them for twisting themselves into this position, because it will be good for New Zealand—no question about that. But I would say to the Hon David Parker that when his Government does not have the capacity to pass legislation to give effect to this bill, he might want to think just a little bit before he puts around some of his propagandist nonsense about how well he’s done in changing this bill.

Let’s just look at a few of the aspects of it—first of all, the idea that somehow he, as a sole genius in the Government, has come up with a way to prevent foreigners from buying land in New Zealand. Well, first, one fact: the churn of land sold to foreigners in New Zealand means that it’s about 0.5 of 1 percent of our land mass a year—an infinitesimal amount. But when those sales occur, it’s New Zealand owners who largely benefit from that.

The second point I’d make is that this proposal to have the Overseas Investment Office Act altered so it becomes harder is a bit like expecting New Zealanders to believe that if you could take a colander, you could store water in it—completely impossible. There are three tracts in that bill that allow people to buy land in New Zealand, and all they have to do is satisfy the criteria and they’re through the gate. The criteria themselves are very light. The criteria themselves simply say things like “can create more jobs”. Well, the Rt Hon Winston Peters mentioned Crafar farms—Crafar farms were in a dreadful state. You had animal welfare crawling all over them because of the state of the stock, and I will bet dollars for doughnuts that there are many times more the number of workers on that farming operation these days than was the case before. So they would get through the gate straight away—first up.

Then, of course, apart from the other two tracts—which I may come back to—is the extraordinary situation for Mr Peters and his party to be supporting, which allows foreign investors in New Zealand to buy up to $200 million worth of assets here without going through any process, as he would say, whatsoever. Let’s just take, for example, a struggling building products firm—a firm that might employ thousands of New Zealanders directly and indirectly. They put themselves or part of their operation up for sale so they get themselves out of a big hole, because they’ve had a little bit of a financial hard time and a few bad business decisions. Well, that transaction, if it’s below $200 million—or any multiple of it—does not need to go to the Overseas Investment Office; they simply are able to purchase it. And even if they did, the national interest test would say, “Well, this saves X hundreds or thousands of jobs—tick, they’re through the box.” So there is a whole lot of deception being talked across the other side of the House. This agreement is largely as it always has been.

We hear today the Rt Hon Winston Peters saying, “What happened? The United States pulled out because they didn’t like the agreement.” Everyone knows that the politics of the United States are very, very different at the present time, but if the Rt Hon Winston Peters is saying that his foreign policy is now modelled on Donald Trump’s view of the world, then this country is in some severe trouble. The United States is making noises at the moment about possibly reconsidering their position on this comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership, but they will require all of those 26 suspensions to be unsuspended. Those 26 suspensions will not be enshrined in New Zealand law; they will be able to be traded away, changed, or they will be simply wiped aside and reinstituted by a majority of the parties to this agreement. So the claim that is being made is nothing short of deception and, as I said before, is sort of a contortionist’s view of how you present a policy—and, particularly, a policy change.

The other issue is this investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) situation. David Parker is right to say that—while Mr Peters might be out there saying “We’re protecting New Zealand from being sued by foreign Governments and foreign business entities.”, Mr Parker knows that that is not, strictly speaking, the full case. But the other side of it is that New Zealand is a trading nation, and, increasingly, we trade in services and in skills that are provided largely without any particular product that you can hang your hat on, in many other countries. Engineering skills, geotechnical skills, legal skills—on and on we can go, and often those contractors will be engaged with foreign Governments. So this provision, as Mr Peters now touts it as being good for New Zealand, exposes those companies in other jurisdictions, reduces the amount of cover that they might have had by the law, and somehow that’s waved around as being something good for this country.

There are so many aspects of this bill that the current Government have claimed success on that are simply not a change at all, and while we are very pleased to be supporting the bill, it’s becoming increasingly irksome that a Government cannot among its own members, its own contributors, get the numbers to pass the bill. It’s somehow being thrown back in our face that there was failure on our part, but we are still expected to create a situation where they can go around the countryside telling their mistruths—frankly, lies—about what they’ve achieved in the preparation of this document.

The idea that this is somehow bipartisan, which I’ve heard David Parker mention a number of times, and that there is a bit of cross-party work going on here is plain wrong. What happened is that over a period of years, a National Government did negotiate the vast majority—the overwhelming majority—of this text with other countries. Of course, when the United States pulled out, there was another negotiation, and then when there were 11, there were further negotiations—that’s obvious that that was going to happen. Most of it took place under a National Government. The last little bit was the trip to Vietnam, where the Canadians stopped stomping their feet and finally came to the party, albeit that they had to have some different name to satisfy their domestic politics. And it would have been, I think, fitting had Mr Parker reached across the House and said, “Well, why don’t the National Party send their trade representative to the signing on 8 March?” It might have been just a little bit of insurance so that over on this side of the House there’s no exercise of the contortions we are seeing over there to find a reason not to vote for it.

This is an extremely good arrangement, an extremely good trading deal, for New Zealand, and I have no doubt that the New Zealanders who now, apparently, are patting Mr Peters on the back are actually just patting him on the back saying, “Thank God for you coming to your senses”—oh, sorry, for Mr Peters coming to his senses and not sending their business down the tube. And of course we support them in that.

So let’s be very clear: the changes the Government are claiming are not substantial. The legislation they’re making around landownership is so broad you could drive a bus through those regulations, and, frankly, that’s what will continue to happen.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. Isn’t it fantastic the way that Mr Brownlee tends to rewrite history? Well, unfortunately, the facts get in the way of the sort of subjective nonsense that Mr Brownlee talks about. This actually started out under Phil Goff as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement. It started out as a Labour initiative under the last Government, and I think it’s incredibly fitting that our trade negotiations Minister, David Parker, is going to end up signing it off on behalf of the New Zealand Government, because this is where it started, Mr Brownlee, and you know that.

The other thing that really sticks in the craw of Mr Brownlee is that when they were Government they said, “Can’t protect our land. It can’t be done. No—not up for negotiation.” Well, we did it within the first hundred days. Mr Parker sorted it out within the first hundred days, and the bottom line is Mr Brownlee talks about 0.5 of 1 percent of all land—well, he includes the national parks and all this sort of stuff. The bottom line is—and the thing I really like about the Overseas Investment Act is it talks about the fact that owning land in New Zealand is a privilege. It’s a privilege—it is not a right; it’s a privilege, and we need to protect that privilege. What was happening under that Government was New Zealanders were shut out of their own country, and that is wrong. In fact, Mr Peters needs to take a lot of credit for this. He pushed back against the excesses of global capitalism, and it has been noted—it has been noted.

Like every Labour Government that comes in, we are the Government of, sort of, economic and social evolution, revolution—these guys come in and slowly manage it down, and then it takes a Labour Government and, yet again, we change the way things are done, for the betterment of the New Zealand economy and the New Zealand people. This is what this is about.

Now, one thing I will agree with Mr Brownlee on—and I know this is surprising—is we are a trading nation. We know this. We’re a country of 4.8 million people. If we’re going to grow, if we’re going to create sustainable wealth and well-being for our citizens, for our companies, and for our country, we need to trade. We’ve always needed to trade, and we’ve always recognised this. In fact, it was Phil Goff who signed the first free-trade agreement with China, and it’s worked incredibly well for us.

But the thing about New Zealand is we are viewed overseas as a country of principle—we really are. I’ve just been to Mexico last week. They look up to us because we do things well. Yet again, I believe, just last week we have been named the most transparent country in the world. Now, you don’t get that by being lucky; you get that by being principled and doing things incredibly well. So while we are a trading nation, while this started out under Phil Goff, we believe, under the terms that were being negotiated by that Government, we were actually compromising our principles to the point where we just couldn’t go there.

So what happened is Mr Parker took it over, and, once again, our principles came to the fore, and with these 22 changes, these 22 change clauses—it’s not many Mr Brownlee; I’ll admit that, but they’re the really important ones that define New Zealand as a country—the really important ones.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Tell us about five of them.

I’ll tell you about them—I’ll tell you about them. Let me tell you about investor-State dispute settlement clauses (ISDS): we wanted these removed, actually. In fact, they’re a little bit of an anachronism these days, and if you read the international literature on these, there’s a growing voice of concern about how these are being implemented, and the reason for that is they’re done behind closed doors, no one can see the rulings, there is inconsistency, and it does take away the sovereign right.

We all know the case that causes a whole lot of problems, and that is Philip Morris suing the Government of Australia—and they lost. They went through the whole court system—in fact, Philip Morris moved its headquarters from Australia to Hong Kong where they had ISDS clauses. They went through the whole Australian court system and they lost, so they took it to arbitration—ISDS. What the literature is now saying is Philip Morris knew they were going to lose this, but it gave them two more years. It gave them two more years to do what they felt they needed to do, and that is wrong.

That is why Mr Parker has worked incredibly hard to actually ensure that we are not going to be sued when we make important decisions that affect the health and well-being of our countries. That is why Mr Parker has worked incredibly hard to have side letters with a lot of countries to ensure that this is very, very narrow in its scope. I suspect that, if not in the next trade agreement then in the one after, ISDS clauses will be removed—actually, from probably all global investment and trade deals—because people recognise there are better ways to do this—there are better ways to do this. But we have certainly mitigated the worst excesses of ISDS, and that Government had not done that in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). We have in the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and I think that is a major win. It’s one of the main reasons why I stand up and I support the agreement as it stands, and one of the main reasons I had major reservations for it, how it was being negotiated under that Government.

The sovereignty issues—we can make our own decisions in the best interests of Kiwis, which is what it has got to be about, Mr Brownlee.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Always good.

It’s fantastic, isn’t it? Now, let’s talk about Pharmac—let’s talk about Pharmac. Maurice Williamson set up Pharmac—am I right in saying that? I’m not too sure, but it is a fantastic thing. It is a really good model, and it actually saves us from some of the excesses that are going on in the States at the moment. You go to the United States and what they have on all the TV ads—“If you’ve got indigestion or if you’ve got heartburn or diabetes, recommend this drug to your doctor.”, and then at the end of that, it says, “If you’re suffering from hypertension or liver disease or anything like this, then be very careful.” The bottom line is our doctors are not subject to the worst excesses of the pharmaceutical industry that exist in a lot of places.

Well, this agreement protects Pharmac—it protects Pharmac—and I think that is absolutely vital. This may be a bit of a long bow, but it may actually save us from some of the excess that we’re seeing in fentanyl, and that sort of thing at the moment, because we haven’t got big pharma in here really screwing things down and acting in a way that is not in the best interests of Kiwis. Implementing these changes was expected to cost New Zealand an initial $4.5 million and $2.2 million per year thereafter with Pharmac. These costs are eliminated under the CPTPP. Congratulations, Mr Parker. Well done on that one.

Now, the thing is, around 8,500 New Zealanders are employed for every billion dollars of exports. But we need to grow this. We need to get better at the way we do this. And as Minister for Small Business, one of the things that I’m going to be looking at is how we use this agreement to increase the percentage of GDP of the small-business sector to our country and how we can use these agreements with these countries to actually export a hell of a lot more and engage in a way that we haven’t done in the past. And it’s not just goods. Mr Brownlee, you were dead right. Services are becoming a really important part of our economy and what we can offer overseas. These are things that can’t be replicated in the back streets of Mumbai or the office blocks of Shanghai.

💬 Hon David Parker: Xero.

Xero. These are the things that provide us with a real competitive advantage. When I say that when we go overseas and we are held up—no, not held up; we are acknowledged as the most transparent country in the world. When we are acknowledged as the best place to do business in the world, people look at New Zealand and go, “How do you do it as a country of 4.8 million people? We want to work with you guys because we know you’re not corrupt. We know you do things well. You bat above your weight.”

This will help us achieve our goals in a way that we couldn’t beforehand. This is a really important agreement in a way that will help us grow our economy and the wealth and well-being and the jobs of our communities and our economy. But it wasn’t an agreement based on the fundamental principles that guide us before; the way that Mr Parker has taken this and modified the really important clauses, it now is. Now, it’s not perfect. It is not perfect but we all know in every single negotiation you give a little to get a little—you give a little to get a little—but what we are told in the national interest analysis is it will boost the size of our economy by up to 1 percent of GDP. Now, that’s a significant amount of money. And what I expect to see is that, in fact, that will increase. I think this is conservative. And seeing what I’ve seen, hearing what I’m hearing, it is opening up markets that in the past just haven’t really been in the view of New Zealand exporters; they are now.

This is an important agreement. I congratulate Mr Parker and I congratulate the Rt Hon Winston Peters in the way they’ve taken something that was not really aligned to our principles and brought it up from the TPP to the CPTPP. Congratulations. Onwards and upwards. Thank goodness it is Labour that’s going to sign this agreement. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I find it ironic that we have the Minister for Small Business standing in this House telling us how important 1 percent of GDP is—which I agree with you—when during the debate on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) when we were in Government, your caucus colleagues were standing up and saying, “One percent of GDP is insignificant and, actually, we want to get rid of this agreement. It’s no good—1 percent of GDP.” So it’s amazing how things have changed.

Mr Speaker, I went back and—

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: Mark, Mark—“Madam”.

—sorry, Madam Assistant Speaker—had a look at some of the Hansards from the debates during the debate on the TPP. It was a bit of a wander down memory lane, because at that time I was chairing the committee that heard these submissions and I was locked in a debate at the time with Mr Grant Robertson. In his view—and it’s very important that we remember this. I want to acknowledge the Rt Hon Bill English and also the Hon Todd McClay, because all of you will remember—and Stuart Nash, the previous speaker, acknowledged the Hon Phil Goff in terms of, actually, it was the Labour Party that first got this agreement started, right? So, in light of that, I want to acknowledge the Rt Hon Bill English and the Hon Todd McClay, who got this agreement started again.

During the debate in this House and during the public debates that I had out there with Grant Robertson—when the Americans withdrew from the agreement, there was a great celebration that went on from the now Government parties that the agreement had fallen over and that it was no longer in existence. I had to stand up, and Grant Robertson and the people in the room enjoyed ridiculing me about the fact that I said, “Actually, as a Government, we believe that we can get this thing back on track. We believe that we can still deliver a comprehensive trade agreement for New Zealand with the other 11 partners in that TPP.” Well, now it’s comprehensive and progressive, and I have to acknowledge Mr Parker. He’s been working hard the last three months. He’s been burning the midnight oil. You know, he’s been all over the world and he’s come back and he’s delivered two new pages to the TPP. So I have to acknowledge that: two more pages.

Let’s have a look at some of Grant Robertson’s comments. Just—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: All tradeable.

All tradeable—all tradeable. I’ll just put a line under this this. This is what Grant Robertson said in the House when he was talking about the TPP in one of our debates: “In the years following my time at university, I used to have what I guess would be called [anxiety dreams]. I would dream that I had not studied for a really important exam that was about to take place and I did not know what the date was, and I would get very stressed about this. I think others in the House may at times in their lives have had similar kinds of anxiety dreams. Of course, then I would wake up and realise that in actual fact there was no exam for me to study for and it was all unnecessary anxiety.” He was talking about the failure of the TPP. He wanted it to fail. He wanted it to go away.

Then he had this to say in the debate: “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.”

💬 Hon Todd McClay: Thank God he didn’t become Minister of Finance!

That’s right. So I just want to acknowledge the Rt Hon Bill English, who went to Japan and met with their Prime Minister. Together, they made a commitment that they would get the TPP back on track. It was revived, and we’re able to stand in the House today and we’re actually able to have this debate. I agree with the comments that were made too that, actually, when it comes to trade, there should be bipartisan support and agreement in relation to those trade agreements. Unfortunately, when we were in Government and when I was chairing the committee, we didn’t have that.

I remember hearing submissions from Professor Jane Kelsey, and I remember in the committee having discussions around how much time we should give her at the committee, because, as you know, she’s taken a firm position against the TPP.

💬 Hon Todd McClay: We’ll give her a lot of time this time.

Look, I remember—that’s right. I remember the Opposition members lobbying me hard—“We have to give her an hour. You know, other people only get 15 minutes.”—and I agreed to it. Then she’d turn up, and she was very good to work with and she was very respectful of the committee and the committee of her. But she would turn up to the committee and she’d be met by a Labour member and she’d be ushered in—a cup of tea and a sandwich—and she’d be well-looked-after. They’d sit there and she’d be like a rock star, and the Opposition members would be rushing to the mosh pit to listen to her.

Now, I see that she’s come out and said, “Fundamentally, there’s no change to this agreement. This is the same agreement. There’s no real change.” So are the Government listening to her? No, they’ve put her on a train to Siberia. There’s no more cups of tea. There’s no more cucumber sandwiches. She’s on the train to Siberia—they don’t want to listen to her. But she’s absolutely right. Fundamentally, there’s no change to this agreement. It’s a good agreement, but there are no changes to this agreement.

Finally, I just want to say that in terms of consultation, actually, for the Government to pass this legislation, they need the support of the National Party. They need our support. So you’d think that they’d want to reach out across the aisle and they’d want to consult.

In all fairness, can I acknowledge the Hon David Parker when he acknowledged Todd McClay in saying that when he was Minister, he went out and he did an exhaustive process in terms of public consultation. It actually brought a lot of New Zealanders with it, which was an outstanding process, and it achieved great things.

In his time as Minister, let me give you some examples: a trip to Tonga to sign the PACER-Plus—cross-party involvement. Fletcher Tabuteau went, and Annette King, and Barry Coates from the Green Party, who was very actively involved in the trade argument. When he went on a trade mission to the eurozone, he took the Rt Hon Winston Peters with him. When he went on a trade mission to Iran, he took the Hon David Clark with him. He reached out across the aisle and he made sure that the other parties were included, because he recognised that, actually, when it comes to trade, that, fundamentally, is very important.

So the one thing that I’d ask you and the one thing that I’d say to you is, please make sure there’s consultation with us. Please make sure that we’re engaged. Please take us with you. Thank you.

Madam Assistant Speaker, I stand today in support of this motion, that the House recognise that the text of the newly named Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) has been released, some two weeks before it’s set to be signed with no more opportunity for amendments or input. This deal undermines our democracy in a multitude of ways, and not least of all through this secret negotiation process; lack of consultation, certainly before the text was properly released; and signing at a time when 75 percent of New Zealanders would like to see some independent analysis of the newly negotiated text.

We were promised a transformed deal. We were told over and over again by the coalition that the risks—the grave risk, to our democracy, our human rights, our workers’ rights, our environmental protection, and our Treaty of Waitangi—have now vanished. It turns out that was mostly spin, and it is profoundly disappointing to know that the coalition used fairly minor changes to justify its total reversal of position on this deal so soon after the election.

It turns out that was spin and even the most grave risks to our democracy, the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses—the clauses that say that multinational corporations, foreign investors can sue our Government for law change—remain the same. The ISDS clauses remain. Now, we are a small nation. We need trade, and the Green Party is for trade—trade that benefits New Zealand and helps us to address the global problems facing our planet today. We are not for a deal that marries us to a failed global economic model that Kiwis voted against at the election. So our democracy is under threat—our ability to adopt transformative change that helps us to face threats like climate change and record inequality, and to honour our founding constitutional document.

There’s good reason we do not give Kiwi businesses the right to sue the Government for law change—because the Government should look out for the interests of everybody. Health policy, education policy, and environmental policy should be all about providing schools, better hospitals, protecting the natural environment, not the profits of a few elite. But that is exactly what we’re about to give away to foreign businesses. They can hold these privileges over our Government—this one and future Governments—in a system that sits above our law, above our courts, above our democracy.

It’s important when it comes to the ISDS clauses to note that we’re not actually talking about contract breaches. Supporters of this deal keep saying that foreign corporates, investors, now have to sue for contract breaches in our courts. Well, that was never the key concern. The key concern was the investment chapter, which creates robust privileges, minimum standards of treatment for foreign investors that ordinary Kiwis do not have. It’s the investment chapter that they can use to sue us using the ISDS clauses. We don’t have to have entered into a contract with them at all. It’s enough that in March 2018 we are entering this agreement. From then on, they can use these privileges that we are about to give away to them to unduly influence our elected officials—a right that ordinary Kiwis don’t have.

The only real change to the ISDS regime in this agreement is the side deals or the side letters. One of them is with Australia, and the supporters of this deal point out that that’s 80 percent of our trade. It’s a big trading partner. It is a big trading partner, Australia, but we all know that corporates can base themselves anywhere. So once we enter this deal, corporates, even Australian-based businesses, can register a base in any one of the signing nations and use that base to sue us using the ISDS clauses. It’s no protection at all. As Greens, what’s particularly chilling to us is that we know that elsewhere in the world where ISDS clauses have been accessed to sue Governments, corporates have used them to stop environmental protection. When Indonesia tried to stop particularly damaging types of mining happening in its native forests, it had to exclude foreign investors because it couldn’t afford the compensation. It had entered into a similar agreement with the UK and Australia, and just the mere threat of access to ISDS clauses was enough. The Indonesian environmental Minister had to admit, “If we shut them down, they will need compensation and Indonesia can’t afford it.” That is chilling.

At this moment in global history, can we really afford to give primacy to the profits of multinational corporations over the threat of climate change? Is that what Kiwis voted for at the election? Most of us voted for transformative, progressive change—a change in approach even on trade. In fact, this agreement is blatantly not all that much about trade at all. Most of the thousands of pages are about giving special privileges to multinationals to be free from Government regulation. Most Kiwis would be horrified to find that its e-commerce chapter effectively prevents public oversight of this century’s data-driven economy. It allows these foreign investors to base their data elsewhere, bypassing our Privacy Act. It guarantees that New Zealand will abstain from regulating future unknown technologies. Who does that benefit and what does it have to do with trade?

So instead of the progressive promise of its new name, we have before us the text of an archaic kind of agreement, which is just the kind that formed the backbone of the corrupt neo-liberal regime that caused the devastation of the latest global financial crisis. The environmental and labour protections that are constantly invoked to show the progressive nature of this deal are, essentially, lip-service. Actually, climate change isn’t even mentioned at all, and our obligations pursuant to the Paris Agreement aren’t considerations here. In fact, any mention of labour or environmental protections are not all that enforceable in law. They’re outlined with very little specificity. The environmental chapter says, “Transition to a low-emission economy requires collective action.” Great—it does. What does that mean in law?

Parties also agree to cooperate on matters of joint interest, including things like developing low-emission technologies. Again, these are soft, unenforceable acknowledgments in law. Compare that to the incredibly detailed, biting, and binding language of the investment chapter. Actually, we know that similarly worded protections have failed to stand up against corporates elsewhere in the world. In 48 percent of cases where these types of protections and similar deals have been invoked by Government, only four have been successful.

So instead of installing a transition to an innovative and sustainable economy, which New Zealanders voted for, this deal will actually make it far harder and far more expensive for us to implement things like the zero-carbon Act. That is exactly why the narrative of consensus around this kind of deal is all but illusory now. Mass protests across the world—I was at the one in Auckland when the previous deal was put up. The city shut down. The EU will no longer enter this kind of agreement. Its human rights regime and climate change obligations sit above this kind of trade deal. New Zealand should be placing ourselves among the nations that are changing trade, that want to find ways to make trade fair. Our hope and intention is that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the last of this kind of deal. I want to work towards introducing change that will require us to make trade fair, to make negotiations like this democratically processed, transparent. These trade agreements should be contingent on our human rights, our Treaty of Waitangi obligations, our need for environmental protection, and our obligations to tangata whenua, with no more clauses.

We need to make trade fair and fit to serve our needs in the 21st century, with all the lessons of the failed neo-liberal regime. Instead, on 8 March, we will not be entering a fair or free trade agreement at all. We will be ceding sovereignty to foreign investors.

Well, that was a very interesting call from the Green member Golriz Ghahraman. She has just been saying things that Labour used to say. Only a matter of months ago, we would have heard the same content of speech by David Parker and others on that side of the House. He’s shaking his head, but we know that we would’ve heard the same rhetoric from Labour in the election campaign, and, indeed, we did.

I’ve got to hand it to the Greens because it’s not often that I agree with much that they say, but we’ve heard from that member this evening a speech that hasn’t changed in their rhetoric about trade, even though I don’t agree with it. On this side of the House, we don’t agree with what the previous speaker just said, but they have spoken with a degree of principle, and they haven’t shifted their stance.

What we’ve seen in the last couple of months is a real shift. It’s almost like liquefaction over the other side of the House. Liquefaction has crept through their toes, they’ve sunk down a bit, and they’ve realised that this trade agreement is really important for New Zealand, it’s important for job growth, it’s important for reducing costs, and, fundamentally, the New Zealand economy needs this agreement. So off David Parker and Winston Peters and the Prime Minister went to try and sort out what they thought were issues with this deal, and they’ve come back and they’ve put “CP” at the front of “TPP”. Now, they stand up in the House and say, “We’ve got these amazing changes. They’re comprehensive—28 of them.” But when you delve down into the detail, it’s really very much window dressing.

What I’m really keen to hear in this debate this evening is about the approach that the Government takes to trade overall, because this is just one agreement. This is a really important one. It’s taken a long time to get here this evening, but we’re not hearing from the Government what their plan is on the New Zealand - EU free trade agreement. We’ve spent a huge amount of time—and I acknowledge Todd McClay and Gerry Brownlee and the work that they did, and before that—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh, Todd more than me.

Yes, you’re right. Yeah, Todd did a huge amount of work. Of course, what I’m hearing from this Government is that the Prime Minister is not going to travel very much, obviously: pregnant, baby coming on board—that’s great. Fantastic news—congratulations. So the Prime Minister won’t be leading big trade delegations. She’ll go to the Pacific shortly, and then she’ll go to Europe and the UK and have her photograph with the Queen—fantastic—and that’ll be it.

What I’m also hearing is that the Minister of Foreign Affairs won’t be doing a lot of travelling. He’ll put Fletcher Tabuteau on a plane and try and get a trade delegation together, and businesses in New Zealand will go, “Who? Who is this guy? Who is he? Oh, that’s right. He’s the new deputy leader of New Zealand First.”

And David Parker won’t be doing much travelling. He’s the Minister for Economic Development and quite a few other things as well. He should be leading trade delegations around the world, but he won’t because he’s got to keep an eye on Shane Jones’ provincial fund as the Minister. And, of course, we’ve already seen the first real blooper under that new fund. Sixty-one million dollars announced last week, and already we are seeing that fund hit liquefaction as well—probity issues. So, getting back to the issue—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Thank you.

—David Parker is not going to travel, as well. So businesses are coming to the National Party, worried about the overall focus and the trade agenda of this new Government because their senior leadership team aren’t going to travel. It’s going to be left to Fletcher Tabuteau and Damien O’Connor.

It’s fine having a debate about trade, but they’ve just concluded their 100-day programme. It’s been a real shocker for the primary sector. They don’t support irrigation. Now, irrigation helps us grow our exports. It helps our farmers and processors put more products into market. It creates jobs. Unfortunately, the coalition Government—and we know the Greens don’t support irrigation.

We’ve got issues in biosecurity, which is a real trade issue as well, because if you don’t get on top of biosecurity issues, that impacts what we can do in the trade space. Also, we have got numerous other issues in their 100-day programme that they haven’t addressed. The other one is that they’re not getting on top of Mycoplasma bovis, a massive cattle disease.

Fortunately, farmers can still find a market and get those into export. And the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) will help, particularly our beef farmers, into the lucrative Japanese market.

This Government is raiding from the research and development fund, the Primary Growth Partnership. Under the Ministry for Primary Industries, they’re raiding that to do a rebranding exercise. That’s not going to grow exports for our CPTPP market.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): You are straying a little way outside of the motion, so I’d encourage you to come back.

Well, I am coming back to it all the time, Madam Assistant Speaker, because it’s really important. When you think about the primary sector and you think about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with “CP” in front of it, it’s really important that this Government supports our primary producers.

I acknowledge them in that they are supporting the CPTPP—that’s fantastic. But we’re unsure, and we’re not hearing enough from them, about their broader trade agreement, because they’re not prepared to travel the world and open up new market opportunities. That’s really disappointing for our exporters to get pretty clear indication that this Government is more about domestic politics than about looking at a full international approach.

So, in summary, what we’ve heard this evening is that Labour and New Zealand First were lions in Opposition and, now, they’re mere lambs, and I’ll leave everyone to think about that. We heard all the rhetoric in the campaign and how terrible Trans-Pacific Partnership was. So they went off to the meeting, came back with “CP”, bolted it on the front, and it’s pretty much the same agreement. We should get on with dealing constructively across the Parliament on these trade issues, and it would have been great—if they hadn’t been drumming up votes, or trying to, from the greenies and the lefties—if they’d supported a broad trade agreement.

So my challenge back to David Parker and other senior economic-facing Ministers is, please, get out there and lead some trade delegations, because you can’t leave it to junior Ministers to open the doors that we need to see for our exporters to reach into these very lucrative international markets. Thank you.

Split call—this is five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to stand here today and join in this debate to talk about the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and it’s been very interesting listening to an Opposition that is trying to minimise the work that has happened in this agreement. This Government has actually progressed this agreement and made it into the strong agreement that it is now. In that, I’d like to say congratulations to the Hon David Parker and the Rt Hon Winston Peters on the work that they have done to bring it to the stage that it’s in.

We’ve heard here this afternoon about the transparency that has been involved recently around the early release of the text, and I’m delighted about that. Just in the last two weeks, I’ve had people asking, prior to the release last week, “When’s it coming out?”, but since then people have been saying, “Well done. Well done on actually getting this out.” Well done to Mr Parker for getting this text to release to this point. So the transparency goes along with this country not compromising our principles, and this is where this agreement is making the biggest difference.

This is where we have not compromised on our principles, and that is where the CPTPP is significantly different from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA). It can’t be any surprise to the Opposition that these differences are in there. They’re minimising them, but it can’t be a surprise to them because the two parties that talked about this actually campaigned on these. They talked about protecting Pharmac. They talked about something that is really important to this country: upholding Te Tiriti o Waitangi. That is so important. We managed to get that.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Tēnā tātou e Te Whare. The House is resumed. Before the dinner break, we were debating Government motion No. 1. Jan Tinetti had the call, and she has two minutes and 51 seconds remaining if she wishes to do so.

Thank you.

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: I hope she does.

Absolutely. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Right when the dinner break started, I was talking about the transparency and the early release of the text of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (CPTPPA), how wonderful that has been, and the people that have contacted me to say that they’re very pleased to have read that text. What I have been encouraging those people to do, though, is to also go and read the national interest analysis of the agreement that has been released alongside this, because I think that that document is another way that we’re showing the openness and the honesty around the agreement. People have really appreciated the fact that they have been pointed in that direction.

That particular document is a document that reflects the important changes to how the agreement affects New Zealand’s intellectual property law, Pharmac, and whether overseas investors can make claims against the Government. People that have talked to me about that and about that document, after I’ve pointed them in that direction, have said that that has been very helpful. So I would encourage anyone to go and have a look at that. That document was written by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the analysis concludes that it would be in New Zealand’s interests to enter the CPTPPA. As I said, it also outlines the differences in this agreement from the original agreement that we can see.

Now the part of the agreement, in my final part here, that I would like to talk about is the most important part in the changes that I see from the TPPA to the CPTTPA, and that’s the changes in the house-buying ban. This Government thinks that it’s the birthright of New Zealanders to own our houses as well as our farms, so it is something that New Zealanders aspire to. It is something that, for many New Zealanders, has become unattainable to them. So this was one area that is a major change. It was something that we were told may not be able to happen. We were told we would possibly have to look at renegotiating our trade agreements, and yet that was proven not to be the case. So I was very happy around that. I’m very happy to talk on this here tonight. Thank you.

Gerry Brownlee said it best earlier this afternoon when he said that this agreement, and in particular the performance of this Government on this issue, is political deception of the highest order. If you listen to the way this debate has unfolded, when they have positioned trade—trade, of all things; the lifeblood of this country, trade that, essentially, underpins the livelihoods of all our communities, that they passionately say they represent—when they talk to this agreement and position it as something materially different to what this Parliament had debated and supported, that they voted against, is, in my view—I agree with Mr Brownlee—political deception in the highest order. This was politics at its most cynical.

It was a party that was under pressure in the polls and an issue that has always been bipartisan. For the last 30 years, it has been bipartisan, but this Government, the Labour Party, decided they were so desperate they would turn it into a partisan issue. They said the deal was being done in secret, until the full 6,000-page document was released for all to see. They said it was being done without public consultation, until the public consultation started. They said it was going to breach the Treaty of Waitangi, until the Waitangi Tribunal ruled that it didn’t. They said it would ruin Pharmac, despite specific clauses in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) that protected it. They protested on the steps of Parliament. They went and got a hundred thousand signatures. They said it would restrict and restrain our sovereignty, except there are explicit clauses in the TPPA that prevented that from happening and never in any way restrained our ability to regulate for the national interest.

David Parker stood up and said it is, and I quote, “an affront to democracy.” Andrew Little stood up and said, “This deal is hopeless. The dairy deal is hopeless. Meat is hardly better and the rest amounts to not much.” They, the Labour Party and the Labour Party leader, were talking to the market access provisions in the TPPA. The whole purpose of the deal is to open up market provisions and opportunities for our exporters. They were describing those provisions that had been negotiated as hopeless. Those same people stand in the House tonight and laud the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership as a great revelation, as an achievement amongst all achievements. They can barely look down the camera without looking away. They barely can control their cynical smirks as they realise, “Well actually, look what we’ve managed to get through here.”

The public of New Zealand know, the exporters of New Zealand know, that the deal is a good deal. The deal was negotiated by the last Government for market access to a huge, huge set of markets around the world. We stood beside our exporters. We said that these market access provisions were superb and should be celebrated. That side said they were hopeless. How can they stand here tonight and look at New Zealand and say, “Actually, we think this deal now is superb.” It talks to integrity—it talks to integrity. That’s why they struggle to look down the camera tonight and say, “We have delivered a deal that is fundamentally different and better.”, because they haven’t. Two pages of text out of 6,000 is not a revised, refreshed deal; it is the same deal with a couple of minor changes. They know it.

I tell you the people of Tauranga, the exporters of Tauranga, the kiwifruit industry that has $26 million worth of benefit that was negotiated over the last two years, they know it. They know a political deceit when they see it, and they see it here tonight. But we will not do what the Government benches have done and play politics with this. This is a good deal for this country, and despite the political deceit we therefore support it, because we always have supported and we always will support the exporters of this country. And that’s why I’m proud to be a National Party member. Thank you very much.

This is a split call. I call the Hon Nanaia Mahuta.

I take just a brief opportunity to offer a few comments on the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Reflecting on the comments of the previous speaker, Todd Muller, can I simply say this: 22 changes were achieved by this Government to assure New Zealanders of the things that were uppermost in their minds when the previous Government failed to recognise the issues that we were bringing to the House and why we contested that agreement—22 changes.

We argued that the role of Pharmac in purchasing medicines should be protected, and that has been strengthened in one of those changes. Upholding the Treaty of Waitangi, I agree, was a very hotly contested point. I went to the Waitangi Tribunal and heard the debate as it progressed alongside. We’ve been assured by the Waitangi Tribunal that the Treaty exception clause is sufficient, and we acknowledge that there is more work to do as we work towards a more progressive trade agenda. There will be meaningful gains to exporters in the reduction of tariffs and in some key industries, like kiwifruit.

It will do the thing that I think most New Zealanders were most concerned about, which is restricting the sale of houses and farms to overseas buyers. This issue alone actually occupied the minds of many New Zealanders who were very concerned that a carte blanche approach to enabling foreign investors to buy houses in New Zealand artificially inflated the price of houses. What that meant for the domestic homebuyer was that owning a home became so out of reach it was ridiculous, so we’ve strengthened that. Narrowing the investor-State dispute settlement clauses, again, is another positive advantage to New Zealand.

But, all in all, it was the way in which this trade agreement was being negotiated by the previous Government. I’m really pleased that the Minister for Trade and Export Growth and the Minister of Foreign Affairs accepted that early exposure of the draft, prior to signing, and the national interest test become publicly available so that people could see these changes that we can now sign up to but, also, so that it would be a part of an open and transparent approach to negotiating trade deals that deliver the greatest advantage.

This is why it is an opportunity to not only say to New Zealanders—having stood up and said we were concerned about some really important things that affected New Zealanders on a day-to-day basis and secured the 22 changes, and now being able to re-present the text and have the national interest test conducted in a way that gives all New Zealanders a greater assurance that this Parliament will hold itself to account, and the way in which the Government secured better interests through their negotiations, is something I think many New Zealanders will be very, very pleased about.

It does signal a new approach. The Minister for Trade and Export Growth, in going forward, has recognised that yes, more can be done as we continue, as a coalition Government, to advance in the free-trade area. So I’m really optimistic about the new progressive trade agenda that will be led by our Government, which will start to flesh out how we can secure more advantage. I attended several business summits over the last couple of weeks. Small to medium sized enterprises are saying, “Look, it’s time now that we look to secure advantage for a sector that contributes greatly to our domestic economy and is starting to make some inroads into some high-value niche markets overseas.” They want to see some opportunity in the way in which this Government negotiates trade deals to advantage their interests.

Also, in the space of women and on an indigenous platform, there are so many more opportunities. So it is heartening to see that we have a coalition Government that is putting people back in the centre of trade agreements, to derive value to our export sector but also to ensure, backing that up, we are keeping some of the principles about what makes New Zealand a great country to live in still great. If anything else, the fact that we’ve moved early to ban the sale of houses and farms to foreign buyers—I think that alone sends a very clear signal to many New Zealanders. We are very serious about a trade agenda that works for everybody.

Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you. I couldn’t help but think, when the previous speaker, Nanaia Mahuta, resumed her seat, you can understand why she is such a long-experienced member of this Parliament. She’s just shown the ability to fill in five minutes of Parliament’s time without saying anything.

I will give you an example. She said that this Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) puts people back at the centre of trade. Well, who else would be trading with each other, other than people? The fact of the matter is that this is a bill that the Labour Party, despite its long, liberal, internationalist history, opposed because they thought it was politically convenient. And then, upon assuming Government, they recognised a few truths. First of all, New Zealand is a nation of traders. We are a nation of people who have come here from the Pacific Islands, from Hawaiki, from England, from Europe, and from Asia because we wanted a better life. When we arrived here, four million or five million of us, at the edge of the Earth, did we say that we wanted no further links with the rest of the world from whence we came? Of course we didn’t.

Only the Labour Party and their new-found small-mindedness would have suggested that New Zealanders wanted to shut themselves off from the rest of the world. As their former leader Helen Clark said, the TPP was one of those times when you realised that New Zealand was in danger of missing out completely. So it’s no surprise that the Labour Party, despite all their rhetoric, despite all their grand talk of difference and being a different party and having a different position on trade, are here tonight, in the Parliament, signing off a Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership that constitutes the following, and this is really important. Stuart Nash knows. He’s smiling; he knows.

It is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to which the Labour Party and their props in New Zealand First were so opposed, plus a four-page cover letter that removes a few conditions in order that if the United States wishes to come back to the table, we have a negotiating position. So people who supported the Labour Party and New Zealand First—I’d say to them they were wrong to oppose trade for New Zealand, but they should also be under no illusion that their parties have just signed up to the TPP with a four-page cover letter. You see, the text is exactly the same. It’s a four-page cover letter that sets out some negotiating positions for when the United States decides to re-enter.

On behalf of the ACT Party, who understands the origin of this country, who understands that we are a nation of immigrants, people who sought a better life at the edge of the Earth but did not want to sever our ties with the countries from whence we came—in this case, around the Pacific—we understand that our global links are critical.

We want to commend this Government, even though they’ve come to it in a sort of confused, denialist sort of way, for agreeing that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as it was originally written, should be passed in this Parliament and passed by this Government and signed by our Minister of Foreign Affairs, in such a way that we maintain a country with global links, that trades value for value with the rest of the world, that stands proudly in the world, that is not afraid of the rest of the world, and that, heaven forbid, is not xenophobic, as the Labour Party has sadly, and recently in its history, become.

We commend the Government for swallowing its pride and signing the TPP so that Aotearoa New Zealand can remain a country that is a strong, capitalist, global system that trades value for value, and gets stronger together with our cousins from around the world, of whatever nationality. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. I find it remarkable, at one level, that we’re continuing to have a debate on this, now called, Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. I certainly am one who thinks that this trade agreement is immensely important, but why I find it odd is probably twofold.

One is, of course, when you have a new Government you expect a whole lot of legislation to come before the House and not actually be discussing topics like this. The second, of course, is that we have gone through this before. I think we’ve been hearing this from a number of colleagues over the last few debates—that we’ve actually gone through this many times, and very little has changed. In many ways, tonight we are here to celebrate, from the Government’s point of view, the insertion of the letters “C” and “P”.

That’s almost the end of it. It’s becoming sort of—I don’t know—a fairly standard approach these days to whip out words like “comprehensive” and “progressive”, because it gives that sort of warm, fuzzy feeling. Of course, when you start to dig into anything that it is “progressive” in this world, it’s always found wanting, and “comprehensive” is something that is always sort of a contradiction. And of course I’m slightly joking when I say we’re here to celebrate only the letters C and P, but actually, basically, to use the vernacular, bugger all has changed.

There’s been celebration tonight from the Government side that they’re tabling this document as if it’s something remarkable, open, and transparent. Well, it might come as a surprise to them but months ago, actually, we tabled the same 6,000 page document. It’s the same document. The only thing that’s changed are two pieces of paper—nothing has changed. I’m no mathematician, but two pieces of paper over 6,000 means a 0.00003 percent change. It is nothing. It is an absolute minimal change. The Labour Party has effectively buckled to reality, and what we’re seeing here is just classic spin.

We know that a number of those members on the other side—and the Minister himself, the Hon David Parker—were at the vanguard of protests screaming and yelling, saying this was a terrible, terrible agreement and an affront to democracy and every other sort of dramatic spin that they could put on it, and now that they’ve made basically no change and are on the Government benches, they’re trumpeting it. The only way that they’re able to attempt to justify it—partly to themselves; partly to the colleagues and to the public—is to try and say there’s been enormous, enormous change. And you know that it’s false, because, objectively, again, compare the previous 6,000 pages with the new 6,002 pages. But also, as you listen to the speeches tonight from the other side, some of the members are talking about 22 changes; others are talking about 32 changes. So I’d really encourage the Labour Government and their coalition partners to get together and try to synchronise that up.

They’ve made a big talk about the Treaty of Waitangi, because, of course, that’s one of those things, a bit like the words “progressive” and “comprehensive”—everyone goes, “Oh my gosh, the Treaty, yes.” Well, actually, nothing’s changed there whatsoever. There’s big talk about Pharmac, and having been the former chair of the Health Committee, it’s something I’ve followed closely—nothing has changed around Pharmac. The protections of Pharmac were already in the original agreement. When we used to actually have a bipartisan approach to trade, no side of this House was going to sell out the Treaty nor Pharmac nor the country. Nothing has changed.

There’s big talk about the investor-State dispute settlements. You always know when people don’t really know what they want to talk about but they want to scaremonger, they use the acronyms—the investor-State dispute settlements and that “Oh, we’ve made massive changes there.” Actually, the change has been so minor that it’s almost not worth mentioning. The fact that we can no longer sue—or rather, an outside party can no longer sue for contractual disputes, OK; I acknowledge that’s a sort of win. The fact, of course, that other things outside contractual disputes, and particularly if it relates to New Zealanders—if properties or businesses are taken off them as particular Governments nationalise or the like. But the other thing that they don’t talk about, and it’s one word, actually, that hasn’t been used tonight. It’s about successfully suing—successfully suing. The thing is, of course, there is nothing in this agreement that has been lauded to stop another nation suing us. They just can’t do it successfully. So what does that mean? It means that we can still—in this amazing extra two-page agreement—be sued, as I understand things. They can still take us to the courts and cost time and money. It just can’t be successful, and that’s a really important point.

So a lot of noise has been made by the other side, but I just encourage New Zealanders, particularly those who are on the more extreme anti side, to make sure they get the emails of this coalition Government. I’d encourage Jane Kelsey and others to remind them, to say, “Hey mates, where were you a few months ago, standing beside me? Nothing’s changed. Get in touch.” I’d also encourage New Zealanders to get on to Google or Bing or whatever you use, look up “Labour” and “TPP” and look at what they opposed. Look at the faces leading the protests—or if you’re an Aucklander, like myself—who basically stuffed up the traffic for hours. Nothing has changed in this agreement whatsoever. It’s incredibly disappointing that the wool is being pulled over people’s eyes.

I want to finish by just saying a little bit of what other colleagues have noted too: the concern around the lack of trade policy and direction in this Government. We have opportunities, particularly in Europe, particularly with the United Kingdom. We also have opportunities around the PACER-Plus agreement; that’s in the Pacific, which I suspect most people on that side don’t know of. But, actually, there’s a lot more work that needs to be done there, and I encourage this Government to more properly engage with this side of the House, learn a thing or two about how to pull these agreements together, and perhaps return to a proper bipartisan—comprehensive, if you will—approach to trade, which restores a little bit of mana and dignity to how we conduct our foreign affairs overseas.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for allowing me to take a call in respect of this Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (CPTPPA). Before I commenced my remarks in the House tonight, I had the privilege of sitting through only the last few speakers from the Opposition, but what I have taken away is that there’s a lot of conjecture and hyperbolic statements that are used to describe the contents of this agreement.

I think it would be remiss, as the final speaker on behalf of the Government, if I didn’t just make some remarks about the journey by which the CPTPPA has come into this House, and make a few comments in respect of its predecessor, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA). But, in particular, I really rise to speak to the implications of this agreement in respect of my region, the East Coast, the Eastern Bay of Plenty, the impacts that trade agreements such as the CPTPPA will have on our region’s development, and, specifically—through an industry that is close to my heart—the kiwifruit industry. Finally, I want to make a few remarks in respect of the implications of this agreement on Crown and Māori relationships and the implications of Te Tiriti—the Treaty—and this agreement.

But before I commence my remarks in that respect, I do want to make a number of acknowledgments. I want to acknowledge the fact that these types of agreements—one, they are extremely complex, nuanced, and go through years of negotiations to get to a final end point. In the process of those negotiations, I want to acknowledge the fact that so many New Zealanders from all walks of life have stood in support of, and in opposition to, the various iterations of this agreement.

I note the comments from one of my colleagues from across the Chamber, who discussed how there were members from this side that spoke at protests, and other such things, against the former agreement that didn’t get over the line, the TPPA. I myself didn’t attend any of those protests, but what I can say to those that did: good on them. Good on them for being passionate enough about our country to make a stand in respect of things that are important to them. And good on my colleagues who spoke out against the previous TPPA that was insufficient for our country and did not reach the objectives that the current CPTPPA has achieved for our country, and, in particular, the lynch point that the Opposition said that they could not achieve—that foreign investors could not be banned from speculating in our country. Well, that has to be a victory for this brand new Government, and I want to commend the efforts of our Minister for Trade and Export Growth, the Hon David Parker.

In hindsight, thinking about why people become so impassioned about these types of agreements—and, actually, I draw on the previous remarks of my colleague David Seymour—we are a small trading nation at the bottom of the South Pacific, but we’re also a very proud country. We’re an extremely proud country about the way in which “Brand New Zealand”—Brand Aotearoa—is projected to the world.

I remember, prior to my role in this House, when I was a lawyer, I wasn’t sure. I remember there were people who were in extreme opposition and people in extreme support in my close circles of confidants. I said to myself, “Well, I can’t really just go off what anybody else says.” So for two weeks, my household shut its windows and we went through thousands and thousands of pages of papers to go through the exact detail of the prior TPPA, to form our own views. Again, when the text of this agreement, the CPTPPA, was released last week, we did the same. We shut up house and we went through the details, in order to form our own views.

Look, I admire people immeasurably on both sides of the debate, but where I’ve landed—I’m proud to stand on this side of the House, in light of the significant traction that has been made over the past four months.

Seventy percent of New Zealand’s trade flows through the Asia-Pacific region. We’re no longer an island in the middle of the South Pacific but, rather, we’re a dynamic economy that is integrated into a globally connected world.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, who knew that!

Since there was an interesting remark from over the other side there, I was noticing, you know, Peru is one of the eleven signatories to this agreement, and I was reflecting on the peruperu—the potato. My tīpuna from mai rānō actually were trading those peruperu—native potatoes—for generations and generations.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Put this in a book. Put it in a book.

Put it in a book. Nah, how about I just keep on going?

This side of the House managed to get things over the line that your Government couldn’t. The simple fact is—and when we actually go down the track: how many trade agreements have the Opposition gotten over the line? How many? How many? How many? How many? How many? How many? It’s been this side of the House, every single time, that’s had to seal the deal. The Opposition puts themselves out there as being the guys that are the champions of business. They’re the champions of the regions. The champions, champions, champions—but they can never get the deals over the line. Anyway, I digress.

I really want to turn to the applications of this CPTPPA on our region’s development. Before I came into this House, I’ve been a proud product of the Eastern Bay of Plenty. The kiwifruit industry is one of the backbones of our regional economy.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s very traditional.

It is. It’s a very traditional industry. My grandparents have been in it, and pretty much all of my family is. It’s a fantastic industry. I had the opportunity to participate and be a part of greenfield developments all up the East Coast.

Now, the thing is that the kiwifruit industry currently contributes $2.6 billion to New Zealand’s GDP, and in the Bay of Plenty that’s $867 million alone. Currently, the kiwifruit industry generates over 10,000 jobs in the Bay of Plenty, and approximately 2,500 of those jobs are held by Māori. The projections by 2030 are that our growth projections will be an additional 14,000 more jobs created in the Bay of Plenty, and Māori grower revenue is estimated to increase from $271 million to $638 million per year by 2030. Bay of Plenty Māori wages and salaries are set to double from $22.1 million to $52 million, an increase of approximately 135 percent. The CPTPPA will reduce tariffs by $26 million per annum. That has huge fiscal implications for our region that we share.

I briefly want to just pick up on some of the comments of the Hon Nanaia Mahuta in respect to Crown-Māori relations. There’s been a lot of commentary that the CPTPPA will undermine the Crown’s ability to give effect to its Treaty obligations. The Waitangi Tribunal, under urgency, found that the development of the Treaty exception clause, and its successful incorporation into the Singapore free-trade agreement and every free-trade agreement since, demonstrates leadership and is a credit to successive New Zealand Governments.

The issue before the tribunal was whether the Treaty exception clause was an effective protection, and their finding was that overall they concluded that the exception would be likely to operate in the prior TPPA substantially as intended. The exception, in the tribunal’s view, could be said to offer a reasonable degree of protection to Māori interests affected by the TPPA. Does that mean it’s perfect? No, it doesn’t. But what this Government has undertaken to do is to work closely with Māori in the evolution of these Treaty exception clauses moving forward.

I’m proud to be working with this Government, and I’m proud of the achievements made under the leadership of the Hon David Parker. I am pleased to commend this agreement to the House.

Motion agreed to.