O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I'm pleased as the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee to address this amendment bill in its second reading and to acknowledge first and foremost Minister David Parker's speech to the House. I think that while I will obviously speak to it as with other colleagues I thought it was a very good summation of what the bill is attempting to achieve and the purposes of free trade in New Zealand and across the Pacific.It'll be no surprise to the House that National supports this bill. We have always been strong and vocal proponents of free trade. As I've acknowledged—I suppose in this role but just as an MP—we have unfortunately particularly in the previous Parliament gone through a period where the bipartisan approach to trade was not occurring as this Government actually along with other agreements such as the TPP was also championing the likes of PACER-Plus. But I'm really pleased to see that the new Government's now on board.Look we are debating obviously the second reading. This is a bill that has returned from the select committee and if I could to start—well somewhat start seeing I'm already about a minute in—thank the members of the select committee for their work on this amendment bill and that organisation—only one organisation—that presented to the committee. So I think a little bit of context may be needed around that.Look fundamentally PACER-Plus is a free-trade agreement into the Pacific Islands. As you might anticipate PACER-Plus" is an acronym and it's for the "Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus". It involves currently 11 countries: obviously the Realm of New Zealand but working with Australia the Cook Islands Kiribati Nauru Niue Samoa the Solomon Islands Tonga Tuvalu and Vanuatu.Importantly there are other countries in the wing that are looking to come on board—the likes of Fiji Papua New Guinea the Federated States of Micronesia Palau and the Marshall Islands. I won't go through all the particular reasons why those countries have not yet signed up. Obviously it's first and foremost for them to make a decision but by and large they're just a bit further back in the process. But there's a hope I think not only here in New Zealand but through the other 10 countries within the PACER-Plus framework that they will come on board because ultimately this is a free-trade agreement aimed at assisting the Pacific and I'll touch on that a little bit further on. It is probably important for the House to note and perhaps for those listening at home that this is obviously a free-trade agreement. It is an agreement which requires domestic legislation in order to move through this House. So it is the prerogative of the executive—that is Cabinet—to decide and sign off on treaties and agreements. This is indeed a treaty that was signed actually in Tonga in about the middle of last year and in saying that I acknowledge Todd McClay the then Minister of Trade for his work in bringing in effect this agreement to where it is now. He had negotiated and worked with other parties and brought it to this House. A treaty is signed by the executive—that has been done. It's then referred to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee and a good few months ago we went through effectively a discussion with the public around what they thought of the treaty. In many ways it's a feeding back if you will on what the treaty has done. The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee has no powers if you will to change the treaty. Again that's negotiated by the Ministers of trade and others including perhaps sometimes the Minister of Foreign Affairs. But we listened to the public. We had a good number of submissions at that time and why I mention that is of course as I mentioned earlier this particular amendment bill only had the one submitter. But prior to that a good number of New Zealanders spoke by and large in favour—which is probably no surprise—of the agreement and of this free-trade deal. They saw it as something incredibly positive. Really importantly—and my impression is that it will be interesting for other speakers particularly those who sat on the committee—it was seen as being good for New Zealand of course; one would never act against the national interest. But those who were speaking to the committee spoke about the positivity as well that it's going to bring for the Pacific and not in the sense of it being something imposed but actually in their engagement often with existing traders into the Pacific and we should understand that those countries want a free-trade deal like this. They want to be involved and they see the benefits of this agreement. As you might appreciate seeing that this sits within the executive to make its decisions we as a committee heard what people thought about it. In fact this is almost unheard of but we returned to the House to have a full debate or a discussion really. There wasn't—well there is a little bit of resistance to this bill and depending on how we go on time we might mention the Greens. There's a little bit of resistance from them and look speaking as the chair of the select committee that's absolutely the prerogative of a political party or any individual MP to voice their opinion on these things. I think it's actually particularly healthy that an individual MP or a party or a member of Parliament within that can actually speak their mind without consequence. So I think that's positive.We came to the House and we discussed the merits of the agreement. However for the agreement an international treaty to come into effect the New Zealand House of Representatives—this Parliament—needs to pass a bill a piece of domestic legislation. So it's only a couple of pages long. Again I suppose I'm sharing this not so much for the benefit of members of the House as I'm sure they're up to speed on it but it is in some ways hopefully educative for the public that this 2½ pages of documentation—this bill—is not the free-trade agreement itself. It's simply the domestic legislation which enables this agreement this free-trade deal to come to pass. Look fundamentally what it's doing is facilitating free trade across the Pacific and it's doing it in a somewhat unique way. First and foremost it is prioritising New Zealand's aid into the Pacific—up to about 20 percent of our aid. That's nothing new. New Zealand has always focused its work into the Pacific and proudly so. I've had the pleasure particularly living in Fiji to see the benefit of that. While it's easy to talk about Pacific resets and so forth there wasn't really much to reset. New Zealand has always contributed substantially into the Pacific. But through PACER-Plus the intention is to not only provide aid for the services that we might think of—roads and hospitals and the like—but also ensure that our Pacific partners can develop in their trading abilities. So whether that's obviously helping them relook at their legislation and regulation around tariffs customs and excises; whether it's actually helping businesses to develop their skills—that's what PACER is aiming to do.I do know that the Green minority view—and I'm sure they will speak to it themselves if they take a call—is they sort of feel that it's not quite doing enough. Unfortunately I have quoted Voltaire at the Greens quite a few times but the message doesn't seem to be getting through. But you know "The perfect is the enemy of the good." This is a very good piece of legislation bringing a free-trade agreement into reality. I think it's something that the Pacific wants. When we heard from the submitters or the submitter in the singular on this bill—it was from the New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women who by and large were supportive but were obviously really keen particularly on how agreements like this will affect women. In many ways the committee felt by majority that that was important to hear. It's something obviously that foreign affairs need to engage with as it continues its work but it's not something that was needed in the bill. I suppose it's a somewhat political if not philosophical argument of just how far free-trade agreements can go. The long and the short of that is that people like myself see that a free-trade agreement is just that. It's about trade. It's not a vehicle or a back door to bring in every other treaty to deal with climate change rights as they're perceived by different groups. That's not the primary purpose. But I think really fundamentally and particularly speaking to the submitters from the federation it is important that through other mechanisms particularly in our unilateral bilateral and multilateral relationships into the Pacific we make sure that on issues affecting various groups—in this case they were focusing on women—we can have those conversations.So look I think it's a very good free-trade agreement. It's positive to see that after all these years we've engaged other countries around the world and we've finally been able to reach an agreement with our countries our friends here in the Pacific. I'm looking forward to this progressing again. My thanks to the Minister for his work acknowledging the previous Minister Todd McClay for his work there too. I look forward to it completing its second reading."