Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I stand once again as the lone voice in this House maintaining a principled opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (CPTPPA) and to this legislation which essentially implements one and the same agreement.I carry with a heavy heart the voices of the majority of New Zealanders who voted last election for political parties in opposition to this deal and the overwhelming majority of those who turned up to the treaty examination process before the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee to the bill's forum before the select committee opposing this deal. We are a small nation. We need trade and the Green Party is all for trade that serves the interests of New Zealanders and addresses the pressing concerns of our time. We don't support a deal that marries our nation to a failed neo-liberal global order that Kiwis voted against this election. We were promised a transformed deal. We were told over and over again by the coalition parties that this was changed—that our democracy our human rights our workers' rights and our Treaty of Waitangi were now protected—and that all of those risks had vanished and it turned out that that was mostly spin. We found out all too late that even the most egregious threat to our democracy the provisions in this deal that provide for a system sitting above our law giving foreign multi-national corporates the right to sue our lawmaking body—if we legislate in the interests of New Zealand over their profit margins even the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in respect to the investor chapter remain exactly the same.So our ability to adopt transformative progressive change for New Zealand is under threat. There's good reason we don't let business sue the Government to protect its profits because health policy education policy and environmental policy should focus on providing the best hospitals and schools and protecting our natural environment not protecting the profits of an elite few. But that's exactly what we're giving away to foreign corporates today. They can hold these privileges over us and over future Governments. That's chilling. The only real change in respect of the ISDS clauses—and we've been told there's been all of this real change—is that a few member States have signed side agreements saying that their corporates their investors won't access this. And we've been told over and over again that this includes Australia—that's 80 percent of our trade—but we know that multinational corporations can use their bases anywhere to sue us. Australia itself found that out when it was sued by Philip Morris using its Singaporean base. That could happen here and it doesn't even need to happen; it's the fact that they hold that risk over our necks. What's particularly chilling as a Green is that in 85 percent of cases around the world where similar provisions have been used to stop progressive policy it's been to stop environmental protections. Yesterday I proposed a change that would require at least a mitigation of this risk that at least if new members are about to join this agreement our Government would require them to sign side agreements. That was declined. The Government has said that it won't be entering any new trade agreements that include ISDS clauses an admission of the risk that these provisions do pose to us. So why not start now? At this moment in global history can we really afford to give primacy to the profit margins of multinational corporations over the threat of climate change?In fact this agreement if we're talking about trade isn't all that much about trade—the trade of goods and services which is what most people would think. I think most New Zealanders would be shocked to find that the overwhelming majority of the 6000 pages of this agreement are not about trade; they are about protecting the privileges of multinationals. They allow them in this data-driven economy that we live in today to hold their data offshore to opt out of our privacy law. New Zealand has agreed not to regulate future unknown technologies. Who does that serve and what does it have to do with trade?Why are we buying into a system that has been proven to be dangerously deregulated causing the incredible loss of the last global financial crisis? Even the protections that we did get these changes that came via the suspended provisions one of which is to protect Pharmac's ability to regulate prices and quality of medicine in New Zealand—even that we've been told by officials in the select committee could go if new members join. Another one of my proposed changes was to bring the agreement back to the select committee if new member States are going to join so that we will know the terms they are joining on. That was declined. So today this House is signing up to give up its parliamentary oversight of something as important as Pharmac.Why are we upholding such a corrupt financial system that we have promised we would move away from? We have been told that the agreement is progressive and comprehensive because it has some workers' rights and some environmental protections included in it already and I do want to address that because those provisions are expressed in such vague such opaque terms that they have proven unenforceable. Again around the world where exactly the same provisions have been in trade agreements and people have tried to use them to protect workers' rights or the environment in 48 cases only four have been successful. They are different to the detailed enforceable hard-law nature of the investor protections and we know that. That is why this deal has faced such overwhelming opposition around the world an outpouring of people on the street here in New Zealand.We know that the EU member nations don't agree to trade agreements like this. They don't agree to ISDS clauses because their human rights protections their commitment to climate action sits above this kind of trade law and they won't enter it. New Zealand should be placing itself among those nations who are seeking to find a fair way to trade.Our hope and intention as the Green Party is that trade agreements like the TPPA or the CPTPPA—trade agreements that require this kind of legislation—don't happen again that this is the last of its kind. I will be working to introduce changes that require trade to be fair and require trade agreements to be entered into in a transparent and democratic way in future. They should be contingent on our ability to protect human rights combat climate change and do right by tangata whenua.We need to make trade fair fit to serve our 21st century purpose and concerns with all the lessons of that failed neo-liberal system. But sadly today with this bill we are passing no ordinary trade law; we are giving up our democratically mandated sovereignty in this Parliament giving it up to multinational corporates. Thank you.