Tabuteau Fletcher: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: General Debate[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7209. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): The arrogance of it all—it defies the mind. What Mr English failed to mention to this House was that most of those trade gains were on our trajectory anyway. We were going to get there anyway. He is talking about removing trade barriers. What a joke. What an absolute joke. The joke is that if it was just about trade we would be laughing at the incompetence of certain members on this side of the House and saying what a sad deal. But it is not just about trade it goes well beyond that. It goes into non-trade issues and it is those issues—it is those very important issues—that are never spoken about and never get mentioned in the media sound bites. It is just unbelievable and it is arrogant.This Government—all of those loud members over there—promised New Zealanders that this would be a gold-standard trade deal. Those members said it would absolutely be in the best interests of all New Zealanders. I hate to break it to them but this is not the case.Instead what we have seen for example are years of secret discussions behind closed doors and we have a Minister openly admitting to all New Zealanders that he has yet to see the full text of the trade document. He is about to sign a blank cheque. It just does not make sense. If that is not the height of arrogance I do not know what is. The public has not been permitted to see it and yet 480 or 85 percent of US authors of this trade agreement were senior corporate executives or representatives from industry lobby groups. The Minister of Trade and the Prime Minister have been taken for a ride by big corporates.Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh! Here we go.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: I think to be fair Mr Brownlee I think the Prime Minister wanted to be taken for that ride—he was on the bus from the start no worries whatsoever. But to be fair to Mr Groser I do not think that he wanted to be on that bus. I think that Mr Groser was outsmarted by people who had agendas bigger than him. They had agendas bigger than this country and certainly bigger than individual New Zealanders within it.And yet has anyone noticed today that any dissent and any words suggesting that the world is not flat are to be scoffed at. I can see in Mr Groser’s head now: “These people are the unwashed! The intelligentsia know what they are doing. Trust us.”—he is saying—“Trust us.” Even now we are expected to trust this Minister—the man who has agreed to sign something he has not seen. He is literally signing a blank cheque on behalf of us all.I cannot let these backbench members forget the investor-State dispute settlement clause. [Interruption] They scoff but they seem to forget that it is a secret tribunal run by corporate lawyers with no ability to appeal. Workers environmentalists human rights advocates and even Governments themselves do not get that special privilege so why do big corporates need it? Top experts from around the world in law and economics are pushing to drop the investor-State dispute settlement provision and so are other Governments and New Zealand First is at the charge of that call in this country today.This Minister has signed a trade deal that is about so much more than just trade. Many of the numbers that we have been given would have come to pass anyway. They are undermining Pharmac they are undermining homeownership in New Zealand and they are undermining this nation’s sovereignty. Thank you very much.