Coates BarryBARRY COATES (Green): Thank you for calling me to speak on this bill the Trade (Anti-dumping and Countervailing Duties) Amendment Bill. As anyone who has seen the Commerce Committee report from this process would know the Opposition parties are deeply opposed to this bill. There was considerable discussion during the select committee stage and I commend our chair for allowing full discussion. I think we had a decent interchange of views. However during that process I think I came to the conclusion that this bill was even worse and more dangerous than I thought at the beginning of the process.Let me run through a few of the reasons why. Firstly it is not clear what the problem is that we are trying to solve here. Is the problem that we are having a Christchurch rebuild and we need to avoid the fact that there may be countervailing duties on dumped goods in New Zealand at least partly because the Government is not cracking down on cartels in the construction industry? Is that the problem? No—actually already that problem can be dealt with under existing legislation and it is being dealt with now. So the rationale for this bill is absolutely called into question.A second issue is: who wants this bill? Australia looked at the idea of this public interest test and it rejected it. Certainly from submitter after submitter after submitter New Zealand business does not want this agreement. Export New Zealand does not want it the Employers and Manufacturers Association does not want it. Exporters manufacturers horticulturalists and companies adding value to our economy do not want this bill.You know all we are going to be left with if we keep on decimating our manufacturing and value-adding businesses is commodities and services. So our economy will look like dodgy education services that are completely unregulated and resulting in Indian students getting victimised by our failure of regulation. We are going to be having foreign trusts that are hiding money in tax havens here. We are going to have real estate financial engineering and flipping McDonald's burgers—but where is the manufacturing going to be? Where are the jobs going to come from? Where is the value-add of businesses going to come from in the New Zealand economy? If we keep on having measures like these anti-dumping provisions that are included in this bill then we are going to drive the remainder of New Zealand's value-adding industry out of this country. That would be a shockingly bad outcome of this bill. We think the Government is going in entirely the wrong direction in this bill. It is a big tough world out there. People will take advantage of us and dump their goods in New Zealand markets. We have to be aware of the threat of them doing that. I think the third issue then is why oppose the imposition of a public interest test at all? I would like to quote from one of the submissions. This is the submission from the New Zealand Flower Growers Association. It says: We reject that there is a need to tilt the playing field in favour of dumped or subsidised goods from overseas against local manufacturers. We consider that small manufacturers and producers are less able to present a strong voice to Government departments on these issues." It concludes in saying: "This means that 97 percent of the businesses in New Zealand who are SMEs will not be able to have protection from anti-dumping." This is the kind of thing that this Government is introducing in this bill and it is the wrong kind of regulation. If I might be quite specific about a few of the points: firstly the approach that is being adopted is unfair in its fundamental approach. It is unfair to a domestic manufacturer to say: "Oh gee we're going to let somebody compete unfairly against you because there is a short-term consumer benefit." That is not a fair solution to those manufacturers. It is like saying "I'm sorry. Let's just wait till predatory pricing comes in from any business." This is a licence to foreign business to practise predatory pricing against New Zealand manufacturers. Once they do and they have driven that business out of existence then they can raise their prices. This is not a sensible bill to introduce for New Zealand. It allows us to be gamed by other companies and it means that our businesses and New Zealand cannot compete fairly.Secondly and this sounds like a minor point but there are deep and fundamental failings in the methodology that would be applied to this public interest test. We have heard that there are eight factors to consider but those factors are so vague that they do not do what is precisely required which is to balance the real costs and benefits of this decision not only in the short term but in the long term and dynamically across the whole economy. It is as we have heard an unfair and complex test. We went back to officials time and time again and said: "How are you going to do this? What is the quantification of this thing?". We did not hear any satisfactory answers as to how they are going to quantify these factors. What you will have is a series of qualitative judgments that will not stand any rigorous test and certainly not stand any rigorous test in a court.Additionally the methodology suffers because it is only a partial look. What we heard about the methodology is it does not include a dynamic situation where you might have a manufacturer that was trying to grow a business and it was being compared with consumer welfare from allowing a foreign manufacturer to dump products at below their price. What you lose is the jobs. But you do not lose them for one period you lose what happens to the benefits from that company adding value employing New Zealanders having spin-off businesses building a supply base and having the dynamic base to the New Zealand economy that we desperately need and we have lost too much of.The third issue is that we quizzed the officials on what was the fundamental methodology that you would use in order to compare the consumer surplus with the loss of New Zealand jobs and New Zealand value-add and what we heard back was an analysis that they would use Treasury to do a kind of consumer welfare argument. What they said was: "Well we can't ever imagine a situation where the consumer welfare wouldn't be greater than the loss of New Zealand's value-add." What effectively the model is saying is that it is going to elevate the short-term benefits to consumers for buying canned peaches at a slightly cheaper price to the viability of the fruit industry for New Zealand over a long period of time.That kind of failing in the methodology is really fundamental to this bill. It should not proceed. The Green Party thoroughly opposes this bill. We entered a joint minority view which eventually got integrated into the report of the committee. We think that it would be deeply unfair to New Zealand companies to continue with this bill. We welcome the new Minister Jacqui Dean. There is still time for her to listen to reason not only to the Green Party—God forbid that she should listen to the Green Party—she should at least be listening to New Zealand business. She should at least be listening to small and medium sized enterprises that are being driven out of business by this stupid policy.I am sorry to put this strongly but we do feel strongly about this. We feel strongly that New Zealand business should have a fair opportunity to grow their businesses in New Zealand and that we should not be penalising our local businesses that are being predated by foreign companies. We should offer them the kind of protection under anti-dumping law which is our right. With that we thoroughly oppose this bill. Thank you."