SpeechHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Oh Mr Speaker what a shocking speech that was. I'm not even sure—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): You can do Madam Speaker" if you like.Hon NATHAN GUY: Madam Speaker. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Thank you.Hon NATHAN GUY: Sorry. I'm not even sure that that member even read the bill. He was obviously working off the talking points that had been given to Labour MPs. It's really interesting to hear this morning that Government members are taking very short calls on this bill and I'm not sure why. I think it's because they're quite embarrassed to be supporting this bill.On this side of the House National have real concerns about process about World Trade Organization (WTO) potential implications about the number of submitters that we had opposed to it and all of the Zoom sessions that we had to have through a recess period is not ideal. It's not good democracy. If the Government was serious about this bill and supporting the Minister you would have thought that they would have wanted to have a fair and balanced select committee process. So let's just recap. This was part of an urgency motion following Budget 2020 on 14 May. Then the Environment Committee—and I heard the Rt Hon David Carter give a very good speech earlier on saying why on earth would it have been instructed to go to the Environment Committee when really this bill should have been heard like all other forestry bills by the Primary Production Committee. So that's the first question mark.The second one was that the clerk then had to open up submissions on 15 May. Would you believe; they closed at midnight 21 May! Six days to allow one of our biggest export sectors to be able to submit on this bill. It went through a weekend. Isn't that an atrocious process for this Parliament? It's no wonder heads are down on the Government benches when I say that. Six days for submissions! There were 640 submissions received; only 11 opposed. Why on earth would the Government want to be forcing this bill through now ahead of the election? There's been very good questions raised by this side of the House this morning but none of those questions have been answered by the Government benches. And for the Minister to come in and imply that all foresters—whether they are small-block owners whether they're large exporters—are cowboys is an insult. It's a bit like when Shane Jones stood out here on the forecourt of Parliament addressing thousands of farmers that marched through the streets of Wellington worried about forestry hollowing out rural communities. What does Shane Jones say to those people? "You're a bunch of rednecks." Actually he didn't have the guts to say that on the steps of Parliament; he said that afterwards to a little media scrum. So for Shane Jones to carry on with his rhetoric and say that pretty much the forestry industry is full of cowboys is a real insult. What this basically does is set up the framework for the Minister to be able to tinker through regulations to restrict logs being exported to support domestic supply. Now in my mind that's going back to the 1970s or 1980s where the Government is meddling in a free market. We don't agree. That doesn't sit comfortably with us on this side of the House and that didn't sit comfortably with those hundreds of submitters. The other aspect that is really fascinating. Remember prior to this bill the Minister was out there sort of spruiking the industry that he wanted to bring in a tax on raw log exports. So what happened is he got some very short and sharp advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and a lot of it was redacted when it went out as part of this process to submitters. What it basically said is if you put—not you Madam Speaker but if the Minister or the Government puts a tax on raw logs they'll be hauled in front of the WTO. So the Minister backed away from that talked to his officials and he thought: how actually can I restrict export supply to support and prop up domestic mills? So this is the halfway house this bill. This sets up the framework to allow the Minister to set the regulations to restrict supply through export logs to benefit those domestic mills. I have some real concerns about that because in my mind that will mean that the New Zealand Government will be hauled in front of the WTO. Now I heard Vangelis Vitalis who is one of our best trade negotiators currently working at MFAT highly ranked highly regarded around the world. I heard him give an address at the meat sector conference in May 2018—this is way before COVID. He said it's been the worst rise in trade protectionism in 2018 in 23 years. Let's fast forward that now. COVID's upon the world. There's more protectionism happening around the world that's going to make it way more difficult for our exporters to actually be match fit and compete against other countries. So there's a high level of uncertainty amongst the forestry sector that this bill has the potential to be hauled in front of the WTO.Just in that example alone there were 400 new protection measures in the month of May 2018. There's hundreds more. There's thousands more that we are now having to deal with. Now the cost for the wider agriculture sector from these non-tariff barriers is $6 billion a year. It's higher than that now. That's what the industry is facing. Now the National Government brought in the free-trade agreement with Korea. Ninety percent of forestry exports are tariff-free. The 10 percent outside of that are going to be eliminated over the next nine years. That's a fantastic free-trade agreement.This one is going to put sand in the cogs and slow down an open New Zealand economy that we rely on. We're going to rely on our exports more than ever. Our forestry exports our dairy exports our meat exports our horticulture exports are going to help to pull the plough for the New Zealand Government to get the debt down and get our economy growing again. This bill is not going to help that. It's not going to help that one iota. I also want to talk about—I was the one that raised it in the select committee and said let's get MFAT officials in and the chair said "Oh no. No—no." Admittedly I raised it on the last day that we were deliberating. So the chair said "No. Not good due process." and I sort of took that on the chin. But I said to the chair and the rest of the committee "Why can't we get MFAT in after the bill's been deliberated on?" That's fair enough in my mind. That was fair enough in the National Party's approach on our side of the committee—"Let's get MFAT in to understand what they think about this bill." We were blocked. We were blocked every step of the way. We had advice from MPI trade and I know MPI trade officials; they're very good. But we didn't hear from MFAT trade officials who I think would have given us a different view and their concerns about this bill. So we've got a lot of questions. If the Government wants to carry on pushing this through we'll have hundreds of questions that we're going to put to the Minister in the chair. And actually the last period of time where it's been good interaction with the Ministers in the chair and the Opposition I commend. So I'm hopeful that we'll have a good engagement if the Government wants to forge ahead in this.Just in the last few seconds I have National doesn't support this bill. We've got grave concerns about it. It was interesting to hear the Minister say that after the election it's likely that politicians will want to restrict the ability of forest investors to expand their holdings into productive farmland. That's a nod that Shane Jones and Damien O'Connor and James Shaw are getting a huge amount of pressure. I welcome that debate. Actually we should be having it now not after the election. It will come up in the election campaign. We want to make sure that farmers and foresters get a fair go and this bill does nothing to help them."