Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. Sometimes words just cannot convey the situation. All you can do is facepalm. Surely this is the definition of futility. The day after Trump is elected National is passing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. You could not write this stuff. It encapsulates what a failure and a farce this entire 7-year process has been. The Government never carried the public. It never carried Māoridom. It never got the significant tariff reductions it was promising. It never got the copyright balance only the cost. It never got a guarantee on Pharmac. It never got a good deal on investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS). Then it did not get a President who could ratify the treaty. What we did get though is a movement—a movement opposed to putting corporate rights above citizens' rights a movement standing up for the environment a movement that said: Yes we must keep trading but not at any cost and not in any deal that benefits corporate rights over citizens' rights." What we got was an alternative vision—a vision that rejects letting kids go hungry but buying Saudi sheep farms in the desert; a vision that rejects letting tens of thousands of people sleep rough on the streets and in cars and in garages but spends on expanding a casino; a movement that rejects letting people shiver in their homes afraid to turn on the heating so we can subsidise Rio Tinto an oil company. It was a movement—a vision—a growing sense of hope. It was an affirmation that we can have a fair society—a country that gives everyone a fair go—and we can have a clean environment and a richer New Zealand. This Government has spent 7 years invested in this trade deal and the secrecy of the process. It does not have any eggs in other baskets. We need to learn some lessons. Firstly we need to tell our officials who negotiate these deals and the politicians who try to negotiate them that in 2016 we cannot do secrecy as a way to negotiate these global deals. We cannot put corporate rights above citizens' rights. You cannot ignore things like climate change which as Barry Coates pointed out was not mentioned once in the 6000 pages. If we are going to have these so-called modern trade deals we cannot do them in secrecy we cannot keep the people down and we cannot ignore the environment—because what happens is the second lesson which is what you see when you look at Trump and when you look at Brexit. Trump is an odious hateful figure but he is also a real vehicle for the real disaffection the alienation and the marginalisation that result from an economic system that has thrown people on the scrap heap burdened a whole generation with debt and locked them out of homeownership. These people are crying out for solutions and sadly they are looking in some of the strangest places to find them. Surely this must be the lesson. We cannot keep running systems of which the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) was perhaps the most symbolic vehicle for this neo-liberal revolution which has not worked. It has not worked for the people and it has been roundly rejected. I hope that the Government can be a little introspective and look at what the failure was. The solutions are staring it in the face. We can house our people we can feed our people we can clean up our rivers we can reduce pollution and we can grow jobs but it is going to happen by working together not by putting the corporate rights above the rights of the citizens and not by allowing corporations to sue Governments if they try to regulate to protect the environment. It is not going to happen that way. It is going to happen through working together and that is what we saw on the streets. The Green Party has been working for 7 years since before it was popular—for 7 years we have had a clear position against this type of trade deal. We have set out an alternative process for what fair trade deals could look like. We know that New Zealand as a country cannot trade with just ourselves—as one of our Prime Ministers once said—but we have to do it fairly. We have to do it in the national interest. We have to do it in the public interest. That is what we will be articulating because what we see in this farce of passing the TPPA law the day after Trump was elected is that we are crying out for a new way. We need to change the Government."