Tanczos Nandor: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tanczos Nandor: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2007. Volume:642;Page:11737. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party opposed this bill at first reading and we will continue to oppose the bill. It seems to us that a number of concerns that we raised at the first reading have not been addressed by the select committee in any way. Mr Hayes presented the bill as a modest and benign measure and one that was well overdue. The Green Party thinks we should have another look at what it is actually about. As has been said the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency exists to protect foreign investors from the risks associated with investing in developing countries. So the idea is that New Zealand and other countries put up capital to cover the insurance for those corporations. It seems they do not have to buy their own insurance; we buy it for them. It costs us around $9 million to belong to the agency and it is not the only agency of the World Bank that provides this kind of guarantee; there are other examples of a similar kind of operation. 
What interests the Greens is that the agency does have a set of guidelines for the projects where it will guarantee investment and it is supposed to cover things like human rights environmental issues and social issues. But a recent investigation by the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman of the World Bank—the agency’s parent body—strongly criticised the agency for its involvement in projects where it had guaranteed the investor but had been completely negligent about addressing the other issues that it is supposed to give regard to such as human rights issues the environmental record and the social effects on the host community. The Green Party is very strongly of the view that our aid money should not be going to support an agency that performs as negligently as that. 
 My co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons spoke in the first reading about a number of examples in order to highlight the issue. She mentioned that the agency insured investment in a copper and silver mining project in Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The audit of that project concluded that the risks to the local communities in terms of the human rights impacts were not adequately considered. It appears that the mining company that the agency insured apparently provided logistical support to the Congolese army during a violent counter-offensive to suppress a small-scale uprising. According to the United Nations as many as 100 civilians were killed during the military offensive which was supported by that multinational company. That incident was investigated by the World Bank. 
There does not seem to be any process whereby the guaranteeing agency investigates the effects of the investment projects it is insuring and guaranteeing. It seems pretty clear that those effects were negative in terms of human rights and the safety and well-being of those local people. 
Essentially we have an organisation that doles out our money to foreign investment companies to guarantee them against the local risks of investing in countries where they hope to make a great deal of money. That agency does not even bother to investigate—as it is supposed to—whether the projects it is supporting will be good for the local community at all. 
Let me reiterate that the audit of the agency was not done by some radical Third World non-governmental organisation but by an official of the World Bank. The World Bank found that the agency was not living up to its responsibilities not taking due care and not giving due diligence to projects. The conclusion we have to reach is that the agency is there simply to facilitate profit making regardless of the effects and impacts on the local community. The Green Party will vote against this bill once again. We cannot support a bill that claims to be about benefiting developing countries but that offers us no surety at all in that regard.