Groser Tim: New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement Bill — In Committee 
Groser Tim: New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17344] 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 First of all I acknowledge amongst the Government’s advisers the presence of my former colleague Dr David Walker. I congratulate him and his team on the assiduous effort they have put in over a number of years to produce this agreement which I described yesterday—and outside the House—as of potentially historic importance to New Zealand’s long-term trading prospects. 
Today as we go through the Committee stage I will start by addressing some of the arguments against the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement and I will start with the political case against it—the linkage with human rights—which I think is very important. Some other arguments of an economic character which I think are fairly weak arguments have been used but obviously in terms of the broader public debate and the media attention it was the linkage with human rights issues that attracted attention. It is important to have some commentary around that to put it into perspective. 
In this respect it is important to define what the difference is for the two main parties and I am sure for some of the smaller parties. The issue is not about the primacy of human rights. I do not want to get involved in a philosophical discussion about where in the hierarchy of human needs human rights stand vis-à-vis things like poverty elimination. The underlying reality is that members of this House are absolutely at one on the absolute importance of proper respect for human rights. I think we would all also have the view that the human rights situation in China is far from perfect. So that is not the issue; the issue is whether we should therefore have turned away at the last minute from this trade agreement because that record is not perfect. On that we have taken the view on this side of the House as has the Government that that would have been a catastrophic strategic misjudgment. 
I want to explain in my own language why I think that is the case. On the first point there is another debate there about New Zealand interests. I cannot recall which great diplomat of the past said this but it might have been Talleyrand: “If you don’t look after your country’s interests no one else will.” But that is not the point we are discussing today. We are discussing whether it is even remotely plausible that not proceeding to trade with a country—and a free-trade agreement is simply a mechanism for accelerating trade between two countries so it does not differ intrinsically from the concept of trading with a country—would in some sense help the position on human rights. 
When we start to drill down into this argument we come across I think a position that is completely implausible. First of all I doubt that there is a country in the world—no doubt including our own—that does not have in some dark corner of the closet some issue in respect of human rights that we would rather not hear about and that would not stand up to close international scrutiny. Fortunately we live in a country where such issues would be few and far between but I am sure that they exist according to the views of many people. So if we were to take the view that we should not form free-trade areas or find other avenues for accelerating trade with countries that have a less than perfect human rights record what would we really be doing? 
For a start I would argue that we would be excluding trade with all developing countries because in some generalised sense it is probably fair to say that few developing countries—as much because of the greater problems of poverty and want that face them at this stage in their development—have a larger measure of problems in terms of human rights than others. We would then turn round and say: “Well what about Australia?”. No doubt there would be people who would stand up and say that they did not think too much of the apology that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made to the first people of Australia and that we should therefore pull out of the CER free-trade agreement. We might go systematically through all the countries of the world and find that actually there is nobody who meets our high standards and that we should therefore not trade with them. That is the first issue. When we drill down into it I think we come up with a completely implausible position. It is essentially an argument for economic autarchy. 
The second aspect of this putting aside New Zealand’s interests is the question of whether it is even likely that this is the right way to advance human rights. I think then that we have to come down to a view that says this: every country that has gone through stages of development has had serious problems in terms of human rights. We can take our children—or in my case grandchildren—to the Tower of London we can go to see the torture chamber and we can find that this of course is now an object of tourist delight. Well we know that it was not put into the Tower of London as an object of tourist delight and that inside the political antecedents of our very own country are torture gross abuse lack of habeas corpus and the lack of the fundamental freedoms that underwrite a decent society such as we have in this country. So all countries have had this in their past or their derived past if you will. 
The idea that we can somehow suddenly achieve the standard of excellence that some submitters expect in one hit—and only when that standard has been achieved will they be in a moral position fit for a free-trade agreement with New Zealand—is frankly not only ludicrous when one drills down into the practicalities of it but also representative of a fundamental misunderstanding about how this all-important issue of human rights is advanced in the real world. Although I would never want to buy into the argument that in some sense human rights are a relative issue and cannot be divorced from the state of economic development I think it is stretching all the empirical evidence to suggest that there is no linkage between higher levels of economic development and increasing respect for international trade. 
I have never been a believer in trade embargoes not just because of New Zealand’s interests but because I fundamentally do not believe that they work. I have often used the following example. Nobody could think of a more extreme trade embargo to achieve political objectives than the American trade embargo on Cuba that has been in place since around 1957—for over 50 years. At the time when Castro took over power American trade was responsible for 90 percent of Cuba’s exports but there has been a trade embargo ever since. I have always taken the view that if Fidel Castro is a God-fearing man—and he may well be because my understanding is that he was brought up by Catholics and may now be returning to that stage in life where he starts to be a God-fearing man—I would argue that he should be down on his knees every day of his life to thank God for the American trade embargo. I do not believe for one minute that he would be in power if the Americans had overrun Cuba with McDonald’s franchises investment American tourists and American trade. That is why I am deeply sceptical about trade embargoes for political reasons.