Hipkins ChrisCHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka): I would just like to begin by reminding the member who resumed his seat Todd Muller that Government Ministers every day undertake complex negotiations across a range of activities that then require legislative endorsement by the House. I will give him an example one that I know he will be very familiar with. Ministers across successive Governments negotiated with the dairy industry for example to create Fonterra. It then required ratification by the Parliament through a legislative process. To say that Ministers could not undertake complex negotiations simply because they required ratification by the House through a legislative process afterwards is somewhat of a straw man to build up only to then knock it down. That is simply not relevant in this particular case.Globalisation is not a Government policy; it is happening whether we like it or not. That is the truth. That is the reality. But how Governments respond to globalisation matters a great deal because globalisation does not belong to corporations; it belongs to people. Actually what we are seeing around the world now—in popular democracy around the world—is a rebellion by voters who feel that the globalisation agenda has been taken away from them and given to others. We saw it in the Brexit decision where voters in the UK rose up because they felt that they were being left behind and that their voices were not being heard. We saw it in the United States where Donald Trump was elected off the back of a backlash—a backlash against elected elites who the voters felt were no longer serving their interests. The promise of democracy is an empowered and informed citizenry and the level of secrecy that goes with some of these international negotiations does cut against that. I simply remind members who are opposed to the idea of more transparency around these negotiations that agreements that are entered into undemocratically can be exited from undemocratically. We are seeing that at the moment. Think about agreements on climate change. Think about other agreements that people who might not sign up to a trade agenda might sign up to. There should be transparency around those and there should be scrutiny of those. The solutions to many of the challenges that we face as a people as a global people are multilateral ones not unilateral ones. We cannot resort to the certainties of past solutions that are no longer relevant in the current world. We do have to be part of the multilateral globalisation debate and we have to be part of the process. But we have to ensure that we engage with that on our terms and that we make sure we are being responsive to the needs of our people in the process. People are being left behind in the current processes around globalisation. Corporations are being put ahead of people. It is unsustainable and as a result we are seeing a backlash from voters around the world. New Zealand is not immune from that. If we are not responsive to that if we do not ensure that Parliament becomes more responsive to the needs of the voters then we will face exactly the same backlash. The New Zealand Parliament is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the process of governing in this country where more and more decisions are being made by a handful of Ministers away from the public eye with very little scrutiny. I think we have to make Parliament more relevant to the process of governing. Globalisation and multilateral agreements are increasingly becoming more and more important in the way that we are going to solve the complex problems of the future. So yes I believe that there should be more parliamentary scrutiny of those multilateral agreements. I do not think that that somehow means the world is going to end and that we are not going to be able to go out and negotiate with the world in good faith. Of course we will be able to but ultimately Parliament should be debating those things and Parliament ultimately should be ratifying them. That is what we would do if the Government entered into certain contractual arrangements. Think of the aged-care sector. The Government negotiated a very complex deal there with people working in the aged-care sector and we are legislating to ratify that at the moment. That does not mean Government Ministers could not negotiate in good faith. They did and Parliament is now debating it and will legislate to make it happen. We can do that with multilateral agreements too. I do not necessarily agree with the exact design of this bill but I absolutely agree with the basic principle that Parliament should be applying much greater scrutiny to the multilateral agreements that we are entering into. Parliament should be relevant in this process not a handful of Ministers. We live in a democracy; we do not live in an elected dictatorship. If voters start to feel that they live in an elected dictatorship that is when we will see some of the very unpredictable results that other countries are experiencing at the moment.