van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure this morning to rise on behalf of my colleagues in the ACT Party in support of the third reading of the United Kingdom free-trade agreement legislation bills. I'll start with the obvious: it's not often that ACT stands in this Chamber and says that we support the Government for legislation that's going through this House. Quite often in fact we find ourselves in severe opposition to the Government. But on the issue of free trade we are completely in support. And that's because ACT is the strongest proponent for free trade in this Parliament and we believe that free trade is important to everybody who lives in New Zealand. I want to take the time to congratulate the Minister for Trade and Export Growth the Hon Damien O'Connor for concluding this deal and getting it across the line for all New Zealanders who will benefit in the future. We are a very very small country in the scale of the world. We're a small but mighty nation but—Anna Lorck: That's right punch above our weight.BROOKE VAN VELDEN: We do—we do. We punch above our weight. But even if you look internationally at countries and people wanting to ship their goods to New Zealand we are at the end of the world. You know for shipping line companies we are literally at the end of the map when it comes to sending their cargo ships and container ships around the world to export and import goods across borders. We are the last port; we're on the edge of the limb. So for our Kiwi small businesses they do a lot of really really good work creating products that see boats and planes come in to New Zealand so that people have goods to export overseas. You know we're creating such amazing produce in New Zealand that people can't help but want to send their ship right to the end of the world to send something back to another country and I think that shows the pride that we can have in New Zealand businesses.But we should always as legislators be thinking how can we make life even easier and better for our small exporters. And we should always be looking at new markets where we can find export growth potential and ways to increase our market access and ways to increase the productivity of New Zealand businesses. And this means that we need to remove barriers as well for international exporters who want to come here because we need to look at the consumer part of this agreement too. It's not just exporters that will benefit; it's New Zealand consumers and we need to recognise that you know while we're ratifying this deal and we're looking for market access to grow for New Zealand exporters there will be the opportunity for market access to grow for importers. That is good for New Zealand consumers who will find that there are more goods on market in our New Zealand stores and that helps drop the price of goods at the supermarkets and throughout our economy too. It's also very important that while ratifying this deal we acknowledge that we're at a time in history where a lot of countries are becoming more insular and turning away from democracy and turning away from the rest of the world. The threats against democracy are unfortunately increasing and so we must do our best to seek out more like-minded countries that share our values that want to trade with us and do more to create more agreements that will see a benefit to New Zealand exporters a benefit to New Zealand consumers and a benefit for democratic values around the world. It's good that we've recently signed the EU free-trade agreement but there are parts of it that we don't agree with as a party. But on the whole we're very happy that it has been signed and we look forward to any future movement that we could see on a deal with India and a deal with the United States. This deal in particular the United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement is a deal that I think will benefit all New Zealanders with a liberal democratic country that we share an enormous history with. So we should be proud that we have signed this agreement. Every day thousands and thousands of New Zealanders get up and they provide jobs for other New Zealanders whether that's in beef or dairy fresh fruits goat meat sheep wood honey wine aluminium software—the list goes on and on. There are so many wonderful industries that exist within our country and these jobs provide stability to families they provide purpose to New Zealanders and they give pride for getting up in the morning—the ability to go to work have a job create wealth for the family and know that they can put food on their own table. But importantly it gives pride for people who can start a small business and know that they can grow that business to employ other people and give opportunity and purpose to other people in our society too. Our job in this Chamber is to make sure that we are walking alongside them in that growth and trying to find more opportunities and more jobs where people in New Zealand can succeed. And this free-trade agreement will allow businesses to grow it will allow for more opportunities and it will allow for more higher-paying jobs to be created. That can only be good for our exporters only good for our consumers and especially when our consumers are going through a cost of living crisis and everything is just getting more and more expensive. This bill will reduce tariffs and that will reduce the price that we pay for goods that come through the border—that's good for our New Zealanders. The ACT Party would go further than this United Kingdom free-trade agreement in removing tariffs because we believe that there are unnecessary tariffs that create increased costs for consumers across the border. You know we have around $200 million of tariffs that are currently imposed on countries throughout the world and people bringing their products into New Zealand every day. The ACT Party just says: what's the purpose of these? They're so small and insignificant in some cases but they're adding those extra few cents or extra a few dollars to a product that somebody wants to buy for no real purpose. So the ACT Party says that we should drop those and save New Zealanders approximately $200 million a year in costs. I think that would only be good for our economy for our productivity and for our New Zealand consumers. One part of this bill that I did want to touch on that the ACT Party really does support is the increase in the investment-screening threshold that we've seen increase from $100 million to $200 million for non-Government investors from the UK. This is an area that we as a party agree with and would like to see grow even further. And my colleague who's sitting next to me in the Chamber today Damien Smith had a member's bill—the Overseas Investment (Exempt Investment from OECD Countries) Amendment Bill. Now we would like to see more investment in New Zealand not just from the UK not just from people that we have this fair trade agreement with but throughout the OECD. And we should allow for more investment—more productivity more job creation through investment not just through this bill and the UK but throughout the OECD. And that's what my colleague's bill would have done. It's a shame that the Government didn't support this but there's always another opportunity to see the light. In conclusion this bill is good for Kiwi businesses. It's good for Kiwi consumers. And we commend it to the House.