Carter John: Tariff (New Zealand - Thailand Closer Economic Partnership) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Carter John: Tariff (New Zealand - Thailand Closer Economic Partnership) Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21395] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 I am just getting over a dose of if not the flu certainly a heavy cold but one of the things we can smell is the stench of the dying decaying Labour Government can we not? One can smell it in the House. I went through it in 1999 when it happened with the National Government. People could smell the decay around us. Well it has been transplanted across to the Government members. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Where’s that Don Brash—has he gone for his afternoon sleep? 
JOHN CARTER 
: The member who just resumed his seat is an absolute example of that—along with the Minister of Education whom I will talk about shortly in the context of this bill. He told us that he would fix all those things about having special preference for Maori and what has he done? He has done absolutely nothing. He told the country that he would fix it up. He said: “We’ll fix it. We’ll make sure it’s all even and all fair and that there’s no preference given.” What do we have in this agreement? We have special preference for Maori. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: No. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Oh the Minister says “No”. I will quote him shortly. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Read it. 
JOHN CARTER 
: I will. Let me just read something out: “It concerns me that article 15.8 reserves the right for New Zealand to adopt measures it ‘deems necessary to accord more favourable treatment to Maori …’.” It is in the agreement. The Minister should go and look. The Minister who has the race relations portfolio does not even know that that is in there. How disgraceful is that? 
First of all I want to talk about the positive sides to this agreement because there are some and I do want to congratulate the Minister for Trade Negotiations on making at least some gains. He is to be commended for that as are as has been said in this House previous Ministers who have done so. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: You’re too kind. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Well I do not think I could ever be said to be too kind but at least I am a reasonable person who will acknowledge that at least this agreement is a step forward. It is good to have trade agreements; there is no question about that. The National Party supports that concept absolutely and of course it supports this agreement apart from the fact that we have concerns about some parts of it. It is worth noting that currently only 4 percent of the goods that we export to Thailand are duty-free and on 1 July after this agreement takes effect 52 percent will be duty-free immediately. That is of huge value to our industries. 
The problem is that some of the qualifications in the agreement cause us concern. The first thing is the qualification that goods be free of chemicals which the Minister actually referred to in his address. That is a worry because growers in New Zealand will have to certify—we assume that this will happen; negotiations are still going on—that the goods being exported are free of chemicals. There is nothing wrong with doing that other than that the cost of gaining the certification is quite likely to be more than the cost of the tariffs that are currently imposed. So the growers themselves may not actually end up receiving any financial benefit out of this agreement at all. We will wait and see. 
But the second thing that worries me about this particular part of the agreement is that it has to be negotiated. Regarding the cost of negotiating and the time delays—although the Minister has tried to assure the House that it will happen rather rapidly—I have to say that the track record is not flash. If we look for example at the negotiations between New Zealand and Australia around apples we see that they certainly have not been rapid at all. Indeed in the last 6 years there has been no progress at all with regard to that matter. All that has happened is recently the Minister finally decided that we will refer the dispute between Australia and New Zealand over apples to the Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures for discussions. Well what does that mean? Absolutely nothing! Why does the Government not take the bull by the horns as National did on lamb tariffs when we were in Government and take the matter to the World Trade Organization to get it sorted out? The disputes process is there; let us just get it done. It worries me that if that is the track record of this Government in regard to trying to settle disputes what will happen when we are in the middle of negotiations on issues that this bill provides? I suggest that there will be delays and complications and as a consequence there will be significant costs to our growers. 
 One of the previous speakers from Labour talked about its track record in negotiating trade agreements. Well the only one that Labour has had any involvement with as a Government apart from this one was the Singapore agreement and all it had to do was sign the final piece of paper. To be fair the previous member who spoke acknowledged the work that had been done by my colleague Lockwood Smith in regard to the Singapore agreement. That work was all done under the National Government. Yet a previous Labour speaker—I think it was the member for Waimakariri whose name I cannot recall at the moment— 
Hon Member 
: Cosgrove. 
JOHN CARTER 
: Clayton Cosgrove claimed that Labour had a fine track record. Well actually when one looks at it one sees that the equivalent of Labour’s track record is a flat tyre on a vehicle that is broken down. That is about as good as it gets. 
This agreement is Labour’s first attempt and there are lots of qualifications in it. I say to the House that we need to be concerned about some of the conditions in this legislation that may well put different sorts of tariffs on our exporters. It is unfortunate that we have any qualifications at all. At least the Singapore agreement was clean done and end of story; it was just a straight trade agreement. CER was the same sort of thing. This agreement is a case of “Yes we can do it but with all sorts of ifs and buts.” and that is most unfortunate. 
I want to talk about the one part that does concern me as I said I would and I hope the Minister in charge is listening. It is the issue that appears in article 15.8. Why in the world do we have to have in a trade agreement an article that states that New Zealand reserves the right to adopt “measures it deems necessary to accord more favourable treatment to Maori … including in fulfilment of its obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi.”? I ask Parliament why that clause is in an international trade agreement. It mystifies me. I asked that question during the first reading and no one was able to give me a reasonable answer. 
I wondered whether it is because some of the fruit that Maori grow is different but I do not think it is. I do not think the apples that Maori grow are different colours from other apples. I would not have thought so. I am sure the apples are the same varieties and the same colours as the apples that non-Maori grow and export to Thailand. I am sure they are the same so why would Maori need preferential treatment? I cannot think why. Maybe the cherries are different. Maybe the blush is a different colour or something. I do not know why. But it really mystifies me as to what the advantages are to this country and to the Maori people in having that clause in the legislation. The Thai people I am sure do not know what the Treaty of Waitangi is. I doubt whether they have ever heard of it actually—well one or two of them will have heard of it now because it is in this agreement. It is a real mystery. 
This Government 12 months or so ago gave this country an absolute assurance that there would be no more preferential treatment and that all those kinds of clauses would go. Trevor Mallard the Minister in charge of that said: “Forget about it. You don’t need to worry about it. This Government’s got it under control.” and here we are signing an international agreement that puts it back under the spotlight. Quite honestly the Government needs to explain—and I hope the Minister in charge of the bill will do so during the course of the Committee stage—why that particular provision has to be in this sort of legislation and in these sorts of agreements. It actually does this country no good in my view. 
National members look forward to the debate in the Committee stage and we will explore some of these clauses more closely during that debate.