Shaw James: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 24 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7083. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I would like to start by acknowledging again the hard work of the public servants and negotiators who have put a lot of time and effort over the last many years into concluding this deal. Regardless of what we think of the deal I think that they all deserve recognition for the hard work that they have done on behalf of the country. Again I also want to acknowledge Mark Mitchell for his role as chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. He gave a great deal of time to Opposition concerns most particularly about the investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms and the concerns of the public about those and other concerns to do with that. So I do appreciate the process. For the most part I think it has been a good process that has got us here today.One of the things that I keep coming to is the fact that we have a series of concerns about a number of the measures that are contained—or in fact are not contained—in the Korean free-trade agreement that are in the words of the Minister of Trade earlier in the context of general trade policy and are showing up here in this agreement and also in other agreements; both those that we have already signed and ones that we are currently negotiating.I would like to respond to Mr Shearer’s concern that the Green Party has a high bar for signing trade agreements. It is true that we have high standards for these and that so far we have not yet seen a trade agreement that meets those standards. One of the things that we have a real concern about is that for a number of these agreements although they have language around for example human rights labour standards and environmental standards those conditions are non-binding and unenforceable. For example I think somebody referred to the ASEAN agreement earlier today. That does have some language in it about environmental standards but the commission that is supposed to meet to discuss those has never actually met in the entire time that the ASEAN agreement has been in place—but obviously trade has continued.I want to give an example. We have a free-trade agreement with China and that has led to a huge increase in trade between our two nations. That has led to material benefits to New Zealand and to China although obviously it is a bit of a drop in the bucket for China. In China there is a small city called Baotou which is in Inner Mongolia not terribly far from the country of Mongolia. Near Baotou is a tailings lake that is 11 square kilometres. The background radiation of that lake is three times the normal background radiation which itself is already very high. The lake contains 180 million tonnes of fine waste powder from ore processing. It includes a whole series of different ores but notably cerium oxide and neodymium. Those are rare earth metals that are necessary for a number of things that we hold to be particularly important including batteries lasers and magnets. Magnets are used for a whole series of industrial processes—in particular and notably in wind turbines a clean green technology and also in electric cars which we are hoping to see on our roads before too long. Those metals are also used in catalytic converters. One of the other things that they are used for is the covers on our iPhones—the touch screen glass on our iPhones—so it is incredibly common. Virtually everybody has some of this product in their pockets now as a result of these industrial processes.It is an absolute ecological catastrophe in Baotou. Baotou is only one of a number of tailings lakes throughout China but it is certainly one of the largest ones. In our agreement with China there is some language around environmental standards and so on and yet we are encouraging these industrial processes that cause massive ecological catastrophes and we are not holding ourselves to the standards that we say are already contained inside these agreements. So until the kind of language in these agreements becomes binding and enforceable—where there is some mechanism and where we have some recourse to say “Look we think these are great products. We’re very grateful for this trade. Obviously we like our iPhones. We like them cheap. We like our electric cars. We like our wind turbines but is there a way that we can ensure that the production of the components in all of those things is a great deal cleaner?” what we have to take responsibility for is the fact that when we buy those components in when we buy those iPhones and those electric cars and so on and so forth what we are doing is encouraging a massive ecological catastrophe in the lands that those things have come from. I am not talking about just China—I mean it is particularly bad in China at the moment—but all throughout the world where we have trading relationships or indirect trading relationships through the global supply chains that supply all of these products that we buy in. So these are amongst our concerns and we kind of restate these every time that one of these agreements comes up in front of the House but they never get addressed.One of the things that I am encouraged by is the rumour that the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement may actually include for the first time ever some binding and enforceable language around environmental and human rights standards. But until we see that we cannot support it. So it is not just about what happens here but also about what happens with our trading partners as well. We completely understand that there are benefits to exporters in the Korean free-trade agreement and in other trade agreements. The problem is that the costs associated with the trade and with these deals are not necessarily borne directly by the ones who receive the benefit. I understand that those exporters who are seeing an increase in trade will be paying their taxes. They will be paying GST and so on and so forth and that comes to Treasury and then Treasury uses that money to do some of the clean-up of some of the environmental damage that is caused through trade and so on but it is a very indirect relationship.Another example is the concern that has not yet been addressed about what the fate of Pharmac will be under the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We understand that it is being protected or that it is likely to be protected but that the cost of medicines will still rise because there are going to have to be some compromises made in order to get that deal over the line. From what the Prime Minister is now saying we understand that the benefit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement in terms of benefits to exporters is going to be reasonably limited but the costs will not be borne by exporters; the costs will be borne by consumers of medicines—particularly very rare medicines that come at a high expense. So when we look at the balance of benefits and costs in these agreements you can say that yes there are some benefits to the country via benefits to exporters but on the costs side you are also saying that the people who are bearing the costs are not necessarily the same people who are receiving the benefits. So they are being borne in differing places. They are not related to each other.We have stated those concerns a number of different times and one of our problems is that although those concerns have been heard at the select committee and so on we have not actually had a response other than for example the warm words: “Oh well we don’t really need to worry about it because we have never been faced with an investor-State dispute provision thing in the past.” But we know that throughout the world there has been an exponential increase in these cases as a result of these agreements. So when Mr Shearer says that we are against trade I reject that notion. We are not against trade; we are as he says for trade with standards—and high standards. But the problem that we have got is that we have not yet had an agreement that includes the standards that we are looking for and in a way that meets our satisfaction. When we look at cases like the Baotou steel group’s tailings mine in China and other numerous examples around the world what we know is that although trade is leading to increased wealth and so on and so forth there are tremendous costs and those costs are not being borne by the people who receive the benefit and they are not being cleaned up. Until the time that agreements include some binding and enforceable standards on human rights labour and the environment I am afraid that we just cannot support them. Thank you.