Hayes John: Tariff (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hayes John: Tariff (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I was interested in the platitudes of the previous speaker who clearly has not done very much homework. He would know for example if he had done some that we do not have an agreement with China and if he reads today’s copy of the  
Independent 
 he might find the reasons why we might not get one. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Poorly informed. 
JOHN HAYES 
: He is absolutely poorly informed—that is dead right. I would also like to comment on my Green colleague that well-known supporter of Pol Pot. He talked about ideology. He was born into it; his parents were great supporters of Stalin. He was talking as members will recall about bilateral trade balances. 
Sue Bradford 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think you may be aware but this member may not be that it has been ruled out of order for those kinds of references to be made about my colleague Keith Locke. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member is quite right. We will desist from that. I thank the member for raising it. 
JOHN HAYES 
: I want to come back to the point about bilateral trade balances and the nonsense he was talking about how these things had to be in balance. I used to get this a lot when I was the ambassador in Iran. I would get hauled across by the Iranian Treasury people who would say that our trade balance was out of order and that we had to buy more products from Iran—until I pointed out to them that every New Zealander spent about 50c per capita on Iranian products and every Iranian spent about 7c per capita on New Zealand products and that just drove a bus through their arguments. 
This is an agreement involving Brunei Chile Singapore and New Zealand—four countries with tiny populations tiny economies and in some cases very few resources. Its gestation for those of us who can remember began as a P5 agreement. Originally it was proposed that this agreement would include Australia and America. Well this Government has not done much about delivering that. This Government has brought in a trade agreement that has actually cost more to negotiate than it will ever deliver to the people of New Zealand. What else I wonder would Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials have been doing if they had not been spending their time negotiating this agreement? They would probably be spending more time at the United Nations helping the Government with its social engineering agenda. 
I support this agreement and National supports it for reasons of philosophy but it will not make the slightest bit of difference to anybody—and it will make no practical difference whatsoever to people in my electorate. But it is a good idea. I would like to draw on the words of the late Robert Kennedy to illustrate why we support it. He said: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” I commend people to think about this agreement in those terms because this is a tiny step and the people of our country will need to change this Government if we are to take bigger steps in the trade area. 
I congratulate Phil Goff who is not in the House tonight. Interestingly enough we do not have the Minister of Foreign Affairs here we do not have the Minister of Trade here and we do not have the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee here. 
Hon Chris Carter 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. First of all Mr Deputy Speaker I am on my feet and the member is standing. I appreciate that he is a new member but he has now made reference to two individual MPs whom he says are not in the House. The member under the Standing Orders must not refer to members who are absent. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I was just about to raise that point. Thank you Mr Carter for raising that. The member must not comment on the absence or otherwise of any members of this House. 
JOHN HAYES 
: The people of the Wairarapa will certainly be furious with me for this mistake because like me they want to see an open economy and particularly in a small country like ours we want to be open to international trade in goods and services. It is a primary requirement that we have this for economic success. The dismantling of “fortress New Zealand” over the past 25 years has been a key element in the reform programme that has produced today’s more efficient economy. Tariffs and other barriers to trade are now low and New Zealand is likely to reach free trade zero tariffs within a decade. 
I also want to draw attention to the comments of our New Zealand First colleague who was it seemed to me despite the lead-up to the election saying: “We will not support free-trade agreements.” and was actually positioning her party and her leader to do just that. The people in my electorate are looking for returns from the activities of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and it is not happening. I wonder why. It seems to me that there are people in this House who believe that Helen Clark and her Labour Government will retain power for the next millennium. Certainly Winston Peters appears to be in this camp. He was desperate to align himself with Helen Clark even though he is now in the unusual position of being our most important Minister but outside Cabinet. 
The governing party must have self-confidence. It must want power and it must believe that its exercising of that power can send our country in the right direction. This agreement will not do that. But the Government also needs to keep in mind that on any projection of its political past its power will come to an end. Winston Peters should keep that long in mind as I think should Ron Mark. Mr Mark has a huge wealth of experience to contribute and really deserves a Cabinet post but he has spent 10 years in this House and has not got to Cabinet yet. That has been at least 7 years too long and the way things are going he is not going to get there. 
The test of Winston Peters’ statesmanship in the context of our history will not be how many trees he pulls out by the roots but how he fits our foreign policy into a continual process of adaptation in which he combines leadership of our foreign policy with our national mood. This is not necessarily a recipe for inaction or the avoidance of controversy. Some of the most bitterly contentious measures—for example the Civil Union Bill or issues around immigration—will I think for New Zealand First become inviolate. They will not be undone because of the cost of too much damage to the Labour – New Zealand First relationship. 
I would never ever say that the Labour Government is the most rapacious doctrinaire and unpatriotic Government this side of the equator—quite the reverse—but I would like to point out from today’s copy of the  
Independent 
 the words of Chris Trotter. He talks about the recent speeches made by Murray McCully and by our Minister of Foreign Affairs. He points out that we are a weak and relatively vulnerable nation and that we should be making every effort to deal with trouble before it arrives. He talks about what is going to happen and what is very likely to happen in Iran which is a confrontation between Iran and the United States. As a consequence of that he says there is a need for the five fingers of the Anglo-Saxon fist—the USA the UK Canada Australia and New Zealand—to act in concert. He argues that Helen Clark will come under intense diplomatic pressure to stand shoulder to shoulder with her very very good friends. 
If there is to be a strike against Iran that will cause a lot of difficulty for us. If we abandon our current multilateral stance and support the United States’ plan to as Chris Trotter says detach the Iranian energy nozzle from China’s petrol tank then we should abandon all hope of the possibility of a mutually rewarding free-trade agreement with the People’s Republic of China. On the other hand if we decide to stand aloof and condemn the actions of our Anglo-Saxon allies New Zealand exporters may well find themselves shut out of their hard-won markets. Having grasped that very unpalatable situation I think people should refer to the speech made by my colleague Murray McCully because he provides some answers. 
I warn the people in my electorate and the people of New Zealand that we are on a difficult and dangerous path. We do not have the trade relationships in place with our major partners to generate the sort of income we need as a country. Why do we need that income? Let me tell members. We need income to train and provide doctors general practitioners in Dannevirke for example. I warn that we do not have the trade agreements in place to generate income to pay for the cost of kids’ operations in my electorate. For example children are waiting for 4 years to get a glue ear operation. 
I warn the people of this country that we do not have enough decent trade agreements in place to generate income to stave off poverty in the Pacific region for which we are responsible. Let me tell members on the other side of the House that they have squandered $12 million of taxpayers’ money in the Solomon Islands by giving school books that have never left the wharf. Twelve million dollars of taxpayers’ money—which includes money from the people in my electorate—has been totally squandered. I warn members that as long as we tax petrol and do not spend that tax on the roads we will not have enough money because we do not have the trade agreements in place to pay for decent roading systems. We do not have enough money coming from our trade agreements to get enough police to man the police station in Carterton despite the Mayor of Carterton Gary McPhee having been to Parliament this week to talk to the Minister of Police to try to sort it out. 
I support this bill but we are a small vulnerable country. We need to work out where our future lies and we need to stop wasting our taxes on agreements such as this that are of no consequence. We need to focus our resources on agreements that matter.