Coates BarryBARRY COATES (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to talk on the third reading of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill and I have to say this is the story of a farce. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) has been a betrayal of us all—of exporters of consumers and of New Zealand citizens. It has been a waste of time and money including this parliamentary session where we are apparently doing the third reading of a bill for a treaty that will never come into force. It is abundantly clear after the US election that the TPPA is dead. We are not here to dance on its grave and celebrate. Actually what I want to talk about is the lessons that we should be learning from this debacle. I want to get away from the free-trade blah-blah actually to look at the myths and the reality of the TPPA. Firstly it has been a shockingly bad process. There were 7 years of secret negotiations when we were told: Oh yes it's all in your interests. I'm not going to show you the agreement but trust me I am the Minister." In fact what we saw was a story of secrecy arrogance and patronising behaviour. There was a pretence of consultation. There was no parliamentary scrutiny. What we have seen through this process is the fact that the people of New Zealand have not bought the arguments for the TPPA. We saw in November 2015 in the most credible poll the TV3 Reid Research poll that 60 percent of people who had an opinion were against the TPPA. That is 60 percent of New Zealanders who did not buy the Government's arguments for the TPPA.Darroch Ball: The Government's not listening.BARRY COATES: And the Government was not listening. Apparently at that stage the Minister said "Oh well anyone who's against the TPPA is just rabble who knows nothing." and that is 60 percent of the public. So what do we know about the TPPA? Well we know that there are myths here. We know that there is a myth that it is an agreement about free trade and it is going to be good for us all. Actually if you look at it it is what we call a Trojan Horse treaty. The Trojan Horse is the apparently attractive outside and the attractive outside is that it is going to reduce tariffs by $274 million by 2030. Actually that is not a very big number in the context of the whole New Zealand economy and the modelling that was done by the New Zealand Government was absolutely shoddy. It was criticised even by the US Government in the International Trade Commission report in the US which directly refuted the assumptions that underlay the New Zealand economic model. So even the tiny benefits that New Zealand said were going to come from the TPPA of less than 1 percent increase in gross national product by 2030 were illusory. That 1 percent by the way from the TPPA would compare with a 47 percent increase without the TPPA. So either you would get 47.9 percent or you would get 47 percent by 2030. What kind of benefit is that from an agreement let alone the fact that even those benefits were illusory? There was also the myth that the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism will not happen to us because we have got a few of these agreements and we have not been sued yet. Well the countries that we have agreements with under the ISDS have taken so far 11 cases of the 698 cases so far taken. But as soon as we sign up to the TPPA we sign up to potentially being taken to court—to a shonky international tribunal—by the multinationals from countries that have accounted for 161 cases including the most litigious corporations in the world. We would be opening ourselves up to very real risks under the investor-State dispute settlement mechanism. We are told as a myth that legitimate Government policy will not be undermined but in fact what the phrase in the agreement says is that Governments have the right to regulate unless it is against the terms of this agreement. So what kind of exception is that? What kind of protection is that for a Government's right to regulate? It is entirely an illusion. We have been told that foreign investment is a path that we are going to benefit from and we are going to get rich. So the TPPA would have opened up foreign investment and this bill would have actually taken the regulation of foreign investment out of the hands of Parliament and given it to an Order in Council—taken it out of the democratic mandate of this Parliament. So what the New Zealand people know is that our iconic places are being bought up. They know that our farmland is being bought up. They know that our value chains are being bought up. They know that we are being locked into a commodity economy that is unable to add value in our own land. We are told that the TPPA would actually be good for the environment and lo and behold if you look through the 6000 pages of the TPPA there is not a single mention of climate change—not one single mention in 6000 pages. This agreement would have been a major block in the way of countries taking action on climate change as well as countries trying to protect their environment. We are told that there is market access for agriculture and then it turns out that we did not get the gold standard agreement after all. What we got was something that accounted for about 3 percent of US agricultural markets—the equivalent of three large dairy farms—and what the TPPA would have done is lock in that bad deal through this agreement in ways that would have made it even harder in the future and it would not have touched the agricultural subsidies that our farmers most struggle to compete with internationally.So is this a good deal for New Zealand business? No. Most New Zealand businesses including small companies know that what is happening under the TPPA is that rights are being given to foreign companies. Those foreign companies include companies that do not pay tax around the world. They benefit from tax havens. What is happening under the TPPA is they would be given even more rights and they are the ones that are competing with New Zealand business. So New Zealand business is in fact potentially losing out under agreements like the TPPA. Finally we are told that without the TPPA we will actually be really badly off but when the Australian Productivity Commission looked at the Australia - US free-trade agreement it found that Australia had derived no benefit from it.So what we need is to applaud the people of New Zealand. Sixty percent of those people who were against the TPPA—they were right. This is a bad deal. It is not good for New Zealand and thankfully it looks like this agreement is now dead for ever. But the tide has turned against these agreements. Also these agreements are not only dead in the United States they are dead in Europe as well. So what we are seeing is that instead the Government is going around desperately seeking free-trade agreements anywhere in the world even paying dodgy deals with Saudi businessmen in order to try to get a free-trade agreement in the Middle East. This desperate searching for free-trade agreements has taken over from all of our other foreign policy priorities. It is time that we had a new kind of agreement—an agreement that is good for the local economy and good for local business an agreement that respects democracy that is about sustainability for our country that is fair and equitable and respects human rights and the Treaty of Waitangi. Those are the kinds of agreements we need. We can have those agreements. Instead we have been wasting our time with this TPPA.This third reading is a complete farce. We need to stop chasing these deals that are pretending to be about trade but are actually about the rights of foreign corporations. We as the Green Party have been fighting this agreement for 7 years. We will not support the TPPA. We will not support the ASEAN Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership which is the parallel agreement with China we will not support the Trade in Services Agreement and we do not support this bill. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker."