Donald Rod: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Donald Rod: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14345] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I will focus my 5-minute speech on the trade negotiations budget and ask whether New Zealand gets value for money for all of Mr Sutton’s overseas trips. The irony of this Budget process is that Mr Goff is accountable for how the money is spent while Mr Sutton is overseas spending it. I would like Mr Goff to explain exactly what benefit New Zealand has gained from the $4.6 million increase in spending on World Trade Organization negotiations bilateral so-called closer economic partnerships and free-trade agreements during the last 5 years. While he is about it he could tell the Committee what the opportunity cost has been of not spending that money on more productive ways to make our economy self-reliant. 
The evidence strongly suggests that the more money the Labour Government spends on imposing its free-trade agenda on New Zealand the worse our trading position gets. Statistics New Zealand’s trade figures released today reinforce this point. Two years ago New Zealand had a trade surplus of $521 million for the year to June and our exports stood at $32.3 billion for that year. Today because the Government pursues disadvantageous trade deals such as the New Zealand - Singapore Closer Economic Partnership our exports have dropped to under $30 billion and the modest trade surplus has turned into a massive trade deficit—over $3.5 billion for the year to June. I am sure Mr Goff will offer all sorts of excuses for the deterioration in New Zealand’s international trading position. Some excuses have a ring of truth such as the impact of New Zealand’s higher dollar and the increasing cost of fuel imports. 
But hang on a second why did our dollar go so high in the first place? In part that is because of the Government’s foreign investment policy which pushes up the value of the New Zealand dollar—all part of the free-trade and investment agenda. Fuel spending has gone up in part because we waste fuel unnecessarily transporting identical goods back and forth within New Zealand between Australia and New Zealand and between New Zealand and other countries. Again it is all in pursuit of free trade rather than in pursuit of sustainability. 
New Zealand certainly has not got value for money from the trade negotiations budget for the Singapore free-trade deal. Before that deal took effect New Zealand’s trade deficit was a mere $24 million with that country. Now it has blown out to $323 million. Yes some of that is because of petroleum imports but the Government cannot hide from the fact that New Zealand’s exports to Singapore have actually declined by $180 million in the last 3 years. There has been a 37 percent decline since the closer economic partnership took effect. 
If that is not bad enough Mr Sutton and his officials did not even seem to know this basic information. When Jim Sutton described the New Zealand - Singapore Closer Economic Partnership as a “stunning success” a couple of weeks ago he had absolutely no evidence to back up his claim. The Singapore Trade Minister tried to come to his rescue but was not convincing. Belatedly Mr Sutton’s office tried to explain away the decline in exports by claiming that a lot of goods had been diverted to Malaysia in the last 3 years. So I ask the Minister why our exports to Malaysia have gone down by $50 million in that time. 
The meeting with the Singapore Trade Minister was meant to be a review of the closer economic relations deal—it was not. There was no report published on the deal no analysis of why the deal has been a one-way street in Singapore’s favour and no thorough scrutiny of the fact that 46 percent of the shipments from Singapore that were tested for rules-of-origin compliance failed the test. Why was there a complete lack of scrutiny by the Minister and his officials? Perhaps they were too busy trying to do new deals with Thailand and China than look into what has gone wrong with our deal with Singapore. 
Why does the Labour Government want to sign a free-trade agreement with the corrupt Thai Government and another deal with the cruel Chinese Government? These proposed deals make a mockery of the Speech from the Throne in 1999 when Labour made commitments to incorporate labour and environmental standards in free-trade agreements. How can the Labour Government even begin to negotiate a free-trade agreement with countries that refuse to ratify core ILO conventions let alone ensure that the ones they have signed are complied with? 
How can it in all conscience consign Thai workers including half a million children to lives of poverty by giving tariff-free access to goods made in sweatshops where pay rates are only 77c an hour? How can it welcome the Thai Prime Minister Mr ThaksinShinawatra to New Zealand when it is becoming increasingly obvious that he is corrupt and runs a corrupt regime? Members need not take my word for it. They need only read an article such as the one in the  
Melbourne Age 
.