Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): Can I begin by thanking the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee for their efforts. They received 427 written submissions and heard from 69 submitters. There's a lot of work in that and I thank them for doing that work. The national interest analysis which was being considered by the committee runs to over 240 pages long. It's annexed to the report back from the select committee and it's a very thorough analysis of the costs and benefits of the agreement to New Zealand. Can I just deal with the assertion that is made by the member who's just resumed his seat Simon O'Connor that there's nothing different in effect between where we sit now and where we sat under the original Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. National still does not understand that the reason that support for trade eroded under their watch was (1) that they refused to properly engage with the people and (2) that they were selling New Zealanders down the land in respect of their ability to control who owns New Zealand homes.If the TPP had proceeded as had been legislated by the last Government against the opposition from other parties including Labour—because these land issues and some other issues had not been resolved—and had come into effect New Zealand by now would have lost for ever in practice the right to control foreign buyers of New Zealand homes.Hon Gerry Brownlee: What a load of bollocks.Hon DAVID PARKER: Now Gerry Brownlee says What a load of rubbish." The Hon Gerry Brownlee is absolutely wrong—Hon Gerry Brownlee: I'm correct.Hon DAVID PARKER: No you're not I say to the Hon Gerry Brownlee. You're absolutely wrong because the provisions of the TPP agreement as he signed prevented New Zealand after that agreement came into effect adding any new class of investment to be screened in our overseas investment screening regime. It would have prevented New Zealand from doing it in respect of the TPP and the effect of that would have flowed through to earlier trade agreements including with China. So of course New Zealanders were railing against the fact that National was selling out their interests preventing future Governments acting in the interests of New Zealand to ban foreign buyers if they wanted. I would hope as we slowly return to this bipartisan approach that we've largely had across the two main parties in Parliament on trade that National reflects upon the fact that even if they might not want to do something the policy space should be preserved to protect the sovereignty of a future Parliament of a different viewpoint being able to do that.And of course we did find a solution to this. In advance of the election voters were told by the Hon Todd McClay that we had to choose between breaching our free-trade agreements—lots of them we were told—and banning foreign buyers; that we couldn't do both. Well they were scaremongering—scaremongering. They also said we could have imposed a stamp duty if we wanted. They were wrong on both counts. We could not impose a stamp duty targeted on foreign buyers without breaching our free-trade agreements—earlier free-trade agreements—but we could ban foreign buyers of residential homes with a complication relating to one trade agreement which is with Singapore and they're small buyers in New Zealand.Hon Gerry Brownlee: Ooh! Ooh!Hon DAVID PARKER: "Ooh!" says Gerry Brownlee. "Ooh!" says Gerry. That's a more intelligent contribution than his first one.The other thing I'm sure that we'll hear from subsequent speakers—they love to stand up—is that the Labour Party people used to go along to these rallies and they would be there with the people protesting against some of the provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. And it's true. I did. I went to one. Do you know what I did? I outlined the five bottom lines of the Labour Party. They were to make sure we had Treaty protection that we protected the Pharmac model that we had decent gains for our exporters in terms of market access that we protected the right to regulate—and within that came up these investor-State dispute settlement clauses which I'll come back to—and finally that we would protect the right of New Zealand to control who owns our land. Some people they'd ask me "Oh look if those five bottom lines are met will you sign up?" And I said yes and quite a few of the crowd said "Fair enough." Some of the other crowd said "Boo."—that's their right. But to present us as being hypocritical is just incorrect. We set out our five bottom lines before the election and we met four and a half.Hon Gerry Brownlee: Rewriting history.Hon DAVID PARKER: Rewriting history? We actually have rewritten history. We got to an agreement which gives us most of the trade benefits—obviously the US isn't in it—on terms that also have enabled us to do better in respect of other issues and protect New Zealanders from the influence of those wealthy overseas people: 1 percenters from overseas coming and outbidding New Zealanders for our homes. Now the other side they say "Oh it's not happening." What happened last week? We had some more data on it and it showed that 20 percent or 18 percent of central Auckland homes were sold to foreign buyers in the last quarter excluding homes purchased through corporate vehicles—18 percent; a fifth. It's a lot. In Queenstown: 10 percent across the Wakatipu—one in 10. One in ten houses and these are the most expensive—expensive housing markets—excuse me Madam Deputy Speaker I've got a tickle in my tonsil.Hon Gerry Brownlee: He's choking on ill facts.Matt Doocey: Freudian cough.Hon DAVID PARKER: Actually I picked up some lurgy when I was in Japan where we've just referred to but I'll come back to that.We have now proof. National only used to release the national average. We could never get to regional data. Now I've got no doubt that in earlier times when capital controls out of China were freer the percentage of sales into Auckland was even higher than the current one in five that we're seeing in central Auckland. And indeed there's been magazine articles in North & South and the like to prove that.Having said that it's also proved true that the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership is more important than it was a couple of years ago. We have rising protectionism around the world. We have attacks on the World Trade Organization which is the international rule of law relating to trade. And we have the appellant body which is effectively the enforcement body for the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules which stops functioning in about a year if the United States continues to block new appointees to it. They won't specify with any particularity their concerns. Therefore the rest of the world can't address those concerns despite a willingness to do so and it may well be that this is a disruptive attempt to stop the appellate body functioning. In that case small countries like New Zealand are more reliant on these plurilateral agreements than they would have been had the WTO still been working.One of the other points I would make is that in terms of the balance between who prospers under this there's an analysis of the economic effects of this that shows that this agreement is actually better for people who work for a living—earn wages and salary—than it is for capital. The gain that's predicted in respect of this agreement has a greater gain to labour than capital. It's unusual but it actually relates to the better access that we're getting in Japan for a lot of our agricultural products.Can I pay some credit to the Hon Todd McClay because although I criticised the prior National Government's disengagement with the public it is true that he began that re-engagement process that had been let go by prior Ministers of trade.But we've continued with that and we've been dealing with all of our critics we've been providing far more information and we've been prepared in writing to show the provisions in the agreement that protect the interests that they're worried about. We've done a number of iterations of that. This is available on the web. It's been presented at meetings up and down the country. As a consequence of being open more people trust us. We've actually rebuilt trust in government. That is a very good thing to do given the importance of trade and the fact that this rising anti-trade rhetoric around the world is dangerous. We have to separate it from the effects of digitalisation of economies disrupting jobs and from the effects of 1 percenters that are buying land.I think that this agreement is a good one and that New Zealand will be more prosperous as a consequence and I'm sure that my colleague the Rt Hon Winston Peters will detail some of the very important changes that we managed to secure to the agreement before we signed it."