Dunne Peter: Urgent Debates — Collapse of World Trade Talks in Cancun Mexico 
Dunne Peter: Urgent Debates — Collapse of World Trade Talks in Cancun Mexico 
[Volume:611;Page:8683] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I was at Cancun as the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. I want to do something rather unusual at the start and compliment the previous speaker on his speech. In its neo-socialist rhetoric and relevance it was equivalent only to the speech given to the plenary session by the Foreign Minister of Cuba who spent most of his time regaling the meeting with the history of American imperialism against his State for the last 50 years. At the end of his contribution which came during a rather sleepy session the entire plenary session erupted in applause chanting and cheering at that good old dose of socialist rhetoric then slumped back into the irrelevance of the rest of the occasion. 
That I think sums up the contribution of the co-leader of the Greens. The world that he described is not the world that most of us reside in—or would want to reside in. The reality that he promoted to us as having occurred at Cancun is reliant on the reports of Professor Jane Kelsey—who was there as the correspondent for iwi radio believe it or not—which bear a most extraordinary sense of irrelevance. She was not sighted even once during the proceedings. Perhaps that is hardly surprising because the Mexican security barrier did not let the protesters within 10 kilometres of the actual event so they spent most of the time talking among themselves making up the story and feeding it back to willing stooges like Mr Donald in New Zealand for him to report to this House. 
 I want to make a couple of comments about where things stand at the moment. This meeting was an intermediate meeting following on the Doha development initiative that had been adopted at Doha a couple of years ago. So expectations that arising out of Cancun we would see some permanent solutions were never going to be fulfilled— 
Rod Donald 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. The honourable member who was speaking often leaps to his feet and takes offence at any suggestion that he acts as a stooge or puppet for any particular industry. In kind I ask him to withdraw and apologise because I do not like his claiming that I am a stooge of anyone else. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The member is quite correct. The member will stand withdraw and apologise. 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: I am more than happy to do so. The context in which my comment was made was not one of suggesting external influence but something else altogether. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I apologise to the member for interrupting but the Standing Orders of this House are quite clear. If one is to raise a point of order it must be raised at the appropriate time. One cannot wander out of the Chamber then decide to come back 3 minutes later and complain about a passing remark made in a speech. I say that the Green member was completely disorderly in breaking up what was quite a good speech from the United Future member—one that those of us in the House were quite enjoying listening to. 
Rod Donald 
: Three minutes had certainly not elapsed. I had left the Chamber but came straight back through the door as soon as I heard those words. It is not for the member to comment on whether I am in the Chamber but I would like listeners to know that I was on the way to a Business Committee meeting. 
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: The point of order has been ruled on. 
Hon PETER DUNNE 
: I will resume where I left off. I am reminded as I do so of Eamon De Valera who was arrested in 1913 during an Irish civil rights meeting. He was thrown in jail for a year and on the date of his release sent a message to his supporters to gather at the same hall he had been in when arrested. He came to the meeting got to his feet and said: “Now as I was saying when I was interrupted …”. It has not been quite a year but it felt a little like that. 
The point that I wanted to make and was making at the time of that interruption was that this meeting was always going to be an intermediate step along the process. The Doha round still has another 18 months or so scheduled before it is due for completion. What Cancun has been in effect is not the end but certainly a stall. It would be wrong to go to the point of saying that the multilateral structure has collapsed that world trade is in chaos and that this country’s relationship to it is in chaos. What has happened is that the process has stalled and it now needs to be restarted. Some issues arise from that to which this House ought to pay some consideration. 
First the emergence of the G21 or as it briefly was the G22 before Turkey had a change of heart is in my view not a temporary phenomenon. When we look at the World Trade Organization of 146 nations and see that more and more developing countries are joining—I think Cambodia and Nepal acceded to the protocol during the meeting—we know that the power of those countries and their willingness to become involved in the debate will increase in the future not diminish. So I am not one of those who say that the G21 is a passing fad. It may well reorganise itself and become something a little bit more cohesive but I believe that as a group it is there to stay. 
That imposes a couple of immediate issues. Firstly there will be a tension between the Europe-America-Japan bloc and that G21 group—or whatever number it eventually ends up with. That will be the traditional rich/poor divide. But secondly and I think of more relevance to New Zealand is the question of where the Cairns group—where New Zealand Australia and other agricultural producers have had their influence over the years—now will lie in relation to the G21 and the Europe-America bloc. New Zealand and Australia in particular over the years have made since the time of the initiation of the Uruguay round a lot of progress in terms of promoting agricultural issues. There is still a long way to go. European protectionism is still as heavy as ever despite claims by the Europeans that the Common Agricultural Policy is no longer that but is now a rural redevelopment policy and will not shift in terms of its total value for 10 years—“And in any case if you do think it will shift we can’t make that decision; it is for our sovereign member Governments to make.” 
In spite of that intransigence over the years we have been able to advance our issues progressively. The difficulty we will now face if the debate shifts away from that issue about agricultural protectionism removal of export subsidies etc. into a wider debate about development relationships between the rich and the poor countries is that the issues that we as a nation have been advancing over the last 15 years run the risk of being to some extent sidelined. There is an irony within this as well. Given the state of world dairy production and its export level of which New Zealand contributes about 40 percent to some extent there is a perception—and I am not actually arguing this—that we could be the victims of our own success. The Europeans in particular are very good at saying: “Look you people come here and talk to us about freeing up agriculture and about giving greater access for dairy products but you’ve got a virtual monopoly anyway. You can’t have it both ways.” So we need to be mindful of that pressure alongside the intransigence that I referred to earlier creating a potential obstacle that the advent of the G21 in my view only increases the risk of. 
The question that arises not just for New Zealand but for nations of our type regardless of our bilateral relationships is what ought to be our future strategy with regard to the World Trade Organization. Clearly withdrawal in the way that Mr Donald advocated is not an option. We cannot go back to an environment where a series of bilateral relationships—in the absence of any multilateral structure—prevail. The tariff walls the protectionist boundaries that have been in place for so long will simply rise again. There does need to be a coherent World Trade Organization. 
I think that the organization itself needs to take more decisive leadership. In my view it was noticeable during this meeting that the secretary-general was very much a passenger in the proceedings taking place. The driving forces were the European Trade Commissioner Mr Lamy and the Mexican Foreign Minister Mr Derbez who was in the chair for that meeting. The first issue that needs to be resolved is the need for more steel within the World Trade Organization to try to drive forces to conclusions and not simply to leave it to everyone to try to make up his or her own mind. In a setting of that nature that will never be possible. The second issue that has to be addressed starting from now is that officials need to resume negotiations in Geneva to start to put together a framework that can be the basis of a ministerial meeting to be convened sometime in the next year or so—probably in Hong Kong I believe from the suggested dates so it is not quite Mr Donald’s Queenstown—to bring some fruition to this round prior to its expiry date. 
The difficulty that emerged at Cancun in my perception was that Mr Derbez the Mexican Foreign Minister and his European counterpart Mr Lamy held to themselves by and large the development of the draft text. It was released only at 11 o’clock on Saturday morning Mexican time to all the participants. So it had a degree of secrecy about it and I think that within it it contained the seeds of its own failing. There needs to be a more transparent process in terms of working together. 
The issues between the rich and the developing countries do need to be addressed but New Zealand’s challenge is to ensure that the issues of concern to us and to similar nations through the Cairns group remain on that agenda. There is goodwill amongst elements of the Europeans—the British in particular—and amongst elements of the Americans but a concerted approach needs to be brought together to try to make progress in that regard. Otherwise what happened at Cancun will not be the temporary roadblock that it is being perceived as at the moment but could well become the start of a permanent derailment of that system. If we got to that point then we would have some very severe problems. But the reality that Mr Donald tries to paint is not a path any nation in its right mind would want to go down. There does need to be a rules-based approach to international trade relations. In the absence of a World Trade Organization a similar body would have to be reinvented to try to get that structure that is there. 
So I think it is right that this House expresses some concern about the state of affairs in the wake of the Cancun meeting but it is an over-exaggeration to say that all is doom and gloom and there is no future. I do think that as a nation we collectively need to redouble our efforts both at the official level and at the political level to ensure that when these talks resume as they inevitably will we can start to see some concerted move towards progress that will lead to a resolution of these issues in a way that is favourable to New Zealand. But it would be a mistake to ignore the mounting power and influence—and I guess assertiveness—of the developing countries. They have now reached the point where they are taking a role within the World Trade Organization; they do not expect to be passengers. They expect their issues to be listened to and we have to figure out where we stand in relation to that.