Dalziel Lianne: Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 02 May 2012. Volume:679;Page:1928. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 The Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Commerce has informed the House that he is all over the detail of the Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill. Those were his words and I want to challenge him on that because there is nothing that he has said in his contribution that would suggest that. I was the Minister who introduced this bill. I was not the Minister who oversaw its reference to a select committee. It was referred to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee as opposed to the Commerce Committee and that is because of its trade implications. I want to acknowledge in this Committee the work of John Hayes as the chair of that committee because he did an excellent job and— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: He should be the Minister. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well there are a lot of people on this side of the House who think he should be the Minister in charge of this bill now and perhaps he will have the opportunity to do that some time soon. But that is by the by; that is not the point.  
The reality is that the Minister has challenged this side of the Committee to take the politics out of the debate and I am happy to do that. He was very happy to sit there and listen to every single one of the National members get up and insult me personally for taking I believe a position of integrity on a particular matter that I felt I had to take responsibility for. And that perhaps is the difference between me and the Minister in the chair: I was prepared to take responsibility for the mistake that I made. I did make a mistake. I should have been a bit more open about the role that I played—in particular in information being referred to the media. It was for a whole lot of reasons. But I just want to say this: I believe that it is most important that our borders are protected in a whole lot of ways and that is very relevant to this bill because it is about our borders being protected from having goods dumped on its shores to undermine local manufacturers. That is what this bill is about and nobody on the Government side is actually really talking about what the bill is about. That is what it is about.  
I stood down from my position as Minister because I was trying to protect our borders from having people arrive here making claims about refugee status that were not true and trying to get around our rules in order to claim their right to remain in New Zealand. I made a mistake I took responsibility and I stood down. I think other people in this Chamber should be prepared to do that as well. I actually do not think that it does anyone any good to attack me personally on this matter and then to stand up in this Committee and take umbrage— 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. Can I just say to members on my right that interjections are out of order unless they are rare and reasonable and also that a running commentary is out of order as well. People can take an opportunity to stand and have their say. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. That speech has been going on for some 3 or 4 minutes and it has talked about the indiscretions that that member made when she was a Minister. That has nothing to do with the bill. If you want us to listen and be courteous that is fine. Talk about the bill and we will. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Mr Chairperson you may be at some disadvantage and so may the Clerk on your left be at some disadvantage unless you were in fact listening to the debate previously. The matters to which my colleague is responding are the very matters that were brought up and spoken about at length probably for a minute and a half or two by the Hon Tau Henare when he was making his speech. He referred to these matters. It is an absolute right of a member in this House to defend their integrity and to contrast it with others when they are so challenged. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. Can I just refer members to Speakers’ ruling 46/2 which does allow some leeway for a member to respond but then they have to come back to the detail of Part 1. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: This legislation is designed to protect New Zealand’s borders and it is designed to protect our borders to ensure that our local manufacturers are not put at risk of having cheap goods dumped on our economy to the detriment of local manufacturing. That is what the legislation does. The Minister told us that he was all over this bill. The reason that I believe that he is not all over the bill is that he actually has not described the fact of what it does. He seems to think that this is a brand new piece of legislation that has somehow emerged from nowhere and that it has created a new set of obligations under the World Trade Organization rules that did not previously exist.  
Well we currently do have rules that provide for temporary safeguards to be put in place. The problem is that there is not an adequate definition of the public interest for those rules to be applied in an adequate way and the other problem is an administrative one which I thought that the Minister would be all over if he was all over this piece of legislation—which he is not; he has obviously forgotten something. What this legislation does is replace the temporary safeguard authorities that already exist. We already have temporary safeguard authorities but to set up temporary safeguard authorities is administratively inconvenient. It costs time it costs money it wastes time it wastes money and I would have thought that the Associate Minister of Commerce would have been all over this. He might have actually mentioned that in his contribution to the debate. But I do not think that he is all over this. Either that or he has been briefed and he has forgotten what he has been briefed about. I think it probably reflects the reality of the situation that he is in at the moment.  
The bottom line is that this is a particular piece of legislation that I was very pleased to introduce as Minister of Commerce. I recall when the previous Minister of Commerce made his contribution to the first reading which was back on 11 March 2009. Actually we are not far off that now so it is now 3 years since the first reading and the bill was introduced prior to the 2008 election. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Who was the Minister then? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Simon Power was the Minister of Commerce who moved the first reading of this bill. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: That’s the speech that was prepared for him though. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: It was prepared for me and I actually read along with the speech. I will just quote a little bit from  
Hansard 
 because I thought it was quite funny. He said “The current regime is subject to the Temporary Safeguard Authorities Act 1987 which has not been subject to a comprehensive review since its inception. As a consequence”—and I interrupted him and I am recorded in  
Hansard 
 as saying “It’s now outdated”. He then said “—the Act is now outdated—that is quite right I say to Ms Dalziel—and does not provide an adequate means for New Zealand to comply with its WTO obligations should it be necessary to take safeguard action.”  
So the point was that—I mean Simon Power was actually reading a speech that had been prepared for me as Minister of Commerce to read back in 2008. He was reading it on 11 March 2009. Do you know why he was not reading it until 11 March 2009? It was because it did not fit within the concept of that then Government’s 100 days of action when it had to do all those amazing things within the first 100 days and it had to introduce all these different things. That was the plan to have 100 days of action and actually I think it stopped after the 100 days. But the reality is that this bill has sat on the Order Paper for a very long time and I think that the Minister in the chair the Associate Minister of Commerce does a great disservice to the reality of the need in this particular area. He stands there and tries to take umbrage at some of the issues that this side of the Committee has raised when he is more than happy to see the attacks made on me personally. I do not really care about what people say about me. I am probably not going to be here for very much longer. The bottom line is that I— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: You’re approaching the mid-point of your career. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Yeah the mid-point in my parliamentary career. I have not got that long to go.  
What I want to say is that if the Minister really did understand the reality of what he was doing in this and if he really was all over it then he would know a little bit more about why this legislation was so important and he would actually answer some of the questions that were put on this side of the Committee. The reality is that I do not think that he really cares about it and the reason that he does not care about it is that he is not long for this place. In fact I shall be here longer than he will be here and he will be leaving this place relatively soon. I think that it is important for this member— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Will he be here for the vote on Part 2? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I do not think he will be. But the reality is that I think that the member does this important measure a great disservice and I am actually quite annoyed that he has allowed the debate to be used in this particular way and not defended the important elements by understanding the reality about what it is designed to protect. It is more about ensuring that our local domestic manufacturers have a fair go in their own country. It is about some of those ownership issues that matter a lot to New Zealanders and actually matter a lot to the workforce who work for the manufacturers in New Zealand and who cannot compete with some of the overseas interests who are more than happy to dump on our country. They are more than happy to buy up every element of our country that they can get their hands on.  
At the end of the day this actually stands as quite a sad and sorry commentary on a Government that thinks that this is so unimportant that it has been able to sit on the Order Paper for so long and then end up here in the Committee as part of a debate that does not really matter to this Minister at all. I think that is a very very sad commentary on the state of affairs that we are confronted with. I think that the Minister should get back on his feet and rather than complaining about some of the obvious comments that are going to be made about his inability to respond take responsibility for some of his own actions like others have done in this House. It is a sad and sorry indictment on him.