McClay Todd: Tariff Act 1988 Repeal Bill — First Reading 
McClay Todd: Tariff Act 1988 Repeal Bill — First Reading 
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TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 What a disgraceful speech that was! That member Stuart Nash is as new to the House as I am. He stood up and first of all pretended to heap praise upon a member of this Parliament who has been here for many years representing New Zealanders and constituents worked hard and come forward with something that he believes in and believes will help New Zealand. Then Mr Nash made an outright attack on that member of Parliament. I have decided to change my speech a little bit after that disgraceful intervention by the last member. Mr Nash lost all credibility at the end of his intervention when he said that the next Labour Party Prime Minister would be Phil Goff. At that stage everybody on this side of the House and certainly everybody on that side of the House switched off and stopped listening. I think there is a reasonable chance that the next Labour Party Prime Minister could be Stuart Nash himself. Would that not be a wonderful wonderful country to live in? 
I come directly to the Tariff Act 1988 Repeal Bill. Along with members opposite I will not be supporting this bill because I do not believe that it is the best thing we could be doing for the country in terms of trade at this moment. It is a little bit like a can of coconut cream. It looks good and it smells good and we all want it but when we dig down a bit deeper we realise that it is not good for us. I will speak more about that in a moment. 
The thing about trade negotiation is that it is like a game of chess. We do not give up all of our options or all of our advantages before we start playing the game. Unfortunately this bill before us today would do exactly that. It would mean that when our negotiators went out to negotiate trade agreements on our behalf we would have given up all of our advantages; all of the things we might trade away for better access for our exporters to other markets would have gone. 
New Zealand tariffs are imposed against a very small number of imported products and at extremely low levels. In 2008 80 percent of goods imported into New Zealand were tariff-free with no restriction. Those that did have tariffs imposed against them had tariffs rated at between 5 and 10 percent. As Jacqui Dean a very capable member of Parliament from the South Island said the Tariff Act provides protection for New Zealand industries. A number of industries perhaps could not function as well if a large number of foreign goods were imported from other markets. The Minister of Commerce and the Government have the ability to provide some short-term protection through the imposition of tariffs to stop those goods from being imported. I think that is very very important. 
Last year along with a number of my colleagues and members from the other side of this House I had an opportunity to visit the Pacific Islands. It was very interesting to have discussions with people there. In fact in a previous life before coming to this Parliament I worked very closely with a number of Pacific Islands. I spent a good 4 years with them negotiating trade access and trade agreements with the European Union. The one thing that the European Union wanted from the Pacific Island countries was increased access because their tariff rates were very high. Conversely on the other side there was not a lot that the Pacific Island countries could offer the European Union—one of the largest trading blocs in the world—and therefore the Pacific Island countries were very cautious not to give up too much of their protection too quickly. This bill would mean that New Zealand would be giving up too much at a time when we have the ability to negotiate more. 
I will take the case of Niue and come back to my analogy of coconut cream. In Niue people go out and pick coconuts. They make wonderful coconut milk and great coconut cream in factories over there. They get to export it to New Zealand without a tariff upon it at all. Countries in Asia also produce coconut cream and under the bill they would get access to our country without any tariff restriction because there is no tariff restriction. Well that would mean that coconut cream producers in countries like Niue the Cook Islands and the many other countries where great coconut cream is produced would be under greater pressure because of this bill. So I think we should not be doing it at all. As the member opposite has just said it tastes good but it is not necessarily good for us. Certainly this bill would not be good for those producers in the Pacific Islands. 
I will finish up very very briefly. If all of our trading partners were doing this tonight as well and if all of our trading partners around the world were saying “Let’s get rid of all tariffs.” that would be fantastic for New Zealand. But sadly they are not. Sadly it will take many years and a lot of hard work on the part of this Government to sign more free-trade agreements in order for us to have freer trade access. Therefore we must go step by step to do that. I commend the honourable member Sir Roger Douglas for bringing the bill to the House but National will not be supporting it. Thank you.