Harawira Hone: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Harawira Hone: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2007. Volume:642;Page:11732. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Maori Party—Te Tai Tokerau) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Tena tatou katoa i te Whare. I understand that this bill is intended to amend the International Finance Agreements Act of 1961 so that New Zealand can become a member of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and to ratify the convention establishing the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency signed by this Labour Government in Seoul on 6 September 2005 linking that agency to others referred to in that Act including the World Bank the IMF and the International Finance Corporation. 
The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency is one of just five agencies that make up the World Bank Group. There are 170 members including New Zealand. The stated mission of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency is to enhance the flow of foreign investment to developing countries by providing insurance for member countries against both sovereign and political risk. It provides protection against an inability to transfer local currency outside the country caused by the host Government’s actions protection against the loss of an insured investment as a result of acts by the host Government—it may reduce or eliminate ownership—protection against the host Government breaching a contract and protection against the loss or destruction of assets caused by politically motivated acts of war or civil disturbance in the host country. The risk insurance is provided for terms of up to 20 years for investments investment loans and deals where the investor’s return comes from the revenues or production of the investment. 
 That is the official spin but the history of foreign investment paints a much different and far darker picture in this country. Foreign capital has always played a big role in the New Zealand economy from right back in the colonial days when the settler Government first attracted British investment by promising land to settlers that had been stolen from Maori then called for further investment to bankroll the war against Maori whose lands had been stolen. But despite all that up until 1950 foreign investment was still only about 11 percent of the total investment. 
Then in 1984 the Government lifted restrictions on New Zealand companies investing overseas and taking advantage of cheap overseas labour which of course led to the loss of thousands of New Zealand jobs to offshore manufacturing. Unfortunately for New Zealand the Government’s response was not to protect jobs but to start reducing the restrictions on foreign investment into Aotearoa. That led to the privatisation and sale of some of the country’s largest companies beginning in 1988 and giving foreign investment a real boost. Indeed sales at the time were structured to make overseas participation inevitable. Many companies were sold cheaply in a depressed market and by the mid-1990s most of New Zealand’s top companies were between 30 and 100 percent foreign-owned. Yet the reality of all that investment is that rather than investing in New Zealand extending production and creating jobs foreign investors basically took over existing companies stripped them of their assets laid off thousands of workers and took their massive profits back offshore with them. 
Then if that were not enough in 1995 the Government amended the Overseas Investment Act to make it even easier for foreign investment in the New Zealand economy. That included the lifting of restrictions on the purchase of New Zealand land even though a  
National Business Review 
 poll in 1995 clearly showed that more than half of all Kiwis did not want land to be sold to foreigners and in fact said they would support a law to ban the foreign ownership of New Zealand land. 
Maori have been particularly hard hit by much of the privatisation and sale of New Zealand’s assets through the selling of huge Maori workplaces such as forests the railroad and Telecom and through the break-up and sale of many of the country’s freezing works. The Government was also selling off resources that were subject to Treaty claims—resources that were hard enough to recover when held by the Crown but that would become nigh on impossible to get back once ownership had moved offshore. It all culminated in 1997 when the Government wanted to sign up to the OECD’s Multilateral Agreement on Investment which aimed to remove virtually all restrictions on foreign investment giving multibillion-dollar foreign raiders an open season on assets in Aotearoa. A massive campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment brought together Maori activists unions students anti free-trade groups local mayors Grey Power the Alliance and even New Zealand First—Labour sat on the fence during this one—which eventually forced the Government to abandon negotiations on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in late 1998. 
So the history of foreign investment in this country has never been particularly pleasant for Maori. There is no reason to believe that much has changed with the advent of the new more powerful World Bank - IMF rape and pillage brigade. Today the Labour Government continues to negotiate and sign an increasing number of trade agreements that give rights to large corporations over the very resources that Maori lay claim to. Now it wants us to amend the International Finance Agreements Act in order to lock New Zealand into the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. 
Well no way will the Maori Party support any plans to continue the rape and pillage of this nation’s assets. Nor will we support the stupidity of our having to put up insurance so that the rapists get compensation if they cannot have their dastardly way. Here is where we see the hyp—oh there is that word again. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: That is right. You cannot use it. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: Here is where we see the two-facedness— 
R Doug Woolerton 
: The differing standards. 
HONE HARAWIRA 
: Thank you very much—the differing standards in all of this. Although this Labour Government is planning to ensure the rape of our land by foreigners it does not even have the decency to support a watered-down Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which is due to go before the United Nations General Assembly for ratification in a few days’ time. In fact not only will New Zealand fail to support the declaration but it has been internationally credited with leading the charge against it backed up by Canada Australia and again the good old USA. 
I draw the House’s attention to the recommendation of Professor Roldofo Stavenhagen the United Nations special rapporteur on the Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights and the fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples who said: “One of the new trends that has been reinforced in recent years is the continuous loss of indigenous lands and territories including their loss of control over natural resources … intensified as a result of economic globalisation especially with increased exploitation of energy and water resources”. And here we are being asked to support a bill to ensure foreign investment in Aotearoa when the rules have been determined not by us but by international financial institutions whose sole purpose is to break down trade barriers in order to enable transnationals to dominate not only economic development but also political development by using international trade agreements that overrule national decision-making and national sovereignty all in the interests of globalisation. 
Yet the evidence already clearly shows the failings of that philosophy. Poor countries and poor people in rich countries simply do not get the promised gains from globalisation. In fact the World Bank itself concedes that predictions of substantial poverty reduction from the Doha round were based on a “fanciful scenario” and suggests that even big cuts in tariffs and subsidies would benefit less than 1 percent of the people who live below the poverty line. So-called trade agreements extend far beyond trade in goods and in fact restrict the choice of laws and policies available to Governments to regulate international investment the provision of services and intellectual property. They restrict the choices the ability and the right of Governments to regulate in their national interests. Indeed it is their stated function to do so. The point is that the world’s major economic powers do not even adhere to those policies themselves. In fact they unashamedly promote their corporations’ interests above all else and our being dragged into these international agreements leaves us more and more vulnerable in a grossly unequal global economy while giving away the very sovereignty that protects our interests. 
I am aghast at the lengths to which this Government will stoop in order to keep onside with the World Bank and the IMF. This scenario—this bill—is almost like a rapist flying into the country and coming into one’s home carrying an international agreement that states he can rape one’s sisters. Now we have to assure the guy that if one sister should say “No”—heaven forbid—then we will give him our other sister. Maori rights are under constant threat but these international financial agreements threaten the sovereignty of every New Zealander and our fundamental right to determine our future is being compromised by the Labour Government’s actions. In the interests of Maori sovereignty—indeed in the interests of New Zealand’s sovereignty—the Maori Party will be opposing this bill.