Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. All members of this Parliament have effectively come out in favour of these bills. We do need to have as a trading nation the ability to trade and trading with the UK makes a lot of sense. The UK has left its European brothers and sisters with the exit in Brexit. A good stroke of ingenuity by the British to do that—to leave Europe—and a smart move for them but it meant that they then had to look at free-trade agreements around the world. It's all right for the Government to say how great they are in this free-trade agreement but effectively the British signed the Australian free-trade agreement three or four months before this and it effectively set up this agreement. So I think rather than our New Zealand negotiating Ministers taking any credit they should actually be crediting the Australian negotiating Ministers that actually achieved a lot more than the New Zealand Ministers did. Now there's some Labour members over there laughing at that and saying No our Ministers did a great job and look how great they are and wonderful they are." Well I'd just like to read two paragraphs from Farmers Weekly in July this year: "Before flying to Brussels for the final few days of the talks last month Ardern told media that NZ was ready to accept an improvement on the 'status quo' market access NZ exporters already had in the EU. Around that time Cabinet had signed off on a change in the mandate given to NZ's trade negotiators from a commercially meaningful deal for key pastoral exports to the lower threshold of an improvement on the status quo market access." Basically the Prime Minister made a comment that led to the end of any meaningful negotiations in the EU. Minister O'Connor tried to put a brave face on it saying what a great result that was for New Zealand in the EU negotiations. The reality is they achieved nothing of any consequence in that agreement. This agreement is more consequential for New Zealand but comes off the back of what the Australians effectively negotiated. So it's pretty rich for the Government over there to say that they've done anything meaningful in free trade. They haven't. They actually stuffed up the European negotiations. When it comes to British ones they're riding on the back of a Britain that was trying to get back into the world and had already signed an agreement with our largest neighbour. So we need to take the context into account and when we look at that we understand just how poor this Government is in negotiating free-trade agreements. What else have we achieved under this Government that actually helps our exporters? Nothing. They have burnt our exporters at home. Their continual rules and regulations are destroying the New Zealand primary sector. They just have to look at the polling and see that their party is sliding down the polls and that is a reflection of their poor performance in the trade area and in primary production in general. We accept this agreement and we will be supporting it and we want more free trade but where is the Government on free trade with other countries? Where are we going with Indonesia? Where are we going with India? Countries like Australia have signed a heads of agreement with India. We can't even get in the door. Where's our agreement with Indonesia? They're not even working on it. When are the Labour Party going to actually look at some of the big trading countries that are on our doorstep that we need to trade with in the future? The UK agreement is great but our future lies in this region and we need to have agreements with Indonesia and India and we don't see any progress from this Government. If anything what we're going to see is a Government that will stall and fail in those agreements as they did in the EU agreement. They failed completely. They may laugh over there but they did. That quote I read out indicates why there was complete failure and that was because the Prime Minister gave up before they even went into the negotiations. Hon Kiritapu Allan: Rubbish.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well do you want me to read it out again for the Labour member? OK I'll read it out again then for the Labour member: "Ardern told media that NZ was ready to accept an improvement on the 'status quo' market access NZ exporters already had in the EU". She didn't want a better agreement; she just wanted the status quo. That's not what we engage in free trade for—the status quo. We engage in free trade to get better agreements. Now if the members over there want to dispute that well then maybe take it up with their leader. I'm sure it's an open and honest caucus where they can have those discussions and I'm sure members that have had those discussions in the past don't just end up going to a by-election a couple of months later. The reality is the Labour Party—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I'm going to ask and invite the member to come back to the matter at hand. Hon DAVID BENNETT: The free-trade agreement with the UK is what we are talking about because we are looking at what Labour's done in the free-trade area. They haven't done much if anything and what they have done has probably hurt us in some regards like they did in the EU agreement. So when this House votes on this bill this will be a vote that was always going to be on an agreement that was going to be successful for New Zealand because the British had to do it. They left—Brexit. They had to get some agreements in place. They didn't have negotiating teams. They were ready to go but they just didn't have the ability to do it and New Zealand and Australia were the first cabs off the rank. Australia was actually the first cab off the rank and our agreement was signed a few months later basically as a replication of what the Australians had achieved. That's effectively what happened here so it's not any success by this Government at all.When we look at what this Government's track record on trade is they actually failed completely in the EU agreement. That's their track record. When we look at their track record compared with Australia where are our Indian and Indonesian agreements that Australia has? Those are the markets of the future. The British can make as much milk as we can make. They'll make as many primary products as we will. They will be able to control their economy much more. Their populations aren't nearly the size of India and Indonesia. Our future lies in the Asian region and we don't get free-trade agreements with those countries under this Government. That's the reality of what New Zealanders need to look at. Instead of hearing the rhetoric of how great we are and how lovely we are at doing this look at the reality. They stuffed up the EU agreement they only got this one because the Aussies had negotiated it and they haven't done any work on any other agreements. That's the reality of what's going on."