Hayes John: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hayes John: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 24 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17431. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I need to make it very clear to the previous contributor to this debate Hone Harawira that there is no fairer trade than free trade. There is no fairer trade than free trade and for any politician in this House to turn his or her back on that statement of fact is to undermine the interests of the people he or she purports to represent. I say to the earlier speaker from the Green Party Dr Norman that in China we are operating in a communist country—a country with a record of appropriating possessions belonging to members of its community—and the member expects very naively that New Zealand investors will go to that country with no form of protection at all and will put their capital at risk. I say to the member he should get real and find an electorate that will put him into Parliament to represent it because he is letting down every one of my constituents with everything he has said.  
I say to the Maori Party that many Maori constituents are running businesses in my Wairarapa electorate—dairy businesses fishing businesses sheep and beef businesses—and they are doing very well. Those Maori-owned businesses will benefit unreservedly from this agreement and it astonishes me that we have people who are prepared to get up in this House and let their supporters down. That is what has been going on here this afternoon.  
This is the most important legislation that will be passed in this Parliament in its life. In fact it is probably the most significant legislation in the trade and export area to be passed in this country for 25 years since we signed up to the Closer Economic Relations agreement with Australia.  
We have acknowledged the work of Dr David Walker and that of officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and 20 or 30 other Government agencies. I commend their work. But I would also like to reflect for a second or two on the contribution that underpins this agreement made by people like Ted Woodfield—arguably the father of trade policy work in this country—and also made by the first New Zealand head of the World Trade Organization Mike Moore who for a long period in this Parliament advocated for free trade. It was the work of those people built on by successive generations of politicians and officials that has led us to this point today.  
The benefits from this legislation will flow on longer than the lives of anyone currently sitting in this Chamber and living in our country because we are writing legislation that will provide benefits ad infinitum—for as far as we can see into the future. I would ask the Green Party and the Maori Party to please get real. Our wealth our well-being our ability to buy Herceptin our ability to pay our schools a decent amount of money to educate our children and our ability to keep school bus services going in the northern part of my electorate depend on our ability to generate income. If this country does not export anything it will have no income. Exporting is how our country survives. When we think about this legislation I want us to think about it as a mechanism to improve the ability of those people who produce things and sell them—and there are a few people around here who have never produced anything in their lives—to do their business better. I have seen difficult regimes make trade very difficult for New Zealand exporters; I have seen that firsthand when I have lived in countries like India Bahrain Saudi Arabia and Iran. The National Party supports this legislation for the very reason that it will make work much easier for the people in our community who are out doing the hard graft of raising our national income.  
I want to thank the submitters who came to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee regardless of whichever perspective they came with—in a democracy they are entitled to their view.  
However it remains incomprehensible to me that people in this Parliament—particularly the New Zealand First Party members—can oppose this legislation because they have not provided one piece of evidence to substantiate their opposition to it. Mr Brown talked about Chinese people not liking wine. I can only suggest to him that he has never been to a vendor of wine in this country and asked for a bottle of Great Wall wine. It is available in most Chinese restaurants in my electorate. Has Mr Brown heard of Tsingtao beer? Yes the Chinese drink beer. I tell Mr Brown that some years ago longer ago than I prefer to remember I was working in Singapore in our high commission there. A Chinese contact in the national drug bureau when we were chasing Mr Asia said there were four things I needed to understand about Chinese communities: wherever there was a Chinese population there would be gambling drugs prostitution and brandy. 
Hon Member 
: Also hard work. 
JOHN HAYES 
: Yes also hard work. 
Hon Member 
: Does that apply to Europeans too? 
JOHN HAYES 
: No no that man was looking at life from the point of view of criminal activity in communities. Now brandy is based on what? The grape. Mr Brown is absolutely off track; Chinese people drink alcohol. 
A couple of days ago I mentioned that an economist called Ricardo had developed a thesis and tried to educate people like the New Zealand First Party members that free trade trade without barriers was the best way to allocate factors of production efficiently across the economy. It is also long established that individual countries are best to do what they do best. That means that in our country we are a food producer we have ideas we have technology like Bill Gallagher’s electric fences and we need to export them.  
What does this bill mean for my electorate? First of all for the dairy farmers—and I am thinking of Don Stephenson up in Te Rehunga or Graeme Tulloch in Masterton or even the dairy support people like Bob Tosswill in Greytown—it will increase their on-farm income really significantly. They will pay more taxes. They will be able to go into the communities and buy goods and services and support our businesses. That is not happening for our sheep and beef farmers some of whom have often lost $300 every day they have worked in the last 12 months. National is supporting this bill because our farm businesses and our community businesses will be significantly improved by it. Only one company in my electorate Norsewear has gone offshore but that did not happen because of this agreement. It happened because the shareholding in Norsewear was taken over by a bunch of Wellingtonians who sold the brand and the buyer has gone to China to manufacture clothing items and bring them back here into our community. There is no other negative that I have been able to find in my electorate.  
I would now like to refer for a minute or two to the comments from the Green Party on investment. We have in place an agreement with China called the Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement but it applies only to New Zealand nationals not to New Zealand residents. Many of the people who work in our country are residents not nationals and those people are often working in businesses. The point of the investment part of the free-trade agreement is that it now brings the benefits of an investment agreement to all New Zealanders who are living here. Under the provisions of this agreement as well no other country that may sign a trade agreement with China will end up with better conditions than we have. Members of the Green Party may not think that is important but New Zealand investors have $333 million at stake in China—at least they did as at 31 March 2006—and China has $1.66 billion invested in this country.  
I tell members that the National Party unreservedly supports this bill and any electorate MP put into this House by his or her people should do the same because electorate MPs would know that this step will serve the strongest interest of the people who bring them here.