Delahunty Catherine: Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDelahunty Catherine: Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11075. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green): It is great to have the warm welcome from the Government and an opportunity to speak on this bill which is a really really significant moment in terms of the history of this country. There are many coherent arguments that have been articulated for months and months about the concerns around the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement including those related to the environment Te Tiriti o Waitangi pharmaceuticals the idea of genuine benefit to New Zealand businesses—the list goes on and on—but I think it is really important to acknowledge that this is not just about us; this is about a global movement of opposition to unfair trade. Every country that is associated with the TPP agreement has got its people’s movements its challenges to Government its legal challenges where people have made every attempt to point out that this is not a trade agreement; this is an investment agreement and it is an investment agreement to benefit the United States of America more than its own Government—more to do with its own corporates.The global corporates which are beyond Governments will benefit from this so-called free-trade deal. But the reality is that for people on the ground in ordinary life they are legitimately raising issues about whether their medicines will become harder to access whether in fact they will have the right to defend the environment and whether the deal will have real benefits to New Zealand - owned businesses that cannot compete with large-scale multinationals. This bill is the first step in what is a very very damaging process of further undermining the sovereignty of this country.If we think first about the environment a good example of why people are against the TPP agreement in this legislation is to do with investor-State dispute settlements: an extraordinary process that involves courts which are not conducted by judges in rooms that are not open to public scrutiny so that the powerful can talk to the powerful about their right to sue the Governments that dare to stand up to them. I will give you an excellent example of that: OceanaGold which happens to have large gold mines in Reefton and Macraes Flat and also in my area of the Coromandel—it now owns the former Newmont mine. It is suing under a free-trade deal with very similar provisions to the TPP agreement the Government of El Salvador for $301 million for daring to say that it should protect its water. Their communities asked the Government to stand up and say “No” but because it had signed the deal it was impossible. We have major problems with this deal. We have major problems with it in terms of the risk to the environment.Also listening to Shane Reti’s speech I just have to disagree about the interpretation of the clauses around the Treaty—all of those clauses say that the Government the Crown will decide whether the Treaty is being breached. Hello—that is not Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The Crown does not get to decide. If it was a genuine negotiation and if the clauses in the TPP agreement said that tangata whenua will decide whether there is a Treaty breach and they would advocate for that Treaty breach that would be one thing. But the Crown will decide. It is clear—Mr Reti read out the clauses—who gets to decide. It is clear that investor-State dispute settlements will not apply if the Government decides they should not apply but the Government is not tangata whenua and the Government is not the Treaty partner on both sides of the agreement.That is why we have real concerns about the Treaty clauses and that is why some of our most senior Māori leaders—not the businesses that were apparently consulted but some of our most senior Māori leaders in terms of constitutional law and Treaty law—went to the Waitangi Tribunal and have raised issues supported by thousands of tangata whenua.David Seymour: What did the Tribunal say?CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: The Waitangi Tribunal got it wrong because what it said was that the Crown’s protection is sufficient. The Crown’s protection is not sufficient. The articles of the Treaty must be honoured in actuality not through the Crown defining—David Bennett: It says “sovereignty of the Crown”.CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: There is not sovereignty of the Crown when you are talking about the articles of the Treaty. It is a shared sovereignty arrangement but that is a little bit deep for some of the members here.We need to look at the long-term effects of a trade deal that will not be about trade. It will be about very very minor access to a few other markets and for all the hype for all the claims it turns out to be a very very very serious erosion of sovereignty—in exchange for what? And that is why the Greens will keep fighting it. Kia ora tātou. [Interruption]