Carter Chris: Tariff (Malaysia Free Trade Agreement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Carter Chris: Tariff (Malaysia Free Trade Agreement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10279] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 The Labour Party supports this free-trade proposal which is a proposal that happened when Labour was previously in Government. With all due respect to our Green colleagues the Labour Party knows that without trade our country could not exist. We could not import goods and we could not pay for the lifestyle that we have. Trade is the lifeblood of New Zealand being a developed country. 
As I am sure all members of this House are aware New Zealand faces severe geographic barriers to prosperity. We are the most distant country from the European market. We are far from the North American market. We are relatively speaking close to the emerging Asian markets but remember that we are as far from Singapore as London is. So geographically even for South-east Asia and for a country like Malaysia New Zealand is still a distant market. Malaysia is currently our eighth-largest export market. We export goods of about $1 billion worth to Malaysia. Hopefully this free-trade agreement signed so recently and soon to be ratified by this Parliament will increase that trade. 
I think back to 2008 when as Minister of Education I accompanied the then Prime Minister Helen Clark and the then Minister of Trade Phil Goff to Beijing for the signing of the Free Trade Agreement between the Government of New Zealand and the Government of the People’s Republic of China. I tell members to look at what the results of that free-trade agreement have been: an increase in trade of $1 billion in the last 2 years. That is an increase of 34 percent in our trade with China—that huge emerging market. One of the critical things to see the development that the China free-trade agreement personifies is a Government taking a very proactive role in promoting and encouraging the opportunities that the free-trade agreement provides. For example when I went to China with the then Prime Minister for the signing of the China free-trade agreement I had meetings with the Minister of Education Zhou Ji. I signed a memorandum of understanding for the mutual recognition of high school qualifications so that students coming to study in New Zealand at high school level would not be penalised in China for having New Zealand diplomas and similarly for New Zealand students going to study in China. I visited schools and tertiary institutions. I really worked hard as we would expect any Minister of Education to do to try to utilise those opportunities. Mr Goff and I went to Hangzhou. He spoke with exporters and I dealt with educationalists in Zhejiang province in that very rich middle part of China. It is really important that a Government seizes those opportunities and takes a leadership role. 
After that free-trade agreement the Labour-led Government set up a road show. It travelled all around New Zealand giving exporters business people and agriculturalists the chance to see what was available through the free-trade agreement. We set up web-based information services so that people could access ready and quick answers to the opportunities provided by the free-trade agreement. Between 2005 and 2008 when Labour was in Government it increased New Zealand Trade and Enterprise funding from $6 million to $54 million. We knew that it was critical to invest to maximise these opportunities. I am really pleased that the present Government has signed the free-trade agreement with Malaysia but I ask myself what it has done to encourage New Zealand exporters businesses education providers and primary producers to take advantage of this situation. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s funding over 4 years will be reduced by $101 million. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: How much? 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: It is a reduction of $101 million in New Zealand Trade and Enterprise funding. Remember that this is the funding I just spoke about that in 3 years under Labour went up from $6 million to $54 million. That was an increase. In fact we set up a national development fund and that has already had cuts for this financial year and it will disappear entirely in 2011. Yes the new Government has set up a Growth Services Fund but only a very small amount of money from the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise cuts is going into that fund. 
So we have provided an opportunity but we have not provided the oil if you like to facilitate New Zealand businesses education providers and so on to grasp those opportunities. I ask the present Government to take a lesson from what Labour did. We knew that we had to invest and to show leadership. We had to encourage fund and explore the opportunities that free-trade agreements create. This is especially important because I guess we have seen with the current air problems in Europe created by the volcano in Iceland that air travel is critical to successful exporting. One of the obstacles that New Zealand already faces is the talk in an environmentally and globally conscious world that air miles—carbon that is generated by air transport—could be a penalising weapon used against us by some of our competitors in Europe and North America. They say that New Zealand primary production as efficient and top quality as it is is very competitive in those European and North American markets. Our competitors and we cannot blame them for it will use every opportunity they can to get a market advantage. 
I am really concerned about the threat to one of the things that we have been very successful at in New Zealand both Labour Governments and National Governments before that which is helping to build this image of “100% Pure New Zealand”: a country that is very environmentally conscious that cares about the environment and that would not be open to criticism about not being environmentally sustainable. Three events come to mind to question that brand which we have been so hard put to invest in which has been cultivated over so long and which has been so successful. Those three things begin with of course first and foremost the proposal to mine schedule 4 lands protected by the Crown Minerals Act in our national parks in the Coromandel Forest Park in some of our offshore islands in the Hauraki Gulf and so on. 
I know that the present Government will say that it is just a proposal and that it is just looking at it but the very fact that it is being considered is a detriment to this “100% Pure New Zealand” image that our country has spent so long and so much money on investing in and promoting. So the first issue is that we have to be really careful that this free-trade agreement with Malaysia and the tourism and brand opportunities that we have spent so long cultivating are not compromised. 
Then we have the whaling issue. We heard Mr Key’s announcement in January that he would have a bold new initiative to stop Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean on which I would totally agree with him. We do not want whaling to happen. I was conservation Minister for 5 years and I battled against Japanese whaling that entire time. I went to every International Whaling Commission meeting over those 5 years to try to stop it. We now have a proposal from Mr McCully and Mr Key to have limited commercial whaling with an end point where Japan will hopefully stop whaling. The Japanese have already announced that they will continue whaling indefinitely because they have said it is part of their cultural identity. Curiously enough this is a country that started whaling only after the Second World War. 
So we have had mining in national parks and we have had New Zealand instead of being the staunchest conservation country and reinforcing our brand as “100% Pure New Zealand” now being the leading country promoting the idea of lifting the international moratorium on whaling. Then we had the fishing debacle a few weeks ago. At the conference in Libya the New Zealand delegates took the opportunity to increase their quota for bluefin tuna—a species that is at grave risk of becoming extinct. Many other countries voluntarily reduced their fishing quota but New Zealand went from 4 to 6 percent. That did not receive very much attention in New Zealand but it had a huge impact globally and a huge potential impact on our image of “100% Pure New Zealand.” 
Mining in national parks commercial whaling again with New Zealand leading the charge and now New Zealand becoming the only country in the world to increase its catch of bluefin tuna an endangered species are just three examples that have led to the  
Guardian  
and  
The Economist 
 in London and the 
 New York Times  
starting to question our clean green image. 
Dr Paul Hutchison 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I think the Opposition speaker has been going far too wide off the mark and he should come back to the bill. This is the Malaysian free-trade amendment bill and I think he should confine his remarks to that. 
Hon CHRIS CARTER 
: Speaking to the point of order— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: I do not need any advice. If the member is making comparisons he needs to draw them back to the bill. But that opportunity has gone because his time has expired.