Seymour David: Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11074. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I proudly rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of this bill. This is a great day for the trading nation New Zealand because it connects New Zealand in more intricate ways with our trading partners in the Pacific who together have $27 trillion of GDP—40 percent of the world’s GDP.I would say to the earlier speaker “Professor” Tabuteau that when he says this is a way for companies to do business across borders he is absolutely correct. This agreement is sophisticated and it does allow people to do sophisticated business across borders. It is about supply chains. For instance this is about a company like Icebreaker which grows wool in Otago which has it manufactured in Asia into clothing that was designed by talented designers here in Wellington and which you can then find in the stores of North America. That is an example of an outstanding successful  innovative value-adding New Zealand company that will do better under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).It is interesting given the amount of controversy that we heard about in the lead-up to the signing of the TPP agreement how mundane the provisions in this bill turn out to be. I have got to say that I am a little bit disappointed. We are going to have to for instance amend the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act so that we can allocate export licences so that we know how much milk we are sending into the United States. I would prefer that the Americans got rid of all of their barriers but the fact is that they have lowered their barriers and they have allowed some products from New Zealand into their country so we are going to have to make a technical amendment in order to allow that to be administered from within New Zealand. We are going to have to amend the Customs and Excise Act. We are going to have to change the way that the Customs Service values imports when they enter the country.This is not exactly the end of New Zealand sovereignty as we had heard ad infinitum from the Opposition leading into the signing of the TPP agreement. As it turns out we are no longer allowed to call artificially frozen wine “ice wine”. The Canadians appear to have had a bit of a French moment as the French people did with champagne and they will not allow us to call wine made from grapes that were not frozen on the vine “ice wine”. That is a concession and I think that is actually a shame for the very innovative and very brilliant New Zealand ice wine industry. But there is give and take in trade wherever you do it across the world.You might pause to reflect on what the debate over the TPP has said about New Zealand because there are people on the other side of the House who go on and on about Mr Trump in the United States and how they would never ever become anything like Mr Trump. I mean the guy from New Zealand First who spoke a moment ago Fletcher Tabuteau—I think he thought he was in the US presidential election. The people on the left generally say “We would never become anything like Mr Trump.” but we have a Trump movement here in New Zealand. It consists of Opposition members who whenever anything happens remotely connected to global commerce with foreigners involved—and especially with wealthy people involved—they do their bananas. They did it on the TPP they did it on foreign buyers of housing and most recently they have done it on the Panama Papers.But in every single case including the case of this bill what we find is that when the facts are revealed and all of the hysteria and the xenophobia and the tall-poppy syndrome and the hatred of global commerce from the Opposition dies down what is left is a set of very very sensible and minor enactments that will allow New Zealanders to benefit from being a bigger part of $27 trillion of global GDP and 40 percent of the world economy.Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.