Mapp Wayne: New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement Bill — Second Reading 
Mapp Wayne: New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:17269] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 This week Parliament will pass into law the New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement Bill and that will be an important strategic gain for our country. It will in fact trigger the first round of tariff reductions on 1 October and that is why it is a priority to get the legislation passed into law. Traders are waiting for us to do our legislative work so they can get ahead and reap the gains of the agreement. As the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee Mr Gallagher noted in quoting the concluding comments of the committee’s report this is a historic opportunity for New Zealand and it is one that we as a nation must take. 
Those parties that are voting against the bill however well intentioned they might be really are looking past New Zealand’s opportunities. Could they seriously suggest there could be a free-trade agreement better than this one? The New Zealand First Party for instance says that yes obviously there could be a better free-trade agreement and indeed if there had been a better one—that is faster liberalisation—I guess it would have supported it. Is that the case with either the Maori Party or the Green Party? I would think not. Based on what I hear those parties are essentially against free trade. But I want to ask one of those three parties—the one that said that under appropriate conditions it would support such an agreement—whether it could actually imagine a country the size of China negotiating a free-trade agreement that would go from the current level of tariffs to no tariffs at all in just over 10 years. That party is simply quibbling about a year or two surely and that is not a good reason to vote against the bill. 
One of the ironies of sitting in this House was demonstrated today when during question time and before this debate we heard all the New Zealand First members extolling through their questions the wonderful virtues of their leader saying what a marvellous Minister of Foreign Affairs he had been for the country and the Prime Minister agreeing—although one would have to say somewhat reluctantly—with those comments. Perhaps she felt she had no choice but to do so. But if their leader is such a marvellous Minister of Foreign Affairs for our country and if he is advancing our nation’s interests at every possible turn then surely he should be doing the one decent thing he could do at this point in time—that is to actually persuade his party to vote for this bill. We all know that it is in fact just naked political calculation on their part that apparently has them voting against this bill. 
Let us be clear about this. This is an enormous strategic opportunity not just for New Zealand but also—as that country sees it—for China as well. We are talking about the second-largest trading nation in the world—not the second-largest economy in the world but certainly the second-largest trading nation in the world—deciding that it would go for a full free-trade agreement on all goods with no exceptions. There might be a delay of 1 year in one sector but within 10 years there will be complete free trade across all sectors. China knows full well that every other country in the Asia-Pacific region knows that it has done that. In fact Australia is negotiating with China as we speak and will also be getting I assume a full total free-trade agreement. Members should think of the significance of that in the Asia-Pacific region because we are talking about other countries that really struggle with that concept—countries like Japan Korea and also the United States when it comes to agricultural products. 
This agreement will put real pressure on those economies to actually ante-up and shift their game. We have already seen that in relation to Japan. Can anyone seriously think that Japan would be in full free-trade agreement negotiations with New Zealand if it were not for this agreement? The Japanese know full well that this agreement puts the acid on them to shift deeply held views in relation to agriculture. Japan of all countries along with Korea has been extraordinarily obdurate in relation to freeing up agricultural trade. It wants to protect its farmers who are grossly inefficient at all costs. It knows that that day is coming to an end. It knows it will have to talk to those people and take them along a path of opening up their trade to a much wider approach. In truth this agreement will end up being the precursor of full free trade within the Asia-Pacific region. It might take a bit more than 10 years—realistically it will probably take 20 or even 30 years—but it will have started with this agreement. China in particular knew what it was doing by going into these negotiations with New Zealand at this time. This is China’s attempt I guess not only to gain a further economic leverage within the Asia-Pacific region but also to boost its own prosperity by increasing trade within the region. 
One of the remarkable things about the submissions was seeing who was in favour of the agreement. I am saying this directly to the Maori Party which was not actually present during the submissions in the select committee. I am not suggesting it was deliberately absent but because it does not have representatives on the committee it simply did not have the opportunity. So I think it is quite important for the committee members to report to the Maori Party that the leading Maori business organisations—the Federation of Maori Authorities and all the leading fishing companies—universally said they needed this agreement. Probably of all the business organisations they were the most strongly represented by their submissions. The mainstream—for want of a better term—business organisations saw this as a kind of pro forma exercise and tended to just let Parliament get on with it. 
The Maori business organisations were making a very specific point here however. It seemed to me that they were signalling two things. The first was that they were interested in an international engagement and that they had stepped out of their usual pattern of being passive recipients of Federated Farmers the meat companies the fishing companies and so forth to being active traders in their own right rather than through intermediaries in the international arena. 
The second point which is perhaps more interesting is that those Maori organisations saw that China because it is a new economy and an emerging international trade partner would provide special opportunities to Maori businesses to get ahead to get a foot in because they would kind of understand each other—both coming to a resurgence in recent times. So there would be empathy sympathy and a gain in trade. That was a hugely significant point and I would suggest that the Maori Party needs to talk to a wider range of its own supporters to understand that this is actually a very strongly supported agreement because of the opportunities it provides for iwi-based organisations. 
I would have to say to those submitters opposed to the agreement that they were running the autarchic ideas—well-intentioned though they might have been—that have been run in this country from the 1930s through to the 1950s 1960s and even the 1970s. Those days are gone. It is about as relevant as assembling railway wagons and trains in New Zealand. The truth is that we have to get to a situation where we have free trade and where we find our points of international competitiveness. The Maori community has done precisely that by their submissions. Many other submitters saw this. 
National is very pleased to support this agreement. We see it as a historic and unique opportunity for this country to get ahead. The single biggest challenge facing this country over the next decade is how to get back up the OECD ladder instead of—as we have done over the last 9 years—going down it. It may have taken 9 years for Labour to get to this point but it seems to have finally realised that this country needs to get ahead. However I suspect it will not have time to convince the voters of that.