Robson Matt: General Debate 
Robson Matt: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19485] 
Hon MATT ROBSON (Deputy Leader—Progressive) 
: 
 The expansion of trade within and across the vast Asia and Pacific region is currently propelling the most significant rise in living standards ever experienced by so many people in the history of human civilisation. The race to promote economic development is one that everyone can be excited about because it is a race to eradicate the evil that is poverty and it is also a race to raise environmental standards. Ministers from 52 Asia-Pacific nations yesterday pledged to alter current patterns of production consumption and distribution to promote cleaner environmentally sustainable growth. China has adopted car emission standards that put Western democracies to shame. 
Our minority coalition Government has since 1999 been able to advance its progressive agenda only with the cooperation and support of other responsible parties in this Parliament—United Future since 2002 and the Green Party since 1999. Labour Progressive United Future and the Greens are making the MMP system work for people. I am not here to be unfair on the Greens who have been our natural allies but I say to the Green Party that when it comes to expanding our economy’s international connections our objective going forward must be to get other nations from the United States to China and from the European Union to Canada to give us a fair go. We want them to lower their unfair barriers on our exports. We want global barriers to trade to come tumbling down just as the Berlin Wall came down just as the Sahara wall that Morocco’s kingdom has built through the Western Sahara will come down and just as Israel’s apartheid wall through the Palestinian West Bank will crumble. 
The Government of China has given us a privileged position at the head of a very long international queue seeking a fair trade deal with China. China is emerging very quickly as the world’s most important manufacturing hub and the Labour-Progressive Government precisely because it is forward-looking is embracing this opportunity for all New Zealanders. It disappoints us in the Progressives that the Green Party is not here with us on this vital issue. 
Last year a suggestion was made by the Greens that if the Green Party were ever to join in our coalition Government it might yet call for trade sanctions against China. That is like saying that New Zealand should consider trade sanctions on the United States because we disagree with its Federal Government’s inhumane opposition to needle and syringe exchange programmes. That is about as futile as having a non-negotiable stance on GE in the 2002 election. Unless the Greens reverse this position on China they are shutting the door to joining in Government and are inviting other parties to take their rightful place within our centre-left coalition. 
I believe that the Greens’ position is intellectually and morally flawed. The Greens say that New Zealand is in a race to the bottom in trading with Asian economies but in reality New Zealand’s minimum wages have been increasing every year of progressive government. Our unemployment rate is at its lowest level in a whole generation. Our relative living standards have at last stopped falling which they did from 1970 until 1999. 
Of course democrats everywhere must speak up in support of overseas democracy movements and bitterly condemn any attack on human rights in any society be it Tonga the US or China. Leon Trotsky writing in 1927 described the working proletariat of Shanghai as the most advanced vanguard in the world—the most socially conscious and committed to social justice and democracy of any urban area in the world. I believe that the Chinese working people will uphold that tradition and be seen as that most advanced vanguard for democracy in the world in the years to come. As China becomes more prosperous its democracy will grow. The Chinese will do it themselves. 
China is a Third World society pulling itself up to lift the living standards of its people so that they may enjoy the liberties freedoms and lifestyles we take for granted here. This Third World nation has recently issued landmark regulations banning cars with poor ecological performance. China’s new rules are strict. Motor vehicles that fail to meet the standards will not be registered by traffic administration departments across China. The World Resources Institute calculates that 42 percent of the cars that the manufacturing giant General Motors sold in 2004 can no longer be sold in the China of 2005. From 2008 China’s regulations will get stricter still. 
I urge the Greens to join with the Labour-Progressive Government in opening our doors with China to work for a global economy that is socially just and environmentally sustainable. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.