Reti Shane: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeReti Shane: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to speak to this amendment bill. I would like to speak briefly to a few points that have been raised by the Opposition—a few points that were mentioned by Mr Tabuteau here just a moment ago. He commented on the apparent loss of sovereignty with Germany being unable to address its sovereign desire to change its nuclear position. I think that needs some clarity. Germany is in a dispute with Vattenfall which is a Swedish company. Vattenfall is a party in the Energy Charter Treaty. Germany is also a member of the Energy Charter Treaty; we are not. That is a multinational arrangement to manage energy and power predominantly for Europeans.As I said New Zealand is not a party to the Energy Charter Treaty but the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in its February 2015 issue speaks about investor-State dispute settlement tribunals and the fact that the greatest number of complaints or disputes now is against the Energy Charter Treaty. It used to be the North America Free Trade Agreement but now it is the Energy Charter Treaty.I think we also need to remember that the German Government is being sued and being sued does not mean that the company is going to win. In fact if we look at 356 cases that had been concluded through investor-State dispute settlements there is only a 25 percent success rate. I would also comment that the Energy Charter Treaty which Mr Tabuteau is alluding to has a specific sovereignty clause in it. It is part IV “Miscellaneous provisions” article 18: “Sovereignty over Energy Resources” and that clause states: “The Contracting Parties recognize state sovereignty and sovereign rights over energy resources.”The second point I would like to talk to is the discussion around investor-State dispute settlements. It is about fairness—fairness that we expect to be able to demonstrate to people who work in our business environment but certainly fairness that we want in return. For our people who are working in overseas foreign environments we want fairness too. It is about fair and equitable treatment. “Fair and equitable treatment” through case law through the tribunals has several characteristics that have been defined. It must be consistent with international law non-discriminatory and non-arbitrary. That is what fair and equitable treatment talks about.Some of the rulings have hinged on being “grossly unfair unjust or idiosyncratic”. That is not us. That is not the sort of environment we work in. This is from another case study: “Conduct that is arbitrarily grossly unfair discriminatory and exposes the claimant to sectional or racial prejudice.” That is not our business environment. New Zealand’s view on this is that the treatment should amount to “an outrage to bad faith to wilful neglect of duty or to an insufficiency of Government action that is so far short of international standards that every reasonable and impartial person would readily recognise its insufficiency”. It is solely a fairness issue and we include it in this agreement because we are fair to the Koreans and we expect them to be fair to us as well. I have no issues with it. Thank you.