Groser Tim: Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Groser Tim: Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5288] 
Hon TIM GROSER (Minister of Trade) 
: 
 National will not be supporting the referral of the Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee from whence the issue it addresses basically came in February this year. But I want to share some sentiments with the member whose bill this is the Hon Maryan Street. I would argue that if anyone is honest about this issue they have to admit that the member is correct: the conversation continues. We all struggle with this issue. Not just decent people in this country but people around the world struggle with this issue. 
I will not make a speech about the abhorrence of slavery. I accept what the member has just said and no member in this House—one small joke aside which we will pass over quickly—would fail to share that view. The historical image is forever in our minds of the slave ships and those of us who saw President Obama inspect one of the awful sites from which they came in his historical homeland have had this image refreshed in our collective memories only in the last few days. The problems are many and varied. The traditions of servitude and forced labour in many societies prove to be extraordinarily hard to eradicate. 
 Extensive evidence was given to members of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee—I had the privilege of being on that committee—when we were considering this issue in the course of 2008. It may well have started in 2007; I do not recall when precisely we started to wrestle with this issue. Many fine minds particularly in the United States—where for reasons that are stunningly obvious more anti-slavery non-governmental organisations exist than in any other country—grapple with the issues that I know the member is trying to focus political attention on. 
I think we all understand that the long-term solution is sustainable economic development. The world has made extraordinary progress in the last 30 years not eradicating but reducing absolute poverty the breeding ground for appalling labour conditions of which slavery is the most abhorrent. We all understand that solution. There is a variety of different views on how to establish it but sustainable economic development plus the spread of human rights is the long-term solution. I am one of those who strongly believe there are linkages between those two big objectives those two fundamental solutions. But that solution is not fast enough for us; we all understand that. From time to time people take the initiative to see whether there is something more that we can do and this member’s bill is the latest example of that. 
As the select committee found when it went through the issues with a high level of consensus in the committee the problems start with the definition. This is not particular to us; even this century starting from the 1930 ILO definition around forced labour people have struggled with defining this problem. It is simple if we have a very narrow definition that would be associated with what I call the historical image of the slave ships. But the moment we widen that definition as the member’s bill does we have some real problems in trying to target what is legitimate and realisable from what is illegitimate. It is deeply in contention by many many developing countries and it would lead to massive disputation were we to proceed down that track. The member’s bill is a fair effort but the definition is broad: “labour by persons over whom any or all”—emphasising the word “any”—“of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.” I guarantee that any attempt to define this unilaterally and impose an import ban would cause real problems for any country moving in that direction. 
The second fundamental problem behind the definitional issues is that the very success of the spread of economic development and the growth of the global supply-chain associated with it compounds the difficulty. So many different products from so many different countries are incorporated in a final product. In the climate change discussions that I had the privilege of attending in Singapore last week under the Rt Hon Simon Upton the chairman of the OECD committee on sustainable development we grappled with an example that I think illustrates it well but with a different frame of mind. The issue was whether we could apply unilaterally border tax adjustments to countries not doing the right thing on climate change and people were using the example of the Apple iPod. As one of our ministerial colleagues pointed out when it arrives in the United States it has “Made in China” stamped on the box. Actually an analysis of an Apple iPod has been done. The recommended retail price in the United States is $299—round it up to $300. Only $4 of that stays in China; $130 of it stays in the United States because the real value in these products is the intellectual property in them; and 20 or so other countries are involved in manufacturing the components. How any New Zealand customs officer would try to disaggregate a problem like that when the reality of the global supply-chain massively compounds the problem defeated the select committee. I am sorry to say that were we to refer this bill back to the committee the problem would defeat the committee once again. 
Another example—and it is in the nasty sense of the word the poster child of this issue—is cocoa. The countries that most of the international attention is directed at are Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Of course there is grave concern about the labour conditions in those two desperately poor countries but all attempts to define this concern in a more operationally effective way by many non-governmental organisations many Governments and many international negotiations have failed to establish a consensus on this matter. The second most at-risk product sugar would emerge in numerous foodstuffs imported into New Zealand. How would we ever be able to differentiate between products made from this wide definition of “slavery” and products made simply by poor people? Most of the sugar in the world is produced by poor people and it is a very good thing that we import sugar. I remember being party as a very junior person in the New Zealand system many years ago to a decision in the 1970s that stopped the beet production of sugar in this country precisely to allow Pacific Island countries and Fiji in particular the opportunity to export to New Zealand. I thought it was a fantastic moral decision taken at the time. The importation of sugar from poor countries is part of the solution not part of the problem. 
The way forward will be murky as it always has been. It will rely on a multiplicity of efforts and on New Zealand’s and other countries’ participation in a variety of United Nations institutions. The UN itself is very active in this area as is the United Nations Human Rights Council and the ILO. New Zealand is a party to the 1926 Slavery Convention the ILO Convention 29 Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour and certain other conventions that I am not so familiar with but that are directed at the same general policy area. In addition to those conventions and I give credit to the previous Government for this we have promoted trade and labour side agreements in our free-trade agreements. That promotion obviously falls way short of driving the level of ambition that we all want but at least it moves the trade and labour debates in a mutually supportive way. 
We are continuing that tradition with this Government. We will also support the further development of guidelines of a voluntary nature. Often people are very reckless with the international trading system. They think trade bans trade embargoes and trade threats can solve each and every problem when there is abundant evidence that that is a gross simplification. Actually a lot of very useful progress can be made with voluntary codes. We will continue to support efforts in the OECD corporate social responsibility codes and others. 
To sum up I accept the underlying premise of the member’s bill that the conversation has not ended. It has not ended anywhere in this world. We will continue to work on it but yet another examination by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee would not lead us very far.