O'Connor Damien; Pugh MaureenHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour): Thank you very much Madam Chair. In the spirit of cooperation that is generally the way that we manage trade agreements in this House I think all parties in the House have agreed to come together and to move this through as quickly as possible. It's not because it's insignificant or small in terms of the technical parts of the bill but it's one where there has been agreement reached and I'd just like to acknowledge the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee.I'll take the opportunity and I know it's a kind of a free-ranging speech and we can go all over the place—of course while focusing on the bill—but I'll acknowledge the Minister and his efforts to keep this thing moving as quickly as possible. There's been much said about the timing of when it came into the House; the reality was that this is quite a complex piece of legislation. I don't think we're going to go and unpick it. The select committee had the opportunity to do that and I'll acknowledge the chair who heard submissions who managed this process properly. It is technical. A trade agreement with 450 million people negotiated with 5 million people is quite an achievement. So in acknowledging the Minister's movement and momentum I want to go back to the officials who have been a key part of this. Ten years ago probably it would have been said that this was impossible. We're a small player at the bottom of the Pacific; the European Union arguably one of the biggest single blocs of economic activity and commerce in the world and 450 million highly discerning high-value consumers—what would they want with us? The agreement is about values—value and values but most particularly values because we share many of the same aspirations as all 27 of the EU member States and I think that's quite an achievement.I want to acknowledge Ministers Dombrovskis and Wojciechowski who were the key leaders—one in agriculture and the other Valdis Dombrovskis is the trade commissioner from the EU. He drove this through some difficult times—one of them being of course the Ukraine war which cut right across everything that the EU was doing. He kept focus on the New Zealand - EU free-trade agreement and I want to thank him once again.The pressure was on I guess us as a Government too. The previous Labour Government had signed a free-trade agreement with China. My colleague the Hon David Parker had signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and so I had to get on and try and do my little bit and I know as I've said before it's a non-partisan area. New Zealand is a trading nation and we need to open every door every opportunity we can for trading nations.What makes this agreement I guess more valuable is in the services area and I know there has been some disappointment in some areas of agriculture that didn't get the volumes that they wanted. None the less the increased access—particularly for dairy and for beef—offers huge opportunities to add real value to the total export earnings of those sectors but it's in the services area where we're not limited really only by what's between our ears and New Zealanders are very very good at this open government procurement into the EU. Services that are unlimited in terms of their volume and scope can now trade into the EU with virtually no barriers and so thank you to the officials for the technical work that they did to keep us in the game. I have to say that it is a very valuable agreement.I'll maybe take the opportunity—and there's a national interest analysis here quite a substantive one. You can go to estimated impacts by sector: Expanded export opportunities for the agriculture and food sector is an important driver of the overall economic benefits. Improved and preferential quota access and lower or no tariffs on products such as beef cheese butter fruit and wine would improve New Zealand competitiveness". It opens the door to us being more competitive in these areas; but on top of that the services sector is expected to make the largest contribution to economic gains in absolute terms due to the significant role of services in the New Zealand economy something that we don't always appreciate but we are coming to realise more and more. So you know up to $2.1 billion of additional gain the largest source of economic gains from the agreement from the services sector—nothing to scoff about at all.So there were submissions made to the select committee on some technical areas but one of I guess the areas of interest were geographical indicators. It's quite a strange thing that the agreement does two things. It protects geographical indicators and then it actually allows the EU in almost an opposite approach to say that anything produced in any member State can be called "from EU". So while we might have had country of origin as a traditional way forward to identify which particular State we've said "No; we'll go back and accept anything from the EU because you'll maintain the standards." So at one end geographical indicators; at the other end opening up opportunities for all exporters from the EU into our country.CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The member's time—Hon Damien O'Connor: Madam Chair.CHAIRPERSON (Maureen Pugh): The Hon Damien O'Connor.Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair and I won't take too long other than to say that people might see a number of contradictions in a big player like the EU having an agreement with New Zealand and why? As I say I come back to the values one and all the tricky areas that we work through on geographical indicators really leaving the door open for most of our cheese and wine exporters or traders or producers with a couple of exceptions that we couldn't negotiate our way out of.On geographical indicators consultation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade around New Zealand where we asked how we should manage geographical indicators because there were some concerns the question of "Well how many are we going to develop and protect?"—there was little or no interest from the New Zealand primary sectors. That is disappointing. So what I lay on the Table with this agreement is a challenge to the food and beverage sectors—and wine of course has a few geographical indicators as we appreciate the value but for the other sectors in the finest quality nutrition to the world let's develop some of our own and turn those into valuable clearly identifiable and unique products for us to sell to the world.I'll leave it at that other than to say thank you once again to officials to the Minister keeping this moving through. This is a high-quality valuable agreement for New Zealand into the future. Kia ora."