Mitchell MarkMARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): It is interesting that Dr Clark raised sheep in his speech because I enjoyed working with him on the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee in this process but I cannot help but feel that he has been put up as a sacrificial lamb. He is the fall guy who has been put up to front this.The only reason I say that is because over the weekend I watched Q+A and I saw an interview with the Rt Hon Mike Moore who is highly respected—an ex-leader of the Labour Party an ex - New Zealand Prime Minister; highly respected within international trade circles—and he came out and he actually made a valiant effort to stay loyal to the leader Andrew Little. He did a pretty good job. The one area that he departed on was the TPP the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He was very clear in his statement when he said that Andrew Little and the Labour Party of today have made a poor decision around not supporting the TPP.I think another very telling sign of the split within the Labour Party in relation to this free-trade agreement is the position that the Hon Phil Goff took. He was very very clear in his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and he even had to go to the leader to seek a dispensation for him to be able to take an alternate view. So it would be safe to say that unlike Upper Hutt Auckland City will not be becoming a Trans-Pacific Partnership - free zone.I want to just address a comment that was made earlier in the House today by Mr Barry Coates—and of course we welcome him to the House. I had a fair bit of contact with Barry before he came in as a parliamentarian around the TPP and we had some good positive engagement on it. But he made a statement in relation to it that it was a given that most of New Zealand was actually against this free-trade agreement.My observation is that when the select committee received the original text we went through a process of seeking submissions from the public. During the first round of seeking submissions although the bulk of them were pro forma the committee received about 10000—or a bit over 10000—submissions. Of those submissions we heard a bit over 300. We went to Auckland. We heard submissions in Auckland. We heard submissions here in Wellington and we also travelled to the South Island and heard submissions in Christchurch. The interesting thing about that—and this is where I want to acknowledge the Minister of Trade Todd McClay and our chief negotiator David Walker and actually also the Hon Chris Finlayson as we have heard from him today that he was also involved in a series of roadshows that were taken throughout the country—sorry and the Hon Paul Goldsmith was involved in those as well.So they embarked on a series of roadshows around the country. This was for members of the public to be able to attend and put questions directly to the Minister and the chief negotiator and raise any concerns or issues that they had around the Trans-Pacific Partnership. I believe that as a result of that on the second go round when we received the legislation on to the committee we went back out and we sought public submissions again we received—I do not have the exact number but going off what Minister Finlayson was saying—about 68 submissions. Of those submissions about 30 wanted to be heard in front of the committee. We heard all of those submissions in Wellington. We did not need to travel to Auckland. There was no requirement to take the committee to Christchurch because we went through a 6-month process where we went from receiving 10000 submissions and hearing 300 to receiving 60 submissions and hearing only 30. I think that is actually a very clear indication of how much information was put out into the public and how the public of New Zealand actually started to understand and realise that this was a very good agreement for us.In relation to free-trade agreements what do they really mean for New Zealand? Obviously they create favourable terms for us to be able to trade with the rest of the world. We are a trading nation. That is what we have relied on till now for our growth and for our opportunities and that is what we will rely on into the future. I mentioned earlier the Hon Phil Goff. He probably copped a fair bit of criticism going through the process of developing a free-trade agreement with China. But if we were actually to fast-forward now to today that free-trade agreement has been significant for us in terms of job opportunities economic growth new opportunities emerging and without that free trade agreement we would not be—and I acknowledge him and I acknowledge the previous Labour Government for the work that they did on that.This is why to me it is a big surprise that Labour has taken such a massive apparent swing to the left in terms of its failure to support these types of free-trade agreements that essentially are so important to us. So coming back to what do free-trade agreements mean to us if you have a look at the history of our trade over the last 5 years you will find that with the countries that we have free-trade agreements with our growth in trade is growing at about 10 percent or a bit over 10 percent. If you go back and you have a look at the countries that we do not have a free-trade agreement with—although I can assure you our private sector will be trying as hard as it can to continue to develop business—in fact trade with those countries is in decline. So there is a clear correlation between the fact that good free-trade agreements allow opportunities for growth inside our economy; countries that we do not have free-trade agreements with the trend is in the negative. During the select committee process—and I do want to acknowledge the members on the select committee—Fletcher Tabuteau: Amp it up. You sound sad.MARK MITCHELL: Ha ha! I do want to acknowledge the members on the select committee including Fletcher Tabuteau who I am sure is going to get up and make a contribution in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership today. I am absolutely confident of that. It is a good process. It is where people do get to come and make their submissions and we get to test those. I want to acknowledge the advisers who also supported the committee with their advice. We were able to test many of the issues that were actually raised with us through that process.Through the process of course we have recommended that some amendments be made. I guess the one big issue that was really raised with us a significant one was around TPMs or technological protection measures. In relation to those we are going to make some amendments to the Copyright Act 1994. We are going to amend section 198 to include a new offence related to specific recordings. The committee recommends this amendment set the same sentences of imprisonment and monetary fines already prescribed under section 131(5) of the Copyright Act.We also recommend amending clauses 39 to 42 of the bill relating to TPMs technological protection measures to clarify the definition used of issuer of the TPM work" to include a person who communicated the TPM work or issued a copy to the public. We recommend inserting new section 226(2) to define a TPM work to clarify that it must have been communicated or a copy of it issued to the public. We recommended amending new subsection (2)(c) of section 234 relating to regulation-making powers for TPM exceptions in clause 44 to require the Minister to consider the proposed effect on the dissemination of works and the use of non-infringing works when the Minister recommends regulations. This was really important. This was one that we had a lot of discussion about on the committee and I feel that the committee has made some really good recommendations around this.I would just like to finish by saying that this is a significant free-trade agreement for us. It does take in 40 percent of the global economy. It has become clear through the committee process that there is strong support for this agreement and I am very happy to recommend it to the House. Thank you."