Choudhary Ashraf: ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill — In Committee 
Choudhary Ashraf: ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:655;Page:4680] 
Dr ASHRAF CHOUDHARY (Labour) 
: 
 I am delighted to rise in support of this bill. It is not before time that we are concluding this agreement with the ASEAN countries—the 10 ASEAN countries plus Timor-Leste another country that wants to be a member of ASEAN and of course Papua New Guinea which is an observer country for the ASEAN region. I am really pleased that at long last New Zealand is concluding this agreement with ASEAN because I have seen development in the ASEAN region for many many years. 
It was 30-odd years ago that I first travelled to the region and a country like Singapore was pretty poor in those days. As the British would say it was pretty much a coolie State. But I have travelled through Singapore for 35 years and seen it develop almost every year from a Third World or Fourth World country into a First World country. Its standard of living has now gone ahead of New Zealand’s and the whole region—like Singapore Malaysia and Thailand—has made many strides in development and progress. I have had the opportunity to travel to most of the countries in the region. I think I have travelled to all the nine countries except Burma and I have seen progress in all of them. 
It is tremendous that we have this free-trade agreement and there are over 560 million people in the region. It is to New Zealand’s advantage that we are developing an economic relationship but it will also further promote people engagement like diplomatic arrangements. In many different ways the two regions—New Zealand and Australia and ASEAN—will develop into a major economic bloc similar to the European Union and other regional blocs. It is important for us to see the economic development. There has been a 24 percent annual growth in trade. In the last few years there has been tremendous growth; it is more than our trade with China in our agricultural products. From my experience in agriculture in terms of growth in the standard of living of those countries their annual growth in educational requirements and all the amenities they have New Zealand has a lot to offer. Over the years those countries have sent many students to study in New Zealand and we started that with the Colombo Plan. In those days we used to give scholarships to those Third World countries and it is interesting to see the development in those countries. A lot of students came from Singapore Malaysia and Thailand. Now Singapore is offering scholarships not only to the region but also to New Zealand and to the countries surrounding Singapore. 
There has been huge change but if people have not travelled to the region they will not appreciate that or know what is going on. I have had the opportunity to see the development in many of those countries and to do some work over the years on behalf of Massey University as a consultant on agriculture. This free-trade agreement is not before time and it is nothing to worry about. Often people worry that it will adversely affect a lot of things in New Zealand. But I do have one personal reservation. We have to be very mindful that a lot of our people have not travelled to those countries and they often worry about the potential problems if a lot of people from those countries are travelling around New Zealand. They worry about the possibility of diseases being brought here and about quarantine issues. We have to make sure that we educate our people particularly on our side of the equation.