O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I'm pleased to speak in support of this agreement and in support of this bill. Can I acknowledge the Minister that has taken a seat David Parker for the work that he has led here and too who he actually called the Prime Minister. I think he was the then—he's very flattered.Hon David Parker: Prior Minister.SIMON O'CONNOR: Oh prior—my hearing. On this side of the House we began to think it was the Prime Minister. It was quite the promotion. But returning to seriousness to acknowledge the Minister in his work and the prior Minister Todd McClay.I'll leave it up to other colleagues to discuss how much this agreement the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) has changed from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It hasn't been substantial but I will myself not get so much into that as the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee and instead will focus on a little bit about the process.First and foremost it was a good engagement with the public. We had over 500 people who wrote in to us and around 30 who wished to be heard. The committee was very keen to progress that through and I want to thank all those submitters for their time. Many were familiar to us—they had also engaged in our prior treaty analysis some weeks and months prior. I think it was quite good for the committee to hear once again their core concerns.Can I thank too the committee—the members there who worked through this. There were very robust discussions as often—and always actually—happens in the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee.Brett Hudson: Can you detail the contributions of each member?SIMON O'CONNOR: I'm being asked if the contributions of each member are discussed here. No. You can come and join the committee sometime Brett Hudson. But actually the committee worked quite hard on this.I think it's quite important to note we have returned this bill to the House early but not in any rushed fashion. I have been asked questions of Wasn't this meant to be coming back some time in December?" That's strictly when we could—or rather the amount of time that we did have but the committee felt that we were able to deal with the discussions engage the public appropriately hear their views and report back swiftly first and foremost because we didn't need to prolong the process and secondly I think because most members of the House—and certainly on this side of the House—see the benefit of New Zealand depositing the CPTPP as soon as possible. Being one of the key countries some of the key negotiators being a great champion of this free-trade agreement New Zealand wants to symbolically show that by being one of the early adopters. So again the committee has been happy to report back to the House.Really importantly it was a little bit like other treaties that we've had. What we were dealing with is a piece of legislation. It's only a few pages—important as they are. But one of the elements we had to engage with was some submitters and the general public was the understanding that we were no longer really discussing the treaty as a whole. What we were discussing in the select committee was a very particular piece of legislation which in effect takes this treaty which sits within the realm of the executive to decide to sign or not. We were looking at a piece of legislation—which effectively takes an international treaty; in this case a trade treaty—and gives it domestic effect.Why I mention that is a number of people were understandably coming to express once again their concerns as they had done when we looked at the national interest analysis and looked at the treaty as a whole. We've attempted in our select committee report to reflect those arguments; though strictly speaking they didn't actually relate to the bill. Again the bill is quite a technical set of clauses to bring about in New Zealand's domestic legislation the powers which are needed to bring that international treaty into effect.So we tried to balance that. As the Minister noted we made a few suggested minor changes there and I think it's in particular thanks to his and other officials who have helped guide us through that. It's a good piece of legislation and I believe overall a very good trade agreement.I would just finish by acknowledging one thing. There was and always has been a bit of debate in the trade space around—we heard gender was mentioned indigenous rights and so forth. There's sort of a wider discussion going on in the committee at the moment as to what degree if any trade agreements should be used to further much much wider causes. In other words one side says actually a trade agreement is a great opportunity to talk gender and indigenous rights to put forward climate targets and so forth—it should be very very broad and using trade as a lever. On the other side there's some debate that says actually keep the trade agreement a trade agreement and one should not be using that economic leverage to push other philosophies and agendas. I'm obviously not going to answer that today. I'm only one member of the committee. But I just wanted to signal there's a wider discussion. So I'm pleased as the chair of the committee to speak in the second reading and we'll leave the more political side to other colleagues in their contributions."