Tabuteau FletcherFLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): I thought I would start this evening in terms of a contribution around the title and the commencement date because I would like to acknowledge an earlier contribution from my colleague on this side of the Chamber. I will speak first to the commencement date and make reference—well I will not go through the specific Speakers' ruling but it does say that if the commencement date is amended which it has been in this legislation then actually the vagueness of the start date is not only inappropriate but not acceptable under the House's rules. I note that it was changed in this version when it was brought back to the House so that we could make some vague statement around the date on which the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) done in Auckland on 4 February enters into force. It is not specific enough according to Speakers' ruling 130/2. I think the consideration asked for by the member earlier is not only valid but needs serious consideration and it calls for the House to come back and hear the Speaker's ruling on that. I then thought I would speak to the title and what I thought was that what we have got currently is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill but I thought the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Agree Anything) Amendment Bill" might be more appropriate. I say that because I have never had the privilege of speaking to Mr Groser and I do feel like I have missed out on a wonderful opportunity but what I have had the opportunity to do is speak to previous employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The conversation ran around the fact that the previous Minister of Trade's stance on trade agreements was: "Let's sign up to anything and then come back home and sell it to the people as something that's great for this nation." I think the TPPA is perhaps the prime example of an agreement being brought back to New Zealanders as a gold standard—and it could be a gold standard only if it was agreed to by the Minister—and I think New Zealanders will find that it is absolutely not that at all. I will quote a word really from one of the submitters. They were "flabbergasted" by the analysis and numbers used in the interest analysis which they used to inform their submission to the select committee. I make that reference because in our analysis of this partnership agreement the select committee was essentially forced to use an analysis that was abbreviated. It was a shorthand and to be quite honest it was insulting at times in the numbers that were given to us and what we were expected to take at face value especially when we were able to contrast it with overseas analysis done and actually to be fair with some contributions from academics here in New Zealand. The point there is that we are talking about amendment legislation to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement which in the main I have to say is quite technical and quite small because we are a country that is already set up to go in the main. But that word—that they were "flabbergasted" by the analysis and numbers used—was a direct quote from one of the submitters and that is what we are having to go through now. When we look at the submissions and when we look at the enabling legislation in front of us we were not given the information that we required to truly understand what the implications of this were or what the enabling legislation would bring about such that—for example the copyright terms and the patent procedures.The Hon Annette Sykes—Annette King sorry. What a Freudian slip—sorry. That was not intended—[Interruption] Yes yes. She spoke about the Pharmac transparency model and I would have to agree with her completely. The situation with that model which is part of the enabling legislation is such that we now have requirements on Pharmac to produce reports that can be used by any interested party in an analysis of Pharmac's decision-making procedures. The conversation around that was in the uncomfortable state in that we know—and I use that word strongly I admit—that a lot of those overseas international corporates will be using that facility to attack Pharmac's decision-making on behalf of the people of New Zealand. I have had some debate online with some pretty reputable people who know a lot about the Pharmac model and they tried very vehemently to dissuade me from my thinking but this is the truth of the situation. There is that whole question mark around transparency and what I want the Committee to realise is that actually without even going into a renegotiation round—because we do not know what the Clinton or Trump blocs will do in terms of the ratification process—right now it is our understanding that there are side letters being circulated around the member State countries trying to circumvent what is a locked-in agreement such that we will be obliged to extend those patent extension periods even further. So these side letters are being circulated—that is what we are being told—but in an agreement where the American administration by way of its process has locked it in. We have said we will not renegotiate and yet these side letters are being circulated on Pharmac so it is a huge question mark as to what will happen with our biologics and we know how critical they are as we move into the future. So the issues are technical as I said. They are minor a lot of them but there are a few significant changes where many of the submitters especially around copyright and access to technology—I will find the technical term for a later contribution—were almost at odds in their contributions to the select committee. It was a confusing piece of legislation for both sides of the argument. Even those who supported it would often tell the select committee that there was a great deal of confusion and a lot of unnecessary detail in terms of the law and that it made for a confusing read and many of the submitters said: "Let's just not do it. Let's wait for the ratification to go ahead so that we actually know what it is that we are signing up to." I just want to finish this contribution by saying that we are here today after having completed the second reading quite precipitously. We are here now going through the motions and yet we have Japan which is going to run this through its Lower House very quickly to beat us to the goalposts in terms of supporting Obama's attempt to push this through in the lame duck period—but actually that has fallen by the wayside. We have got Canada which has been prepared to stand up from the start and say "We're not going to say anything about this until we've had genuine engagement from the public of Canada." and it means genuine. It is still going. A year later it is still engaging with its community base. We have got Vietnam which had a great level of support from its public actually—from its people—but the Government has decided that it is not in a position and it does not want to be in a position to race through the ratification. That has sent a quite strong message to the Obama administration with regard to his efforts in the lame duck process.I say to the Committee this evening that we do not need to be here—we should not be here. The submitters themselves have talked about the confused nature of what it was they were submitting to because of the interest analysis and so much of what we see here is confused it is unnecessary and as I said at the start the timing of it is entirely in question. Thank you very much."