Hayes John: New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement Bill — In Committee 
Hayes John: New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:648;Page:17377] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 A number of things have concerned me starting with the recent comments by Peter Brown from the New Zealand First Party. He said the Singapore free-trade agreement had significantly benefited the people of Singapore and then proceeded to give absolutely no example to prove his point. I think that was outrageous. 
Second I would also like to address the issues that seem to be disturbing New Zealand First and other parties in this House including the Maori Party who think that China’s lower-wage economy than ours will in some way cause huge damage in our economy. The protectionists in this Parliament say that because the Chinese make television sets toys and clothes more cheaply than we can our people will lose their jobs unless we protect our domestic production with taxes on Chinese products. Well there are countries that do that sort of thing. The international textile trade for example is subject to very very complex trade regulations right across the world. If members think about it they will realise agriculture is considerably protected in many countries—for example Japan and the USA—and that is a direct problem for the people in my electorate who produce agricultural products and want to export them. 
New Zealand First the Green Party and the Maori Party say we should stem the flow of goods into New Zealand particularly the cheap ones. Well I would like to refer them to an economist called Ricardo who many years ago said the best thing a country could do was to get rid of trade barriers. Even if the country could not produce something more efficiently than something produced in another country he said the objective was to remove the barriers to trade because doing that would help both countries. For example China may be far more efficient than New Zealand at producing wide-screen television sets or rice but rather less proficient than New Zealand at producing dairy products. China and New Zealand must stick to producing what each country does best; New Zealand must do that and China must do that. If there are no trade barriers between our two countries then we have both got to be better off and the communities in our country must be better off. We need to address this issue because we must stop our people leaving New Zealand in droves. We must give them higher standards of living here and this trade agreement will do that. 
This trade agreement will not destroy our jobs. It is not possible for this country to stop exporting and to import everything from abroad because we would have nothing to pay for the imports with. If one does not export one cannot import because one has no money to buy the imports with. So it seems to me that New Zealand must export to the global markets and it must pay for imports from wherever those products are cheapest. As I said a couple of days ago in response to Maori Party concerns free trade is fair trade. The transaction does not have to happen if the two parties do not want it. It is quite clear that when two people discuss engaging in a transaction one party can say yes and the other party can say no. The transaction does not have to go ahead. People engage in a transaction because each party will be better off by doing so. Each party wants to engage in the transaction. 
This bill is the most significant legislation that has been put forward in the life of this Parliament. It will provide benefits to our communities long past the life of every person in this parliamentary complex. I support this bill and the National Party supports it wholeheartedly. Again I would just thank the officials involved in putting the detail of the agreement in place.