Parker David: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: General Debate[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7214. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. No one else to take the call; I will. Can I address firstly the issue of the Government squeaking back into surplus. It is a good thing. It is a good thing. We agree that Government books should be in surplus and indeed the Labour Party produced our own financials at the time of the last election to show that we would have been in surplus this year too. There are a number of points that need to be made in respect of it. They have been well made by Grant Robertson.To get to surplus this year the Government effectively used the ACC system as a source of taxation. It took more in ACC levies from registration fees and taxes on petrol and road-user charges than it needed to fund ACC in order to construct a surplus. We also know contrary to what the Minister of Finance said in his answers at question time today that the tax cuts that the National Government implemented after the election in 2008 when it gave 40 percent of the income tax to the top 10 percent of income earners most clearly increased income equality in New Zealand. The Minister of Finance today in question time had the gall to pretend that it did not. He said it reduced income inequality. That is a patent error and one that the Minister of Finance ought not to have made.I want to turn to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. I agree it is a significant deal and I want to record its history. It started under the Labour Government with what was called the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement which involved New Zealand Singapore Chile—and I forget what the fourth country was. The Minister of Trade at the time was the Hon Phil Goff. The Hon Phil Goff had numerous meetings with Susan Schwab who was the trade representative from the United States and encouraged the Americans to join into the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement process which turned into the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.There have been some intemperate comments coming from the National Party members in the last week. They have tried to criticise Annette King and the Labour Party members for asking questions that the Opposition parties ought to be asking such as: “What is the underlying effect on things like Pharmac?”. We already know and accept that the Pharmac model is not going to be fundamentally broken by the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement despite ambitions earlier in the process from some of the American interest groups to actually break up the Pharmac model. It is a good thing that Pharmac has been protected in its fundamental model but it is important that New Zealanders transparently have answers from the Government as to what will be the effect of changes directly or indirectly in respect of patent laws to the costs of Pharmac. It may well be that those questions satisfy the Labour Party members. It may be that they do not. But it is absolutely our duty to ask those questions and I thank Annette King for bringing those questions to the House.I want to say that some of the opposition that there is in civil society to the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been caused by the way Minister Groser and the National Party members have addressed these issues. Indeed just yesterday the New Zealand High Court found Minister Groser’s actions in refusing to provide public information to be a breach of the Official Information Act quashed his decisions in a way that is quite unusual and said that he had to make more disclosures to civil society. It is that somewhat arrogant approach that has caused some of the backlash against the Trans-Pacific Partnership which does no credit to the National Party.Other members in the National Party have said that somehow the Labour Party members questioning aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership means that we are opposed to free trade. That is not so. We are a party that is proudly in favour of free trade. We know that as a small nation at the bottom of the Pacific we benefit from lower tariffs in respect of the countries to whom we sell goods—and of course the Trans-Pacific Partnership covers a very significant proportion of world economic output and trade.In the short time I have got left I want to make one further reference. That is that I think the Government has sold us out on the ability of future Governments to control who buys New Zealand residential land.David Bennett: Who signed the Chinese agreement?Hon DAVID PARKER: The National Government does not want to do that. Actually the Chinese free-trade agreement allows us to control the sale of residential land to overseas people.David Bennett: Oh it does not.Hon DAVID PARKER: It does Mr Bennett. You are ignorant. You should read the agreement. It has been well publicised. Just because the National Government does not think that that was appropriate does not mean it should not have argued for that freedom for New Zealand as experienced in Australia Viet Nam and various other countries.