Reti Shane: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeReti Shane: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 12 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7982. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It is a pleasure to speak in the third reading of the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill. This is an excellent bill. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is definitely a bank that we want to be a part of. If we look at the definition of “Asia” in this agreement it is actually the United Nations definition of Asia and Pacific which indicates the breadth of reach that this agreement will actually have because that definition includes North Asia South-east Asia South Asia central Asia parts of the Middle East Australasia and the Pacific—so quite a lot of breadth.Chris Bishop: Quite lot of Asia.Dr SHANE RETI: Clearly quite a lot of Asia. Clearly the need is great. The World Bank tells us that $1 trillion is needed in infrastructure in Asia so there is no question that the need is there. There are a lot of benefits to being a member to being a part of this bank. The three obvious ones that have been commented on are the benefit of being a founding member—that is our ability to influence the direction and best practices that the bank has been able to start with; secondly economically our ability to compete for contracts; and thirdly the strategic relationship.The cost that has been mentioned is $125 million in paid-up capital. We inquired as to the benefits of that and we were told amongst other things that for what is effectively a 0.6 percent shareholding we have already received disproportionate benefits. We are also interested in the security—how secure is that $125 million? We were told that we have a favourable risk rating and we have preferred creditor status. On the ratio of paid-up to on-call capital this looks very favourable to parameters that say the World Bank has. So we are quite reassured that that paid-up capital is secure. The $500 million on-call—I take the point that my colleague Mr Parker was making when he was looking at a cost per unit share. Effectively he took the $125 million paid-up and put it together with the $500 million on-call. I do not think that is an accurate metric to take because the likelihood of the on-call being called up is very very small. Officials were very clear on that. Secondly it does not take into account the time value of money—more specifically the paid-up capital is paid over 5 years. So I do not think it is quite accurate but I take the point he was making.The case has been made that membership of this bank is almost to the exclusion of other banks—the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. I do not think that is a correct representation either because we remain engaged and active shareholders in both of those other banks. So I just want to comment that that is not to their exclusion. We focused on the economic the founding member benefits and the strategic benefits to being a part of this agreement but let us talk about the quality of life impact for people in Asia that this bank will have. This is an infrastructure bank. We are not building cars we are not building ships or planes; it is an infrastructure bank. That means reliable electricity for many people in Asia. This means reliable and clean water. This means roads and telecommunications. And I think that lifting these people or helping them lift from poverty of course is a good thing. So I think there is some mission around this bank that is a good thing for us to be a part of.Furthermore as a founding member New Zealand has used its founding member status to inject principles of sustainability and some sense of the environment in that. More specifically we are able to have the word “sustainable” placed before the words “economic development” so it reads “sustainable economic development”. The Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee made only one change: to delete clause 9(1) which enabled article 19(1) in the agreement which was around foreign currency restrictions. That was really about the only discussion we needed to have around core principles towards this agreement within the select committee. So I would like to acknowledge the committee chair Mark Mitchell for his guidance in this and other committee members who bring the bill here today for the third reading and I commend it to the House.