Tabuteau Fletcher: Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 12 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:11071. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Most New Zealanders are tired to be honest. They are tired of this Government just ignoring them. They are tired of the simplistic and dishonest spin campaigns that suggest to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is to oppose trade. This is not even called a trade deal.Hon Simon Bridges: Big night out was it?FLETCHER TABUTEAU: They are tired and they resent this Government for not listening just like that Minister over there. They are tired and they want to be heard. They wanted to be consulted in fact. Members of the public were not engaged with. They were not consulted or listened to. Instead they were told extensively and repeatedly that the consultation process was the most prolific and robust in the country’s history. Yet despite the great spin from the Government the stark and frightening reality is that just about every submitter noted the lack of consultation and that is the true reality of the situation we are in today.Did I mention they were tired Mr Bridges? They want to be heard as submitters. As submitters spoke to the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee this Government was writing the select committee’s members’ report for them. Before submitters had finished—in fact before some of them had even started their submission—the report was being written for the Government. That is the quality of democracy that this Government holds to heart. No wonder it has no qualms signing our democracy away: the Government holds no value in it. How can it be giving democracy and sovereignty away if it is already gone?Apparently in the Government’s world—its little quasi-dictatorship—you do not need to listen to the people but you do need to be seen to be going through the motions of listening to the people. You have got to have hearings across the country but to write down what the majority of submitters actually said in their submissions—apparently that is just way out of line for this Government. It is not necessary for the report to actually reflect the submitters’ collective wisdom. Well thank you National Government.As to the enabling legislation let us be honest: this is perfectly good legislation if the intent of this Government is to sell us up the river. Actually we do know that now. That is exactly the intent of this Prime Minister and every other MP sitting on the other side of this House sitting there like adoring sycophants nodding their bobble heads saying: “Trade—trade is good.” They have bought into the rhetoric from the 1 percent: make the top incredibly wealthy and somehow everyone else will benefit from this. It just does not work that way.Hon Simon Bridges: What a load of nonsense.FLETCHER TABUTEAU: I want to take this opportunity to educate Mr Bridges and other members on the other side of the House on the consolidation of corporate welfare and entitlement. It is a huge problem in the US right now. Given that those entitled corporates wrote the trade agreement that we are debating now—at least 605 of them anyway—I think it will be hard to argue that their very simple intent is to expand that entitlement around the world and here into New Zealand because right now their profits are not as good outside their borders as they are inside them. By passing this legislation through the House all that this Government is doing is enabling corporate power and corporate dominance.Do you know why the World Trade Organization trade talks have stalled? Do you know why it has taken decades for them to make progress? It is because those discussions are the ones that local businesses local small to medium sized enterprises think they are getting from the TPP. The trade facilitation agreements the Doha rounds are the ones that are truly seeking to remove barriers to trade. They are not making good progress because most of our major trading partners including the major players in the TPP do not want to fully open their borders or liberalise their economies to outside trade. No what they want is the TPP.What the TPP gives New Zealand businesses is this supposed carrot in the form of tariff removals that even our Government’s own analysis says will benefit the country by less than 2 percent in about 25 years from now. Other more reliable and independent research says less than 1 percent and they are very careful not to say that it will benefit the country because they are clear in their estimations and their projections that this trade deal will again only benefit the few.As the presidential wannabes in the US move around the country they can see that the investment settings in their trade deals have gutted the country of its businesses and meaningful employment for Americans. That is the truth of the situation. That is what the TPP will do for New Zealand. Objective analysis has shown this to be true. History has shown this to be true. If it was just a trade deal then I would support the few businesses that came before the select committee and told us how it would benefit their industries. I believed them and I agreed with them—tiny but a good start. That would be true in isolation. So I thank those submitters who came before us to tell us how good tariff reductions are—no argument from me and no argument from New Zealand First on that. But it is the role of this Government and most certainly today the role of the Opposition to advocate for and act in the best interests of all New Zealanders—all New Zealanders.I pointed out before that the TPP is a partnership agreement. It does not even pretend to call itself a trade deal. That would be too audacious. It is a partnership agreement. It is only the political salespeople on the other side of the House who have decided the best pitch to the country and the masses is to call it a trade deal: “Trade—trade is good.”In the US right now a debate is raging mainly because of the response to some outsiders who have upset the mainstream presidential candidates. The debate is on the power of the giant corporates. This is not a fringe debate; it drives to the heart of the American Dream and I suggest to everyone here that New Zealanders are of a similar inclination. A person of skill and talent who is prepared to put in the hard graft should be rewarded for that. The problem is that corporate America is making that harder by the day. They are shutting out competition stifling innovation and building moats around their own companies. This is what the intent of the TPP is—not to enable big New Zealand business to do the same here but for international corporates to export their entrenchment their entitlement their privilege around the world and into New Zealand.I end with several quotes: “The ability of big firms to influence and navigate an ever-expanding rule book may explain why the rate of small company creation in America is close to its lowest mark since the 1970s.” This is what we are signing up to. This is not the New Zealand we know nor is it the New Zealand we want. We are a country of small businesses of entrepreneurs of battlers.In the 1990s adventurers from around the world piled into America with the share of output from foreign-owned subsidiaries rising steadily. But since 2003 foreign firms contributing to the US economy have been flat at about 6 percent of private business output. So I do not expect huge gains for New Zealand businesses in the US economy. They may be reducing their tariffs by 1 to 2 percent and I am not understating the case. They have their moats built around them and they have their Government subsidies to protect them. We all know this is true for Japan and Canada too. So New Zealand First says on behalf of all supposed trade advocates that we cannot expose our New Zealand businesses to this type of competition to this type of privilege.As I said at the start of my contribution this enabling legislation does exactly what it sets out to do concisely and effectively as far as I can see at the moment and it is for that very reason that New Zealand First cannot support it. Thank you.