O'Connor SimonSIMON O'CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. I find it remarkable at one level that we're continuing to have a debate on this now called Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. I certainly am one who thinks that this trade agreement is immensely important but why I find it odd is probably twofold.One is of course when you have a new Government you expect a whole lot of legislation to come before the House and not actually be discussing topics like this. The second of course is that we have gone through this before. I think we've been hearing this from a number of colleagues over the last few debates—that we've actually gone through this many times and very little has changed. In many ways tonight we are here to celebrate from the Government's point of view the insertion of the letters C" and "P".That's almost the end of it. It's becoming sort of—I don't know—a fairly standard approach these days to whip out words like "comprehensive" and "progressive" because it gives that sort of warm fuzzy feeling. Of course when you start to dig into anything that it is "progressive" in this world it's always found wanting and "comprehensive" is something that is always sort of a contradiction. And of course I'm slightly joking when I say we're here to celebrate only the letters C and P but actually basically to use the vernacular bugger all has changed.There's been celebration tonight from the Government side that they're tabling this document as if it's something remarkable open and transparent. Well it might come as a surprise to them but months ago actually we tabled the same 6000 page document. It's the same document. The only thing that's changed are two pieces of paper—nothing has changed. I'm no mathematician but two pieces of paper over 6000 means a 0.00003 percent change. It is nothing. It is an absolute minimal change. The Labour Party has effectively buckled to reality and what we're seeing here is just classic spin.We know that a number of those members on the other side—and the Minister himself the Hon David Parker—were at the vanguard of protests screaming and yelling saying this was a terrible terrible agreement and an affront to democracy and every other sort of dramatic spin that they could put on it and now that they've made basically no change and are on the Government benches they're trumpeting it. The only way that they're able to attempt to justify it—partly to themselves; partly to the colleagues and to the public—is to try and say there's been enormous enormous change. And you know that it's false because objectively again compare the previous 6000 pages with the new 6002 pages. But also as you listen to the speeches tonight from the other side some of the members are talking about 22 changes; others are talking about 32 changes. So I'd really encourage the Labour Government and their coalition partners to get together and try to synchronise that up.They've made a big talk about the Treaty of Waitangi because of course that's one of those things a bit like the words "progressive" and "comprehensive"—everyone goes "Oh my gosh the Treaty yes." Well actually nothing's changed there whatsoever. There's big talk about Pharmac and having been the former chair of the Health Committee it's something I've followed closely—nothing has changed around Pharmac. The protections of Pharmac were already in the original agreement. When we used to actually have a bipartisan approach to trade no side of this House was going to sell out the Treaty nor Pharmac nor the country. Nothing has changed.There's big talk about the investor-State dispute settlements. You always know when people don't really know what they want to talk about but they want to scaremonger they use the acronyms—the investor-State dispute settlements and that "Oh we've made massive changes there." Actually the change has been so minor that it's almost not worth mentioning. The fact that we can no longer sue—or rather an outside party can no longer sue for contractual disputes OK; I acknowledge that's a sort of win. The fact of course that other things outside contractual disputes and particularly if it relates to New Zealanders—if properties or businesses are taken off them as particular Governments nationalise or the like. But the other thing that they don't talk about and it's one word actually that hasn't been used tonight. It's about successfully suing—successfully suing. The thing is of course there is nothing in this agreement that has been lauded to stop another nation suing us. They just can't do it successfully. So what does that mean? It means that we can still—in this amazing extra two-page agreement—be sued as I understand things. They can still take us to the courts and cost time and money. It just can't be successful and that's a really important point.So a lot of noise has been made by the other side but I just encourage New Zealanders particularly those who are on the more extreme anti side to make sure they get the emails of this coalition Government. I'd encourage Jane Kelsey and others to remind them to say "Hey mates where were you a few months ago standing beside me? Nothing's changed. Get in touch." I'd also encourage New Zealanders to get on to Google or Bing or whatever you use look up "Labour" and "TPP" and look at what they opposed. Look at the faces leading the protests—or if you're an Aucklander like myself—who basically stuffed up the traffic for hours. Nothing has changed in this agreement whatsoever. It's incredibly disappointing that the wool is being pulled over people's eyes.I want to finish by just saying a little bit of what other colleagues have noted too: the concern around the lack of trade policy and direction in this Government. We have opportunities particularly in Europe particularly with the United Kingdom. We also have opportunities around the PACER-Plus agreement; that's in the Pacific which I suspect most people on that side don't know of. But actually there's a lot more work that needs to be done there and I encourage this Government to more properly engage with this side of the House learn a thing or two about how to pull these agreements together and perhaps return to a proper bipartisan—comprehensive if you will—approach to trade which restores a little bit of mana and dignity to how we conduct our foreign affairs overseas."