Hobbs Marian: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hobbs Marian: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise with great joy actually to support the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill. I will tell members why I think it is an important bill. We cannot fight world poverty without the support of the whole community. It is true that in New Zealand many many people give private donations to aid agencies such as Oxfam Save the Children Fund and World Vision—you name it; there are a lot of agencies. We are a generous people; we do that individually. But on its own that is not enough. Aid agencies are not very good at building airports roads and ports. And yes the New Zealand Government contributes aid and I live in hope that that contribution will grow. I presented an argument that it should grow and we did grow it. But there is still a wee way to go and I want to see that aid increase as we go forward. I will come later to what we do and how we as the New Zealand Government contribute. 
But most of all the countries in the Pacific and around the world that are developing need to have a capital injection—that is big money to build airports ports and roads. The people they would get that money from the international companies are very nervous of investing in countries that might actually go kaput or whose police—as once happened in the Solomons when the police wanted an increase in their pay—surround Parliament with their guns drawn until they get an increase in pay. People have found that if they were investing in a harbour and that money went off to pay the police extra money there was no stability. They wanted some guarantee and protection against an inability to transfer local currency outside a country that may result from the host Government’s action. Those people want a protection an insurance against expropriation—against the loss of an insured investment as a result of the acts of the Government—and against breach of contract. In other words they want—and they will get it through this bill by our joining in the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency—to get that insurance. That agency will build up a fund to offer insurance to private companies to invest in the developing world. 
Why do we need to fight world poverty? People often think about that in terms of the aid agency advertisements we see which show little children with flies on them. Everyone feels incredibly sorry for them and the issue is all about us giving to them. But the situation is not quite as simple as that. There is a quid pro quo. Those countries are potential markets. They are places of peace. They are places of good health. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: And fellow humans. 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: They are places where fellow humans live. Left alone they become places of chaos poor health no markets and no trade. 
Let us begin with the markets. When I was a little kid my mother invariably told me to eat my food or she would parcel it up and send it to China. 
R Doug Woolerton 
: That’s what happened to me. 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS 
: I had that problem. I laid down the fat for a long time. How wrong was that? It was just that China was so poor that we were told it got our left-overs. It never ever got them actually; my peas never went to China—I think that even then we had food regulations. But the point is that now no one would tell a child that his or her leftover puddings or vegetables will be sent to China because China has a strong economy that we are trying to do a trade agreement with. It was a country that was economically way behind other countries but it has now become the place that everyone in the world wants to trade with. 
We should apply that thought in terms of what we need to do in order to build up the infrastructure and trading capacity of developing countries. This issue is about the people of those countries but there is also self-interest in it. When we think about health we think about the risks to health from AIDS. We have only to look at the number of people affected in Papua New Guinea to understand that AIDS is as fast-growing there as it has been in Africa. When we think about it spreading down Melanesia and through into Polynesia—of which we are part—we know there is a reason to invest in community health in Papua New Guinea. It is about defence as well as about actual human justice and social issues. 
 There are issues around environmental damage. We know from inside New Zealand that if we deforest we will eventually have floods. Deforestation has occurred in places—in Papua New Guinea and in Fiji at Labasa—and then a fast flood comes down and wipes out parts of the town and kills people. The flood may come quickly because of a dam that has built up as a result of deforestation. How do we persuade people therefore to develop a different economy: one that is not based on taking out the primary products first without building a sustainable economy? We can do that only through aid. We are fast realising that we are not a country on our own. We are absolutely interconnected with other countries and environmental damage in Fiji Vanuatu and throughout the Pacific will have its effect on us in New Zealand. 
Of course if we leave countries alone to face AIDS and unsustainable economies without resources then we know—we see this all the time—that those countries go into militarism mass uprisings and tribe fighting against tribe as we saw in the Solomons. Those issues arise and then we pay out money to send in our army and our police to sort out the issues. Would it not be much better if we were working to actually support these countries by means of aid? People argue that charity begins at home. I say that home is much more inclusive than just New Zealand. Home includes protecting our borders from AIDS and building markets—there is a self-interest there. It is not just a matter of the cost of a hip operation here versus the work that we do over there. 
What difference can we make through supporting that work and through supporting aid? We can build roads. It is utterly ridiculous that in Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea peas beans and carrots are imported from Australia for the tourists who stay in hotels. Up in the highlands of Papua New Guinea peas beans and carrots grow absolutely magnificently—far better than they grow in Australia. But you see there is a plane that flies between Darwin and Brisbane and Port Moresby. There is not a plane—there is not even a road—that goes through the highlands down to Port Moresby where the market is. That country could be self-sufficient. That country would not need to spend its money importing vegetables if there was actually some decent infrastructure there. The same goes with regard to airports and the tourism that comes through having them. I think it was Pukapuka an island—I think I have this right—in the Cook Islands where it took 2 weeks for any boats to get there in the middle of the last cyclone that hit. There was no other way to get there. Small planes and a small airport could have helped. Then we have issues about waste management education and community health. 
This matter is not about being Goody Two-Shoes—that is what I am really trying to say. This is not about being Goody Two-Shoes. There is an element of self-interest in aid. In fact naming it as “aid” irritates me now even though we have an agency called NZAID. Aid is not always about stretching out the hand. There is an element of self-interest and as such we support it. There is a particular kind of self-interest here. This bill is actually about making it easy for international companies and financiers to put their money in and to put it in safely particularly since it is money that has been invested by ordinary citizens throughout the world.