Hodgson Pete: Urgent Debates — Collapse of World Trade Talks in Cancun Mexico 
Hodgson Pete: Urgent Debates — Collapse of World Trade Talks in Cancun Mexico 
[Volume:611;Page:8688] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Minister of Energy) 
: 
 The previous speaker began well enough by spelling out the importance of trade to this country and to all small countries and went on to suggest that the ratio of exports to gross domestic product (GDP) had improved over recent times. I felt that those early comments were most interesting and useful. Then the member reached for the National Party research unit notes and dropped in behind the safety of them repeating as his leader had done earlier in the debate that he wanted to know where plan B was. He wanted to know what was in the cupboard after the World Trade Organization. Away he went. He ranted and raved and gave the same lines again and again. 
 Then the member went a little further and said that only under a National Government could a free-trade agreement with the US be secured in response to which I would gently ask him where he was in the 1990s. After 9 long years there was no free-trade agreement just one that was close. Then the member went still further and got into pure drivel. He said that only if we had a free-trade agreement with the US could we keep our compliance costs low and could we get our tax rates down. By that stage the member had moved from reasoned debate and the National Party research unit’s speech notes through to pure unreconstructed ideology. 
Now is a good time to thank those New Zealanders headed by the Hon. Jim Sutton who have just spent the last week or so in Cancun. The Hon. Peter Dunne was there; so were a lot of officials representing New Zealand’s diplomatic and trade skills. And we do have a lot of them. It is useful to put on the parliamentary record my appreciation anyway for the work they do. I add to that my appreciation for the attendance and I am sure the hard work of members of the business sector—Business New Zealand—of a couple of representatives from Federated Farmers who I know were there and of the fishing industry and so on. 
The fishing industry was a really interesting case in point because around the back a group of countries got together on fishing. Admittedly they were mainly seller countries—like Iceland Norway Canada and so on. New Zealand of course was there. It is clear that some progress can be made on fishing. Indeed progress is being made on fishing just by the formation of that group because it is quite sector-specific. I think that is interesting. I do not know how far that group will go but the fact that it has been formed is very encouraging and I congratulate those New Zealanders who were involved in that as well. Fishing I would imagine would be worth something in the order of $100 million to $140 million or 150 million per annum to us if we could remove the tariffs on that. It is a shame I am sorry to say that Japan as I understand it was not part of that group. 
However I think the issue is whether the Doha round is fatally damaged or not. I thought the Prime Minister made some interesting remarks when she spoke about the earlier Uruguay round. It went on for about 8 or 9 years and had its time extended because it failed and failed as it went through—until it succeeded. The success of the Uruguay round is still being felt in New Zealand because the implementation phase is still running. I do not think it finishes for another year or so. But in any case it is worth a very substantial amount of money to our economy—certainly in the order of a billion dollars or more. The fact that we now have the Doha round which takes things further is encouraging and the fact that the Cancun meeting failed to reach agreement is discouraging. It was interesting to hear the comments of Peter Dunne that maybe there will be a ministerial meeting preceded by a bunch of diplomatic and officials’ meetings— 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: What’s plan B? 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: Maybe there will be a meeting in Hong Kong in the middle of next year. 
I offer up to the House my experience with regard to the climate change negotiations which are the largest multilateral negotiations on the environment ever held. What happened in December 2000 in The Hague was that 17000 people went to a meeting to seek to reach an agreement and after about 12 days failed. It was quite a spectacular failure. The Europeans I felt had taken far too hard a line there and came back 6 months later to Bonn. Instead of 17000 people there were more like 1700 people there. The world agreed on the rules for Kyoto there and pushed those rules through in Marrakesh 6 months later. So one can have failure followed by success. 
Richard Prebble asked what plan B is. What do we do now? That was from the National research unit notes. I will just reiterate the Government’s position. This Government’s position is very similar to the position taken by all Governments in New Zealand and it is that multilateral negotiations—for example the Uruguay round—are at the top of our list and always will be. We will always put the most effort— 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: What’s plan B? That’s plan A. 
Hon PETE HODGSON 
: That is plan A. Then inevitably to the extent that plan A fails or to the extent that plan B or C may help plan A to succeed we drop down to regionalism and to bilateralism or in the case of Singapore and Chile to trilateralism. That is what plans B and C are. Then we have plan D—actually plans D through to Z as well—which are to do with getting rid of non-tariff trade barriers. For example the acceptance in the Chinese building code of New Zealand  
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 is no small deal. So on all those fronts—plans B to Z—this Government previous Governments and future Governments are operating have operated and will operate across a multitude of areas. That is the way of the world and we will continue to do it. 
Not only is that the case but it is also the case that our officials though perhaps small in number are quite skilled. The little that I have seen of our officials in action fills me with some confidence and pride in their work. It was good to see the work of Jim Sutton acknowledged. It was good to see people say that Mike Moore might have made a difference. It was good to have Bill English being relentlessly optimistic. That is the way forward for New Zealand and for New Zealanders. It was sad that the Hon Richard Prebble began his remarks by setting out to poor-mouth New Zealand New Zealand’s efforts and New Zealand’s success. I thought that was sad and I thought the member could have done a little better. 
I think the key issue for New Zealand is that while the Cancun meeting was clearly a failure the process is not a failure—or at least not yet a failure. If the Doha round has to be extended beyond January 2005 so be it. The Uruguay round was extended and no doubt some other trade round in the future will be. The talks seemed to fail because the less developed nations in particular did not seem to be well enough prepared—and that is understandable; that happens at a lot of the international forums I have attended and I am sure other members have found that as well—and did not come with enough flexibility. In other words they came to make a point. Well they have made a point. The fact that they were not able to agree on an open and a transparent procurement policy for example—itself a corruption-buster—is quite a sad thing but none the less that is what happened. It seems to me that what we must do in this country is to work with those less developed countries with which we have the greatest contact to see whether they can come better prepared and with a more flexible position to the next round wherever it may be. 
I think the G22 group was a positive step forward with Brazil China and India leading it. New Zealand was invited to join. We declined. The reason that we declined is that we are part of the Cairns group and if we had pulled out Australia would not have been able to pull out. We could not have made it a G23 group because Australia could not make it a G24 group and the reason Australia could not make it a G24 group is that it is in the Cairns group which it chairs. So that is where New Zealand’s position is for the moment on the G22 group. I personally hope that the G22 group will go from strength to strength and will itself be a positive force for the lesser developed countries but at the moment anyway it is not clear whether it will have a long life. The long and short of it is that the G22 group made a big difference and the fact that the EU made so much movement in its Common Agricultural Policy—not that it can afford to keep it as it is—was really useful and as I understand it the gains that were secured in Cancun are still on the table. 
So I say to the ACT party that it ought to think very carefully if it wants to break away from a multilateral approach to international negotiations in this country. That would be a very very serious thing to do. I say to the National Party there is a plan B C D E and so on as there was when that party was in Government. I congratulate Jim Sutton and all those who went to Cancun with him and hope they will have better luck next time. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.