McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Mr Assistant Speaker thank you. I want to congratulate the Minister for Trade and Export Growth for delivering almost word for word an identical speech to the one I gave in this House for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) just two years ago. The reason for that is that I agree with him. This is a high-quality agreement that is good for New Zealand. I agree with him absolutely. Where he waivers however from that great speech that was delivered to this House some time ago is on the significance of the changes that he says his Government and New Zealand First have delivered.He sits there with a smile but he knows actually the changes are nowhere near as significant as he suggests. We too will take a little bit of time talking about that. But certainly the reason that the Labour and New Zealand First Government feel anxious about this is that there are pictures of them up and down the country over a long period of time campaigning protesting against an agreement of 6000 pages and they turn up in this House today saying that they've fixed it with about two pages' worth of changes. The Minister knows that so very very well.But I will give credit where it is due. If you take the coalition agreement that was signed between New Zealand First and the Greens and you add to the front of that the words Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement" would it be a different agreement at all? Because substantially all that's happened—at the behest of Canada not this Government—is they have changed the name and so very very little else. For New Zealanders who rely upon trade for their jobs who have businesses that trade who send things overseas or who are productive it's very important that this Government didn't change it very much because it was a good trade agreement when it was called TPP and it remains a good trade agreement now that it's called the revised TPP—or they've made it "Comprehensive and Progressive" by just adding those three words to the beginning of it.The reason they're so sensitive in many of these areas is that New Zealanders believed them when they were opposed to this. They didn't see through the facade of the politics of Opposition—and I guess loud voices in Opposition often become quieter in Government. I do want to give the two Government coalition parties credit. They are doing what's right for New Zealand—no question there. But there are so many tens of thousands of New Zealanders that are losing faith with them because they believed them when they said "Send us to Wellington to that Parliament and we will be one more vote against the TPP."Let's look at a few of the things that they've said are important. We've had the Prime Minister within a couple of weeks in the job with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Export Growth in Vietnam proclaiming a deal that has the highest environmental and labour standards of any deal New Zealand has ever done and that protects the rights of Māori—the Government can still meet its obligation through the Treaty of Waitangi. So I challenge the Minister to tell us exactly what he did to change the labour provisions chapter of the TPP. If you go on the website and you download the labour chapter it is 4034 words long; go to the revised agreement—it's 4034 words long. To the Minister: can he explain to us if it has changed significantly so that New Zealand workers are better protected why does the revised agreement—the revised agreement that's "Comprehensive and Progressive"—still talk about America? Why does it still talk about America if they're no longer members?Now of course we've heard a lot about the Treaty of Waitangi clause and there are members on the other side of this House—including Mr Tabuteau from Rotorua—who said Māori weren't protected they were being sold out. The text in the TPP agreement and the revised agreement for the Treaty of Waitangi exemption is word-for-word identical. But it's "Comprehensive and Progressive" because they added it to the name.There are members on the other side of this House in New Zealand First and in Labour and in the Greens who said the tariff gains for New Zealand were not good enough—we didn't go far enough. Andrew Little as the leader said that it does nothing for dairy it's not good enough it's a failure. "We should vote against it" they said in Opposition. Go and have a look at the revised agreement and compare it to the tariff schedules in the TPP agreement—word-for-word identical. Word-for-word identical except America is not in it but in other parts of the agreement it still talks about America. When the current Minister for Trade and Export Growth and his colleagues said at the time of the TPP "It would only add 1 percent to New Zealand GDP it's not worth it; they haven't done well enough." he goes off and claims to have fixed the TPP by making it "Comprehensive and Progressive" and he's come back with a 0.3 percent gain of GDP. And 0.3 percent is still important because it levels the playing field and allows us to get in there but somehow it's comprehensive it's progressive and it's better yet there are so very few changes to it. Now I want to deal with the issue of the housing ban that they've spoken so very much about because of course it's not a ban that they've put in place. It's more bureaucracy and it's a process. So yes what they've done is they've said every single house in New Zealand is now a sensitive asset and if a foreigner wants to come and can fit within the rules they get to buy that. But otherwise as with every other process of the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) every single house that a foreigner may want to purchase—except of course for Australia and except of course for Singapore; for everybody else the British for instance the Minister will have to make the decision because finally when an OIO decision is made it's not rubber-stamped. Just as in the case where when we were in Government we turned down the sale of Lochinver Station in this case every single house sale to a foreigner will go to the Minister. That's not a ban.But of course go and have a look at the revised TPP and go and have a look at the original TPP and have a look and see how it's changed around the housing ban. Where has this Government gone and put in there that they have the right to ban house sales? There's not a single word of difference there. What they have is a workaround. I will give the Minister credit—it's very smart albeit very bureaucratic and you wait and see the size of the holes in that legislation they'll have to go and fix. And by the way go and talk to Singapore about what they're doing to that relationship. And then we have the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS). We have members in this House who have stood up against that day in and day out. Those horrible nasty corporations from overseas were coming to make the New Zealand Government do things it didn't want to. And we've heard that they tried very hard and they carved out 80 percent of all foreign investment under the TPP and this agreement—by signing the very same side letter on the website that I signed two years ago in Auckland. So they gained nothing there at all. The one area that I do give them credit for is they have carved out the ability for foreign companies to sue the New Zealand Government when the New Zealand Government is the contractor issuing a contract particularly overpriced. So when the Minister says we could have been sued by the people doing the Waterview tunnel who were overseas over a contract dispute—you could no longer do that. But any other legislation that's passed that actually could call into question the commitment of the Government when it comes to the trade agreement a foreign corporation can sue them. So when David Parker Jacinda Ardern and members of the New Zealand First Party stand up and say "We've fixed this." what they actually said in this House is "We don't believe we will be sued successfully." And guess what? Go and have a look at the notes that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave me to read out as the Minister of Trade on the TPP—word for word the same. Foreign national companies can still sue the New Zealand Government even though New Zealand First gave promises to the New Zealand taxpayer that they would stop that. They'll say they didn't have enough time because we didn't start the work. That Minister knows his officials said in committee a few weeks ago the work on changes to ISDS started in May of last year long before the New Zealand election—in May of last year. All of these changes that they are taking credit for started long before they got there and were worked on by this Opposition in Government because they were in the best interests of New Zealand. They are so very very sensitive to claims that it's not a different agreement that it's substantially the same because they are worried that New Zealanders will see through the facade of the protest that they gave over all of those years the TPP was there and now they have seen the light when they are in Government. I do want to finish on a positive note. There are so very many people who have worked hard on the TPP agreement and the revised TPP agreement from some of the best negotiators in the world who are our officials. There have been thousands of New Zealanders who have had input and have worked hard to make sure this deal was delivered. It is not in New Zealand's best interests that America has pulled out; it absolutely is in New Zealand's best interests that the TPP as a revised deal is going ahead. I do congratulate the Government for deciding they will put the best interests of New Zealand ahead of the politics of a number of years and I am glad that New Zealand is signing this deal. New Zealanders will have more jobs as a result of it. It is the same deal as was negotiated by the National Government."