Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): The Trade (Anti-dumping and Countervailing Duties) Amendment Bill is the ultimate example of a solution that is looking for a problem—the ultimate example of a solution looking for a problem. I have sat here and listened to speech after speech from the Government members I have read departmental statements and media releases and it is still unclear to me what the public policy problem is that we are trying to solve here. I will give some credit to Brett Hudson when he got up to speak before because he has been the only member from the Government benches who has actually tried to define what the problem is. It was painful—it was like Mr Magoo groping around during a power cut—but he came up with one reason why he thought that we needed this bill the Trade (Anti-dumping and Countervailing Duties) Amendment Bill. He said somewhat perplexingly that if we have a drought there might be a need to have cheaper products in our economy.That spoke exactly to the problem in fact. We have vulnerable producers in our country vulnerable producers in our agricultural sector—people like the peach-growers who have submitted to the select committee on this issue—who face issue after issue challenge after challenge to keep their businesses sustainable without the threat of dumped goods coming in from overseas and entirely wiping out their businesses and their livelihoods. That was the closest we got to a reason for this bill and I challenge any of the members who guffaw across there to actually put forward a reason for why we have this bill.When you read the departmental disclosure statement there are I think a sum total of seven current cases where we have anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties in place at the moment—about seven. Again what problem are we trying to solve?The other thing that has not been explained to me—I think it is absolutely mystifying and curious—is the fact that the public interest test runs directly counter to the point of anti-dumping duties. Here is the thing: why do you dump goods in a market? You dump goods in a market because you want to be able to sell them under the market price and you want to knock out the market producers. So the dumping relies entirely on your being able to sell your goods very very cheaply. Yet in the public interest test that the Minister considers she has to consider the effect of the duty on the prices of like goods produced in New Zealand.This runs directly counter to the point of us having duties in the first place. It would be like a robber standing before a judge before sentencing and the judge having to consider the injustice on the robber's family of that family not being able to keep the stolen goods. The mischief here is that goods come in below market price they knock out local producers and here we have the Minister being able to consider that those low below-market prices are a good thing and she has to weigh that against the damage that is done to our producers. That is completely counterintuitive in a public policy sense.We heard submission after submission from organisations that you would normally count as part of a solid National Party constituency: the agricultural producers Business New Zealand Horticulture New Zealand and the peach-growers and time and time again they raised the risk of this bill to their businesses and to their livelihoods. They made two very important points which again have not been responded to by the Government benches. They raised these two points: that often particularly in the agricultural sector—and I would have thought the National Party would be sensitive to this point—if dumped goods come in and they destroy businesses that is it for a long time. Once the trees have been cut down because your peach orchard has been undermined by dumped goods that is it. You cannot grow the trees and have peaches again next year; it is a 5- to 10-year downtime for that industry.We heard from Business New Zealand as well about the downstream effect something that is not considered in the public interest test because many of these industries in horticulture and in manufacturing do not just employ people in their locale; they have a huge number of businesses and entities that supply them and rely on them and supply employment to large numbers of people. That will not be considered and we have not heard a response to that from the Government.This is going to be another kick in the guts for our exporters who already have a hard time of it. We heard before from my colleague David Parker that this Government had a goal of increasing our exports to 40 percent of GDP. It has quietly dropped that one as exports have dropped to under 30 percent of GDP and this will make it more difficult for our exporters. This bill goes to the fact that this Government has no ideas to support our productive exporting economy and it is time for a fresh start with a Labour Government after 23 September.