Flavell Te Ururoa: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Flavell Te Ururoa: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:9095] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. Kia ora tatou iteneipo. The legislative schedule before the House today has exceeded itself with the use of acronyms. This bill makes its own contribution—IMF MIA and MIGA to name a few—and includes such tantalising terminology as neo-liberalism multilateral investment global trade and investment liberalisation. 
In my preparation for debating the bill I came across a new principle that I would like to share in this debate. It is a principle coined by Professor Jane Kelsey on behalf of the Action Research and Education Network of Aotearoa. Professor Kelsey has introduced me to the “Dracula principle” which is the destruction of obnoxious agreements by exposing them to the light of day. It is a principle that we in the Maori Party wholly endorse for the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill. 
The context of foreign investment and a nation’s economic relationship with the world is of course a key issue for any political party. It is also a context that has been part of the ongoing debate within Maoridom in particular and within the indigenous global community as well. It is a context probably best explained by the Native American activist who said that neo-liberal globalisation “is just a different version of the same old cavalry”. 
Tangata whenua have long wrestled with the notion of foreign investment from the very first colonial land speculators to the hugely controversial Multilateral Agreement on Investment put forward in 1997 to remove basically all restrictions on foreign investment. Maori up and down the length and breadth of Aotearoa attended hui wrote submissions and took to the streets to speak out on their belief that such a proposal would open the floodgates to wholesale exploitation and appropriation of our lands and resources and threaten the very integrity of the nation. 
 It is an interesting coincidence that today—a day that we the Maori Party released a key policy platform in order to ensure that all parties to the Treaty settlements process are on a level playing field—we think back to the way in which earlier foreign investment agreements sought to relate to the Treaty. Signing up to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment would have required the New Zealand Government to speed up and force the pace of Treaty settlements settling all claims by the year 2000. 
We would say to this House that sovereignty was not ceded by Te Tiriti o Waitangi nor should the Government yield its false claim of sovereignty to anybody else but Maori. The Treaty must stand to continue to protect future Maori generations and to guide Aotearoa’s future. Consistent with this the Maori Party today announced the establishment of an Independent Settlements Authority. But what do we have here with the International Finance Agreements Bill? We get another agreement signed up to by the Government without the involvement of tangata whenua—without any kind of agreement from Maori as the partner to the Treaty. 
In 1997 the Law Commission produced guidelines that I would recommend to this House for background reading to this bill. Its guideline entitled  
The Treaty Making Process: Reform and the Role of Parliament 
 recommends that a treaty impact statement should be prepared for all treaties to which New Zealand proposes to become a party. It states further that the impact statement should set out any consultation undertaken with Maori and whether the treaty will have an effect upon the rights guaranteed in the Treaty of Waitangi. 
The Treaty clauses have been included in recent agreements such as the 2006 Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement as a result of Maori challenges and pressure. But such clauses are always limited because it is left up to the Government of the day as to how it chooses to fulfil its obligations under the Treaty. The clauses are also meaningless if they lack any prior dialogue or debate between Maori and the Crown as to whether the agreement is a good idea in the first place. The Crown’s fundamental obligations to tangata whenua as guaranteed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi are overridden by this bill to confirm New Zealand’s membership in the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency not least because it has already been signed up to on 6 September 2005—conveniently and not surprisingly I suppose some 2 weeks out before the general election. 
The bill accords with the economic pathway brought in by Labour and National Governments which instigated then extended a massive programme of corporatisation and privatisation and between them removed essentially all restrictions on foreign investment. By the mid-1990s there were foreign buy-ups of prime commercial and residential property overseas ownership of New Zealand companies had increased by 145 percent and local manufacturing had plummeted and with it employment levels and rates of pay. 
We stand in this House today to make it quite clear that Maori have strongly resisted foreign investment agreements that willingly give investors rights over lands and resources that right now we are contesting through the Treaty process. We must continue to act locally and think globally. The international trade agreements that successive Governments keep signing are simply another mechanism—along with the Treaty settlements process—that locks us all further into a neo-liberal net. All that the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency does is to give more power to the big corporations that dominate the world economy. It is another corporate steal providing for yet another quantum expansion of corporate power. It is a net in which the market mentality is extended to commodify all aspects of life including those that were formerly outside its domain: community iwi identity—in other words humanity itself. 
Yet we in the Maori Party know that the market exists only because the State allows it to exist; so much so that 85 percent of the world’s wealth is controlled by 20 percent of its population—disciples of the market who are supported by the State to ensure that the advantages they have are maintained. Is that fair? If it is not what are we going to do about it? The agreement guarantees that corporations shall be supported to continue and indeed grow activity for private profit rather than guaranteeing investment that actually benefits the country and its people. 
No one in this House can overlook the reality that the gaps between the haves and the have-nots have grown dramatically over the last 20 years with the most vulnerable members of our society—Maori and Pacific people beneficiaries and low-income families with children—showing significant increases in the proportions of people in severe hardship. The Child Poverty Action Group health spokesperson the paediatrician Professor Innes Asher has told us that the vast range of health statistics show that New Zealand’s large income-gap contributes to the poor health of low-income earners and their children. So we are wondering how foreign investment will do anything to improve the income and other resources available to our poorest families with children. How will the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency respond to the costliness of the long-term effects of increasing inequality and poverty on children their families and society? 
The Maori Party will not support this bill. We will stand alongside all of those who have stood previously against successive moves to remove virtually all restrictions on foreign investment. We will stand with Maori activist unions students Grey Power anti - free-trade groups and local government. We will oppose any deals done with international corporates that invite foreign investors to come in and remove jobs and businesses to slash pay rates and work hours and to take the land and the resources that Maori are already contesting. 
Finally I return to another hikoi the great hikoi against the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. That hikoi mobilised New Zealanders into action. The Hikoi of Hope in 1998 arose from a call from Anglican bishops for New Zealanders to re-examine the wider choices that we were making as a nation. The bishops challenged the Government to focus on the bigger picture—on jobs the health system benefits wage levels housing and education—to respond to the trends of the time which were described as “deeply disturbing”. So with that they launched five planks: poverty housing health education and job creation. 
As we debate yet another item on the Government’s global liberalisation agenda it is useful to remember the people—the vulnerable and the poor—who are clearly not benefiting from foreign control. As we lead up to Budget day next week we say the priorities of this Labour Government that are articulated in the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill are not the priorities that will advance our nation. We will oppose this bill.