Goff Phil: Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoff Phil: Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 15 April 2014. Volume:698;Page:17299. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill): Labour supports the Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill but I have got to say that the Minister of Commerce’s ministerial explanation and read speech was pretty unconvincing as a justification for what we are doing in the House tonight. What disappointed me about the Minister’s speech as well is that he persisted in his refusal to give an explanation as to why this bill—the title clause of which says “The Trade (Safeguard Measures) Act 2008”—is coming back to the House in 2014 as he did during the Committee of the whole House. That is over 5 years—Dr Paul Hutchison: Labour didn’t put it through. Too slow.Hon PHIL GOFF: Just to pick up Paul Hutchison’s interjection there Labour introduced this bill at the end of 2008. So Labour got the bill into the House and this National Government by itself—by its incompetence and by its mismanagement—has spent over 5 years on a bill that is not controversial and is now finally and tardily going through its third reading in the House tonight. So I want to know from Mr Hutchison or Mr Hayes or from whoever will be the next speaker from the National Party what the explanation is for that huge delay in the passage of this legislation. Is it indeed incompetence? Is it indeed poor management? Is it because John Banks was in charge of the bill for a while and the last thing that the National Government wanted was John Banks exposed in the chair as the Minister in charge of the bill? Or is it—and perhaps this is a likely explanation—simply because National in its heart does not believe that this bill is actually necessary?Whichever one of those explanations is the most compelling I think that the National Government owes it to the House to give that explanation because the Minister failed todo so in the Committee of the whole House. We are reporting back in the third reading on the Committee of the whole House. That is what the third reading is about. But I have got to report to you that the only reason we knew that that the Minister in the chair was actually alive was that occasionally he blinked. Occasionally he blinked but he did not get up and answer questions. What is the point of paying a Minister a salary and putting him in the chair if he is not going to actually do what he is paid to do and give an explanation to the House to genuine rational questions that are raised in the Committee of the whole House?I want to come back to the point about whether the Government actually believes that this bill is necessary. We are of course a free-trade country and we are proud of that. Way back in the 1980s we removed the high levels of protectionism that actually damaged the economic future of this country. By the way it also made it more difficult for trade Ministers because it took away our negotiating coin when we were trying to negotiate agreements for free trade with other countries. But the question is whether we need these particular safeguard mechanisms. Free trade does not mean to say that you do not have to have measures to ensure that trade is fair. There are clearly some safeguard mechanisms that are patently necessary for any country. Most of those in our country are contained in the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Act 1988. That Act provides genuine safeguard measures that stop another country from dumping goods in this country at a price lower than it costs to produce them. That is not a level playing field. That is not fair competition and of course you need anti-dumping measures to stop other countries doing it. You also need countervailing duties. Countervailing duties are what we put on when the Government in the country where the exports are coming from is subsidising those exports which again makes the trade unfair and not on a level playing field.But this bill does something different. It sets out safeguard measures and provisional safeguard duties that apply—Hon Tau Henare: Are you reading it?Hon PHIL GOFF: I do not read my speeches Mr Henare. You probably cannot read your speeches but anyway it is nice that you are in the House tonight and it is nice that you are still with us albeit for another couple of months. You will be going with quite a number of your colleagues some of whom are going voluntarily and many of whom will be going because the country has had enough of them. But I do not want to be distracted by Mr Henare. That has probably been the major achievement of Mr Henare over his years in this House—to provide a distraction. Sometimes it is humorous and we welcome that.But the fact of the matter is that these safeguard measures are designed to provide protection when there is a surge of imports coming in. They are designed to facilitate adjustment by the domestic industries affected. What we heard at last from the Minister in his third reading speech was how many times these measures have been used since 1987. They have actually been put up four times and countervailing duties have been applied once—in how many years? We are talking about 25 or 30 years. So the question is: how important are these measures? What are the industries that might be protected by the employment of these measures? I am going to ask Mr Hayes that because he should take the next call as the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee. What are the industries that are likely to be protected by this bill given that our average tariff rates are probably around 2 percent? I have got to say that I do have some doubts as to whether these measures are actually going to be employed and that is probably the reason that the Government has dawdled over this bill for the 6 years that it has taken with it.I have also got to express my concern because I know that too often special safeguard mechanisms can be abused. Mr Hayes and Mr Hutchison know from our recent trip to China that actually the special agricultural safeguard mechanisms that are being employed against our exports are not actually justified by the rationale that we are causing damage to the Chinese dairy industry. I did not want the special safeguard mechanisms in the free-trade agreement. I actually opposed those but the fact of the matter was that the Ministry of Agriculture in China wanted to maintain dairy tariffs. It was absolutely miffed when I negotiated with the Chinese PremierWenJiabao to remove the tariffs completely over a period of time. The consolation to the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture was a special safeguard mechanism that we thought would never be used because we set them well above the level of prevailing trade.Actually because of the massive increase in trade following the free-trade agreement those special safeguard mechanisms now come into effect quite early in the trading year and they cost us tens of millions of dollars. We are not happy about that. We do not complain too much about it because of the very good return we are getting on the sale of our dairy products. I raise this as an example of how a safeguard mechanism can be misused not for the legitimate purpose of protecting an industry against damage but—as in the case of China where our exports have increased which is not causing damage to the Chinese industry—because the demand has risen hugely.So the question is: why this bill? Well if the Minister will not answer—and I suspect the National Government will not answer—I suppose we have to answer our own questions. The fact is that this bill does do some useful things. It streamlines the process of responding to allegations of dumped and subsidised goods. It removes the requirement for temporary safeguard authorities and I think that the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment can quite readily do that work in a more cost-effective way. We do not need special safeguard authorities. And the bill does set a more realistic time frame for the completion of a safeguard investigation. Thirty days is not enough time to do it properly; 75 days is certainly more realistic.I think that the bill as drafted by Lianne Dalziel does set out very clearly the actions that the Minister can take and the process that the Minister must follow. That is important because it helps ensure that the safeguard mechanism is not misused. It sets out that you have to prove injury that the injury was unforeseen and that this measure is necessary to prevent or to remedy the injury. The safeguard has to be of an appropriate extent and duration. It must be in the public interest—and that is probably the most important safeguard against the misuse of safeguards that there is in the bill. And it must be compatible with New Zealand’s international trade negotiations. We made some useful amendments in the select committee to that process. We will be supporting the bill but I have got to again express my regret that the Minister utterly failed to justify the bill that is in his name.