Peters WinstonRt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): Can I just say that we have always been for trade when it's fair and it's free and that's why we are supportive of this deal. We have sought to go out there to ensure that they as much as they can in combination advance the wealth and security of their part of the world; we have—both Australia and New Zealand—facilitated it. I want to pay my respects to the previous Ministers who have worked on these projects in the Pacific and in particular the Hon Shane Jones who cut quite a figure as our ambassador in the Pacific itself—Hon Todd McClay: He never walked past a single umu.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No no but the reality is you see Mr Jones understood these people like we do because it's in our DNA and it's very very important that we in this part of the world give other countries in Europe and in Asia and indeed the United States and the Americas to clearly understand the level of severity and earnestness of our approach in the Pacific when we say we're going to have a Pacific reset of our policies and that we're going to go into it with our eyes wide open. That means we've got to ensure that we do a whole lot better to confront some of the challenges some of them very untoward and very adverse that are emerging in the Pacific. I'm not identifying any one partner or any one player because there've been a number of players where their interventions have not been in the interests of the Pacific in the way we would have liked them to have been. The reality is that New Zealand is defined by the fact that we are in the Pacific and we are a Pacific nation. I can recall a former National Party leader saying that we're an Asian nation and I was staggered by that because it was so geographically wrong. We may be in a part of the world where the populations are not great but given the resources in this world—and the sea is one of them; we occupy an enormous theatre where our DNA goes all the way to Hawaii and around the Pacific itself. So this is a very important arrangement. I'm sorry that we haven't got Papua New Guinea and Fiji in on this deal and the Solomon Islands as well but if there's something that we can demonstrate to them very quickly that works well I hope to see them sign up. Can I just say that there's never been a time when we have mattered more to the Pacific or the Pacific matters more to us and trade facilitation is seriously important. I saw recently a comment by I think an Australian attacking this Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus arrangement. What was staggering about this attack on it was that he didn't put out one definitive argument to support his opposition to it; he just ridiculed it. I often would think at this point in time why other members of the media didn't demand that he actually justify what he was saying. PACER-Plus is situated firmly within New Zealand's broader trade and development objectives in the Pacific region. It's about liberalisation but only at the pace the Pacific can sustain. It's also about protecting New Zealand's commercial interests and supporting the objectives of New Zealand's aid programme. New Zealand and Australia have made serious commitments here at $7.7 million over two years to fund support to Pacific signatories with their domestic ratification processes and $25.5 million over five years to fund the management and delivery of the development and economic cooperation work programme an aid-for-trade funding target of 20 percent of total official development assistance for the Pacific. This funding will be delivered through New Zealand's existing bilateral and regional programmes in the Pacific adopting a framework that will monitor and measure the development and trade impacts of PACER-Plus for the Pacific and for New Zealand. This will include determining how PACER-Plus can contribute to positive progress under the global sustainable development goals. But here's the real point. If you look around the world and the trade arrangements we have in nearly all of them we're in serious deficit. That is we're importing a whole lot more than we're exporting except when you look at the Pacific where the ratio is over 8:1. And maybe we should have paid more attention to how that could advantage us because seriously the more trade we can do in the Pacific the better it will be for the Pacific nations and the easier it will be for us to transition them to a more wealthy sustainable future. It's in our joint interest to ensure that we do the maximum we possibly can so that when others come knocking on their door—as they do—they don't forget where their friends really are and who that country in our case really is. It's best evidenced by the recent cyclone in the Pacific and before that a cyclone appallingly named after a certain politician in Fiji—I can only think by some malignant person in the meteorological service who came up with that. But the fact is when it was all over the Fijians and the Samoans and the Tongans got to see very quickly who their friends were. In fact we had a plane provisioned ready to go in the case of Tonga before the cyclone happened and I have to commend our foreign affairs officials and all those involved in the preparation of those missions for the work that they've done as we're doing right now in flying resources to the highlands in Papua New Guinea as a result of the appalling earthquake that they had there.So whilst I could go on I think my colleagues have very adequately covered that. But I suppose the biggest part about this which is probably what we would hope would be more likely the future of New Zealand politics is that this has been bipartisan. It hasn't been petty and it hasn't been nasty and if we put that aside then maybe we can make far more progress when it comes to trade deals. Now the other trade deal that I could mention but I won't is the Eurasian economic deal that involved the three countries at the time last August when the Opposition spokesman on trade was so loquacious and anticipatory about how it would work. He thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.Now just because something else happened that we couldn't have forecast it does not mean that trading arrangements should be set aside permanently and we hope that when we have had more information on these and other deals that we will sign up as a Parliament—bearing in mind of course that one of the beauties of our approach when it comes to trade deals is we approach Parliament before we pass the law not after. Do you see what I mean? I mean kind of getting the horse before the cart so to speak is what we're trying to do because in previous times we've sat there in this House and had deals foisted upon us where we have no parliamentary capacity to change it. That is not democracy and I want to say that I do commend Mr Parker for ensuring that when it comes to trade deals in the future we'll come to this Parliament where the basis and authority of this country really lies.