O'Connor DamienHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Acting Minister for Trade and Export Growth): Thank you Madam Chair. I'll just take this opportunity to answer a couple of queries that have come up from the Opposition. I think they have reasonable questions. Regarding the one from Mr Simon O'Connor yes we would have to adhere to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) if the US of course came in and agreed—hell would probably freeze over before that would occur—and then of course Mexico Canada or Australia so that we had greater than 85 percent of the total GDP for the agreement. The chances of that happening are highly unlikely. Of course ultimately though New Zealand could withdraw its consent to the TPP. So it's a reasonable question but there are a number of safeguards in there.Can I just take the opportunity to acknowledge the Opposition—or the then Government I guess—for progressing the TPP. This is a treaty that was signed up to by the Government in 2016—of course it hasn't come into force. We as a Government did commit to a few qualifications for support and having been voted into Government followed through with the reasonable requests that we needed to see before we would support the TPP.We believe that the comprehensive" and "progressive"—the questions that have been asked by the Opposition—indeed those two words do encompass the objectives of the Government. This must be an agreement that supports and benefits all New Zealanders not just a few and it does need to be thoroughly researched and we need to know exactly what it would mean. There were provisions that a Labour Party in Opposition—and I know the Greens shared that—needed to see change before we would endorse what was the TPP in law but not in force and we took the opportunity. I have to acknowledge the commitment of David Parker the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the trade negotiations team who worked very very hard in a cooperative way to get the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) over the line.The provisions that we were seeking were of course to ensure the Treaty provision or protection for the Treaty obligations in this country. We needed those firstly. The second was that we needed to protect the Pharmac model and that wasn't guaranteed under the TPP. I have to acknowledge once again the National Party who brought Pharmac into being. We believe that that fine structure around pharmaceuticals needed to be protected—so that was the second one. The third one was that we needed to protect the right to regulate for our own good—the sovereign right in our own country—and that was upheld. And we needed decent gains for exporters in terms of market access to make the whole deal worthwhile. It has been as I say somewhat contentious and I accept that people have had concerns. Then of course the last one was that we needed to protect the right to who owns land in New Zealand—a sovereign right again.And so we negotiated all of those things. The investor-State dispute settlement process has not been negotiated out of the agreement. It's still in there but we have protections through side letters and agreements in principle with other countries to ensure that a country like New Zealand that generally upholds the law—I doubt whether we're going to see any of the provisions or concerns from our trading partner countries. But anyway we moved to ensure with those protections that we ended up with the comprehensive and progressive trade agreement that has been put in place. What we are doing here of course is going through the process to ensure that there are suspensions in the TPP agreement that indeed give effect to the negotiator positions that New Zealand has found itself and negotiated.So again just answering a few of those questions there was another one about whether any Minister could bring the bill into force by an Order in Council. Yes that is true. Any Minister can but clearly that would be if the Minister for Trade and Export Growth wasn't available. I hope I've answered a few of those questions that have been legitimately raised by the Opposition but I think we've worked through. In terms of issues that the Green Party still have we respect their right to have those concerns but we believe we've moved a long way to protect the sovereign right of New Zealanders and New Zealand in terms of moving forward particularly in terms of those four provisions that we were seeking."