Brownlee Gerry; Rurawhe AdrianHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): I look forward as a member of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee to considering the bill that I think will get widespread support for its progress in the House today. As my colleague Todd Muller mentioned the genesis of this agreement from a New Zealand perspective started in the time of the Hon Tim Groser and was carried on through the time of the Hon Todd McClay and I have to make the comment that it is a shame that some of the bipartisan arrangements that were in place around this sort of arrangement for New Zealand do seem to have fallen to one side. I note too that this is the second trade agreement that the current Government has brought to the House or its predecessor the coalition Government. So to only have two trade agreements come through in four years—two trade agreements that were started by the previous Government and substantially taken down the track by the previous Government—and then for that bipartisan approach to fall aside it is a bit of an indication that trade is not high on the agenda of the current Government despite what they might say.What people in New Zealand I think increasingly understand is that we enjoy a lifestyle here far in advance of what a domestic economy alone can provide for us. We've seen a little bit over the last 12 months where the COVID-19 virus has affected so many workplaces and so many business opportunities what it requires from a Government just to hold that domestic economy together and that's represented by the billions of dollars—billions of dollars if not tens of billions of dollars—that will have been borrowed and notified to the New Zealand public in the Budget next Thursday. So to get ahead of that to be a nation that isn't burdened by debt we do need to constantly look for more and better trading opportunities.This agreement started out of our involvement with ASEAN. ASEAN is a group of Asian countries and they have dialogue partners of which New Zealand is one. That's how we come to be at the table. The invitation certainly was there for India to be part of that. India is going to be one of the world's great big economies in the years ahead. While we do extend our deepest sympathies to the people living in India who are dealing with the COVID-19 fallout at the moment we should recognise that in a population of a billion people there are many many entrepreneurs who are growing businesses by the day who are reaching out to the rest of the world and who are going to have quite an effect on the international economy in the years to come. So leaving the door open recognising that at the moment there are pressures for the Indian Government to deal with that don't let them sign up to an agreement like this—leaving that door open for the future with no recriminations and in fact a very welcoming hand extended for them to consider their future joining of the organisation or the trade group I think is totally the right thing.We've talked about the value that this might bring to the New Zealand economy saying that the information we've got is about $186 billion added to the New Zealand economy over a period of time or it's been expressed as 0.6 of our GDP—0.6 of our GDP is not inconsiderable but this is not the end game. Imagine if we were every year attaining that sort of growth inside our export economy if our GDP was able to expand by that or even more. That would help us enormously to protect the purchasing power of New Zealanders' dollars against the huge debt load that we now have sitting over the heads of all of us. So trade is something that should be pursued with a great deal of earnestness.I do notice that two of the countries that are listed in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are China which is a country we have very good trading relations with a country that is our biggest trading partner and an extremely important trading partner to us—a country that we should respect for the achievements of lifting so many people from total and abject poverty over the last 40 years while recognising that they still have that challenge ahead of them despite the size of their economy. We will be able to have our disagreements as this House expressed last week concerned about human rights issues and there'll be other issues too that we will have disagreement on but that doesn't mean that we shut the door on one another and that we close off the trading opportunities that do assist in lifting people from the abject poverty that has afflicted so many in past generations in that country. I notice too that Myanmar is here. We don't have a huge amount of trade at the moment with Myanmar but it is a country that has enormous potential. It's a country that we've also had a lot to say about in recent times because New Zealand's style of government does not fit with the dictatorship the military junta that currently runs Myanmar.So the importance of trade groups is that the benefit that comes from trade for individuals for the citizens of these countries can be advanced while there can be at that political level great discord about the direction of any particular country. From our perspective we're a country that is rules-based. We're a country that says law internationally applied is of little value if it doesn't respect the rules that are the basis of government in our type of country. So there's always going to be some conflict around that but when it comes down to the issue of trade a lot of that can be segmented away and the opportunities that come from that trade can be enjoyed by parties on both sides of any agreement.Simon Bridges and I visited India early last year prior to the COVID-19 lockdown and we got a very very clear picture of why India were reluctant to embrace RCEP. I'm not going to go into those right now because we don't have that time available to us but what I can say is that those are issues that will resolve over time and once they get through this particularly difficult time for them I'm very pleased—and I state again because of its importance—that the door remains open to them.This is a good agreement. I hope that we see a lot more of them. I hope some of the attitude of the Government to getting that bipartisan support across the House does change and that there can be a faster pace applied to some of the trade opportunities that do exist for New Zealand and that should be on the table in these very interesting and sometimes difficult times. The select committee I think will do a good job and report back to the House in due course.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday 18 May 2021. Kia ora mai tātou.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 5.02 p.m.