6. Question No. 6—Foreign AffairsCLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First) to the Minister of Foreign AffairsQuestion No. 6—Foreign Affairs6. CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: Has he seen any reports on international incidents of slavery and human trafficking?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Minister of Foreign Affairs): [Interruption] Beg your pardon?Hon Amy Adams: Carry on.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Can't you wait?Hon Amy Adams: Not much worth waiting for.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well you're going to wait a long long time if you keep on behaving like that.SPEAKER: Order! Can I—Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well she's all the time—SPEAKER: No. The member will resume his seat. The Hon Amy Adams you should know better than that and the Rt Hon Winston Peters you should know much better than that. Don't take the bait.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It's like taking candy from a baby Mr Speaker. This is a very serious issue and one that this Government is dedicated to fighting in each and every way. I've seen reports from Europol and Interpol which suggest that of the one million migrants who entered the European Union in 2015 nine out of 10 paid people smugglers to get them there. There are lessons to be learnt from Europe's experience and international cooperation is vital in ensuring the inviolability of New Zealand's borders and maximising its national interests.Clayton Mitchell: Does New Zealand have an issue with international people-trafficking?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Immigration New Zealand's website acknowledges that there is a lack of accurate information on the scope and scale of global people-trafficking and migration to New Zealand. This is often due to the lack of accurate data recording systems and a lack of information sharing between agencies both domestic and international. Ultimately New Zealand is not immune from the scourge of people-smuggling and human trafficking which continues to affect much of the developed world but what New Zealand will not tolerate is a degradation particularly of women and children while this happens.Clayton Mitchell: What forms of international cooperation has the Government undertaken to help ensure that New Zealand is best prepared to address the issues surrounding international people-trafficking?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On 19 December 2018 the New Zealand Government along with 151 other countries voted in favour of the United Nations global compact for migration.Hon Todd McClay: Ha ha!Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The compact itself does not enable any party to think it's a joke because it was the National Party that began the negotiations for it. New Zealand maintains full control of its own borders retains its sovereign rights around migration policy—explicitly stated in paragraph 7 of the compact itself. It also ensures in objective one the collection and utilisation of data to help ensure that women and children remain seen by authorities thereby reducing the risk that they will slip into invisibility and then as is seen overseas into wholesale abuse.Clayton Mitchell: Is the Minister aware of any senior Government figures previously expressing their support for a global compact on migration?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That's a very good question. Yes the UN compact has earned support from figures across the political spectrum. The Speaker at the time realised and he said New Zealand continues to be an open facing country and to counter any xenophobia and intolerance of migrants" ultimately stating that "We pledge a concerted effort spurred on by the global compact." That was a speech that was approved by the leader of the National Party and the leader in the top echelons of the National Party as Mr David Carter gave it to an Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in March of last year.Hon Todd McClay: Can he explain to the House why there was so much confusion at the end of last year before he instructed New Zealand diplomats to go to the UN and sign up to this UN declaration and can he also confirm media reports that there was one heck of a barney in Cabinet over it and that the Prime Minister got her way?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That puts me in mind of Geoffrey Palmer's famous warning about people spreading rumour with malice. There were two questions there; the second issue can I deal with first of all. This matter was never the subject of a raging debate in Cabinet. In fact Cabinet colleagues so entrusted their Foreign Minister they let him handle it all by himself. As to the delay in the UN it was because we were very cautious to ensure that as we gave our support for this document all the criticisms that were emanating from the trolls internationally as to what it might mean would be debunked and debunked they have been.Hon Todd McClay: Just for absolute clarity: can the Minister the Rt Hon Winston Peters confirm that it was he and he alone that made the decision to sign New Zealand up to the UN migration treaty?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well I didn't take that arrogant attitude towards my duties. We approach it with consultative humility as being our central core operational modus operandi so to speak. But I can say that it never did go to Cabinet that way. I don't recall us having anything more than a peripheral discussion because here we were inheriting a National Party - prepared document. We know that now and again the National Party does get it right and in that sense we didn't have a dispute with them but we just wanted to make sure—Hon Dr Nick Smith: It was a sell-out.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —that the understanding was clear in this document. No Mr Smith; selling out is your specialty. Clayton Mitchell: How did the comments of UN migration compact compare to that of the New York declaration agreed to in 2016 by the previous Government?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Another good question. The reality is that in all respects the National Party had signed up to this document. They had one of its leading members a former Speaker David Carter give a speech to the IPU—that's a world body—last year bemoaning xenophobic behaviour and I want to know what happened to the National Party's leadership.Hon James Shaw: Is the Minister aware of reports that the false claims about the UN migration pact that he's just mentioned about the right to migrate and limiting domestic legislation were first popularised on social media by extremist anti-Islamic and neo-Nazi groups based primarily in Europe in September last year and is he concerned that those false claims have been picked up by New Zealand political parties?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I am indebted to that member for asking that very pertinent question. Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. There is a very very unsavoury inference in the question that's been asked by the Green Party and I think it is very much an unparliamentary question. It could be framed in a different way perhaps but not particularly sheeted home in the way it is intended. SPEAKER: I am going to deal with that because it is a matter which I am separately aware of the fact that there are international claims that some particular lines originated with the groups that the member referred to and that they are very similar to lines that have been used in New Zealand and overseas by people opposing the particular pact. Therefore I think it is a reasonable question to ask as long as the foreign affairs Minister does not purport to speak for Opposition parties or to use this as a tool for attacking them.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I want to say I want to thank Mr Shaw for his question because frankly when you've got debates and discussions and concerns about the involvement of certain interests against democratic outcomes in elections this becomes a seriously important issue. Then when you see the extraordinary—not coincidence—duplication of the same phraseology it leads one to suggest that this was what was going on. Above all it behoves us not just in here but outside of Parliament—and indeed the media of this country—to be aware of just what the genesis and origin of some of these attacks might be.Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I would just challenge the way you've just ruled on firstly the reasonable nature of that question and it being parliamentary and then the response from Winston Peters. There are several countries who moved that motion in the United Nations who did not sign up. Switzerland for example did not sign up. Does that mean that they are now branded by Winston Peters as being associated with the very unsavoury elements that Mr Shaw put in front of the House?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Speaking to that point of order Mr Speaker—first of all if there was any right of that member to raise that point of order he had to raise it when the issue was first in front of the House not when he feels like it—Hon Gerry Brownlee: I did.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —no—not trying to give a ballast—[Interruption]—to an argument he'd lost.SPEAKER: Order! No the member will resume his seat. Mr Brownlee you know that when a point of order is being spoken to you do not interject. You know it very well and the member will stop. I'm able right now to rule on Mr Peters' point. He is absolutely correct. While it was taken up directly if the member had additional information at the time it should have been taken up then and not afterwards."