SpeechDr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Kia ora Mr Speaker. It's my pleasure today to take a call on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Legislation Bill or in short the RCEP bill. While I'm not on the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee I've had a bit of experience working on a project related to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement with Vietnam around exporting Vietnamese agriculture products to other countries. The RCEP bill is an omnibus bill that amends the Tariff Act 1988 and the Customs and Excise Act 2018 in order to give effect to the RCEP agreement which New Zealand signed on 15 November 2020.The bill will enable the application of preferential tariff rates under the RCEP. The RCEP free-trade agreement has been signed by 15 countries. Ten of those are part of the ASEAN network and the other five are part of the extended free-trade agreement with ASEAN. Together these countries are home to almost a third of the world's population. That is 2.3 billion people. And these 15 countries represent 30 percent of the global GDP and include seven out of 10 of our top trading partners.RCEP will cover around 61 percent of New Zealand's goods exports and 45 percent of our services exports. These countries take over half of New Zealand's total exports and provide more than half of our direct foreign investment. New Zealand exported over $36 billion worth of goods to RCEP countries and nearly $12 billion of services in the year ending December 2019. Our existing free-trade agreements (FTAs) with the RCEP countries already provide high levels of goods market access and the larger commercial gains are therefore in services and investment progress on non-tariff barriers and the benefits of a single rule book covering 15 countries. RCEP will therefore establish a consistent framework and a single set of services for the entire RCEP region. This will improve regulatory certainty and transparency for New Zealand service suppliers across the RCEP region as a whole and give them greater confidence to enter the markets.The existing FTAs can be very complicated to use compared to RCEP. Businesses with global supply chains might face tariffs even within a FTA because their products contain components that are made elsewhere. A product made in Indonesia that contains New Zealand parts for example might face tariffs elsewhere in the ASEAN free-trade zone. Under RCEP parts from any member nation would be treated equally which might give companies in RCEP countries an incentive to look within the trade region for supplies. It means that a table made with New Zealand wood Japanese bolts and steel legs from China can be sold in Thailand or Indonesia under the same rules of origin certification reducing compliance costs for businesses and incorporating New Zealand exporters into these supply chains.New Zealand business has highlighted its concerns about the non-tariff barriers and RCEP will address these concerns through improved rules for goods trade especially on customs procedures and some rules of origin and sanitary and phytosanitary measures and a specific mechanism to handle non-tariff barriers in future. This establishes a single set of trade and investment rules across all 15 countries rather than a range of different rules which separate FTA partners which has the potential to significantly reduce complexity and therefore compliance costs for exporters—for example RCEP creates an expectation that the customs authority will release perishable goods such as seafood within six hours of arrival. RCEP will also improve existing market access for goods and especially services beyond those in our concluded FTAs. RCEP also includes new services in investment market access commitments by some RCEP countries that go beyond existing FTAs. New Zealand's approach to services in our FTAs recognises how much services matter to our economy. New Zealand will benefit from new commitments by some RCEP countries that go beyond existing FTAs. Like other regional trade agreements RCEP will create more security and certainty for New Zealand exporters and make the trading environment more predictable.I just want to briefly say that instead of just looking at what we get from this agreement if we were not to join the RCEP agreement we may see that our exporters will be precluded from participating in the regional supply chain network and this would mean loss of economic growth and opportunities and therefore relatively lower wellbeing and living standards for all New Zealanders. Having said that I highly recommend this bill to select committee.