Yang Jian: Fighting Foreign Corporate Control Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYang Jian: Fighting Foreign Corporate Control Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 22 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5262. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr JIAN YANG (National): First of all I do have respect for my Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee colleague Fletcher Tabuteau. I understand we both were academics before coming into politics. You were teaching international economy and I was teaching international relations. However this particular bill is very disappointing. This is a poorly drafted bill. It is an anti-trade bill and a political stunt.This bill would prohibit New Zealand entering into international agreements that include provisions for investor-State dispute settlements or ISDS. The bill’s purpose is to “protect New Zealand laws” and “to protect the public interest”. What a misleading statement. New Zealand’s laws and public interest are protected in all New Zealand’s trade and investment agreements including those that provide for compulsory investor-State dispute settlements. We are aware of the potential risks that investor-State dispute settlement provisions could pose if we do not negotiate very carefully.When the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee was examining our trade with the Republic of Korea we discussed this investor-State dispute settlement issue at length. Clearly it is possible to design mechanisms that carefully balance the protection of New Zealand investors abroad with the need to safeguard the Government’s right to regulate for legitimate public policy purposes.Investor-State dispute settlements are not new. They have been there for quite a few years. New Zealand has extended investor-State dispute settlements to a number of countries or trading partners including our trading partner of China in 2008 when we negotiated or reached a free-trade agreement with China and then to the Association of South-east Asian Nations or ASEAN in 2009 and in the same year to Malaysia. No investor-State dispute settlement claim has ever been brought against the New Zealand Government.So this is an anti-trade bill but we all know that trade is particularly important to our economy. It plays an independent and positive role in raising incomes. Of course New Zealand First does not care too much about our economy and has no genuine interest in raising accounts for New Zealanders. They have been running this scaremongering campaign of foreigners taking over New Zealand.When National took office in 2008 the world economy was suffering from a global financial crisis and the New Zealand economy was in recession right? The future for our economy in those years was absolutely gloomy. It was forecast that our unemployment rate would hit 11 percent and then our debt could reach over 60 percent of our GDP. In those years that was forecast but we all can see that we have worked out of this financial crisis and economic difficulty. One important factor was our free-trade agreements with various countries particularly our free-trade agreement with China. So in 2008 New Zealand became the first and only OECD country to conclude a free-trade agreement with China. Labour can take credit for that.Since the signing of the free-trade agreement New Zealand’s exports to China have grown significantly from $2.3 billion in 2008 to $6.7 billion in 2012 and then $9.96 billion in 2013. Our trade relations with China were a key factor for New Zealand to come out of the global financial crisis earlier than many other OECD countries. Had this bill become an Act before 2008 then our trade with China would have suffered and our economy would have been in a very bad situation. So this is how damaging this bill could be.This bill would prevent proceeding the Korean free-trade agreement which is currently before Parliament. The fact is our exporters to South Korea have been paying $229 million a year. Thank you.