Mitchell MarkHon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. In the generosity of spirit maybe the Labour Party would give David Seymour the last call as he only got a split call. But—David Seymour: I could go another 10 minutes easy mate.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Ha ha! I just want to first of all congratulate the Hon David Parker on making sure that we got this legislation through the House as quickly as possible. We want the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to be triggered and activated as quickly as possible because it is very important for Kiwis who are selling their services and products on to the global market to have a level playing field and that's what these high-quality trade agreements provide. They provide a level playing field for us.I'd just like to go back very quickly as it will be the last call I'm taking on this bill and acknowledge—and we haven't actually acknowledged him yet in this House—Sir Lockwood Smith. Sir Lockwood Smith was our first trade Minister in the National Party to actually begin the initial negotiations on the TPP. So I just wanted to make sure that he was acknowledged and I remember standing in this House back in 2011 making my maiden speech and acknowledging him and the work that he'd done to get this TPP agreement under way. So it's nice to be able to be standing in the House in 2018 and seeing that the original agreement that he started is now going to be passed today in this House.I want to acknowledge Tim Groser who took over the work from Sir Lockwood Smith—the Hon Sir Lockwood Smith or the Rt Hon Sir Lockwood Smith—and he did an outstanding job. That's when—Hon Christopher Finlayson: Dr The Rt Hon Sir Lockwood Smith.Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh Dr The Rt Hon Sir Lockwood Smith—thank you for that correction. I just want to acknowledge David Walker who at that stage was the chief negotiator along with Tim Groser. There were several times where that agreement almost fell over and there were long days long nights where they worked very hard to get the agreement back on track and keep it moving forward. So I want to acknowledge them and the role that they played.Finally I want to acknowledge the Hon Todd McClay because when America pulled out of this agreement it looked like the agreement was going to fall over entirely. I remember clearly going to a debate in Wellington or it was a panel discussion with the Hon Grant Robertson and it was soon after the Americans had pulled out and the agreement had virtually fallen over. I said Look I prefer to see things with a glass half full and I think there'll be a way of being able to maybe get this agreement back on track if we can get some support from some of our partners." and Grant Robertson turned around and said "Don't be an idiot. Move on. Forget about it. You've failed. It's all gone. It's not going to happen." So I'm very pleased to be able to stand in the House today and say that actually through the hard work of Todd McClay and his team from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade—and I want to acknowledge the Japanese Government and their Prime Minister who lent his support to this and had a major role to play—there was life breathed back into the agreement and it was brought back online.Finally I want to acknowledge the Hon David Parker because he has carried it on. He inherited that momentum. He inherited a 6000-page agreement and he's shepherded that through and brought it back into the House for us to be able to pass it as a Parliament in its third reading today.But I do want to make a couple of observations because I've listened to some of the previous speakers who are wondering why we have taken the position in saying that largely this agreement has not changed and there are a couple of reasons for that.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Because it hasn't.Hon MARK MITCHELL: One is that—that's right. It hasn't. You just heard the Greens' speaker get up and say that they are still firmly against the bill. They've been consistent in their position—Hon Judith Collins: Oh well that's a good sign then. We'll definitely support it.Hon MARK MITCHELL: —that's right—on this but their two biggest partners throughout the process in terms of trying to get this agreement through Parliament were the Labour Party and actually one of their best spokespersons and someone who campaigned very actively was Professor Jane Kelsey. Now the Labour Party of course have changed their position on it and that's the responsible thing to do. With things like trade and national security where we can they should be bipartisan—there should be bipartisan agreement. But the funny thing is that the Labour Party's two partners the Greens and Professor Jane Kelsey have said "This is the same agreement. There's been hardly any change to this agreement and that is why we're not going to support it."So when the Labour members stand in the House and say "Oh no we've changed our position now. We are going to support it because we've been able to implement and make changes."—no you haven't. In a 6000-page agreement there are two additional pages and there are two changes to the name. It's now "Comprehensive and Progressive" and we still are yet to find out exactly what the "Comprehensive"—Hon Willie Jackson: I'll tell you about them.Hon MARK MITCHELL: —"and Progressive" actually means. So if the Hon Willie Jackson is going to take a call maybe he can answer those questions. I hope that he will.The investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions—these are very common in just about every trade agreement globally. The ISDS provisions by the way have never been triggered by us. We've never actually had to use them. The only real trade disputes that we've had for example were if you think back to when our exporters couldn't get our apples into Australia. We went to arbitration over that and actually in every arbitration we've entered into the finding has always been in our favour. So they actually work for us because generally speaking as a country and nation we're pretty fair in how we deal with people.But the ISDS provisions—and what was lost on the Opposition was that actually they provided much greater protections for our own people for Kiwi companies that wanted to export their services and their products into overseas countries as trading partners because if they didn't have the ISDS provision which is an independent arbitration process it meant that they had to rely on the courts and the justice system in those countries. Actually we are very lucky here in New Zealand that we've got one of the best justice systems and the best courts and the best judges in the world. We are largely—in fact on all the indexes we are right at the top in terms of no corruption and a very fair open transparent system.Hon Christopher Finlayson: Who appointed most of them?Hon MARK MITCHELL: Yeah to a point—that's true. The problem is that with a lot of the countries that we trade with—although that relationship is very important and we want to trade with them—actually our people are carrying an enormous amount of risk because often their own justice system their own court systems are not as transparent and are not corruption free. So that poses enormous risk to our people actually trading in those countries.Let's give you an example. If we had a New Zealand company that decided to go to a country where they made a big investment in property or plant—you know hugely capital intensive—and then all of a sudden that Government decided to nationalise and seize the assets then without the ISDS provisions they've got no avenue they've got no pathway to be able to actually fight that and dispute that. So the ISDS provisions actually provided us more protections than they took away. What have the Government done about the ISDS provisions? Nothing. All they've done in this agreement is said that if there's a contract involved between the Government and another country then that can't be brought into any ISDS dispute. So effectively it means that actually our Government is just as exposed to the ISDS provisions—we're just as exposed to the ISDS provisions—as we were in the original agreement. And like I said ISDS actually more often than not works in our favour.So I just want to say that I just finally want to commend the bill to the House. These free-trade agreements are very important for us. I want to acknowledge Phil Goff who put the Chinese free-trade agreement together. But it's important—it's very important—that there is bipartisan support across the House when we are working on and developing these free-trade agreements.Lastly I just want to mention the Korean free-trade agreement and maybe a comment to the Greens and New Zealand First who again did not support that agreement. If you look at it now the Korean free-trade agreement that was passed maybe three years ago is benefiting this country by tens of millions of dollars every year in our increased trade with Korea. If there was really an issue or problem with that free-trade agreement then I'm sure that New Zealand First or the Greens would have stood up and they would have made a case against it but there's not. These free-trade agreements are very important to us as a small trading nation down the bottom of the world and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker."