Graham Kennedy; Tisch LindsayDr KENNEDY GRAHAM (Green): Mr Assistant Speaker I did not want to interrupt the previous speaker Todd Muller in full flight but we do want you to know that the Green Party does not think that you have a small and narrow-minded perspective.Moving on from the faintly simplistic tub-thumping of a left-right nature that we have just heard and focusing on the point that we are meant to be here for which is to look at the bill that is before us and the committee's report back on the bill—which did not actually figure explicitly for a second in the previous presentation—we find that the purpose of the bill is to make legislative changes to align New Zealand's laws and regulations with its obligations under the international agreement that New Zealand signed in February this year. But why? In order to enable New Zealand to ratify the agreement. Let me pick up where my colleague Barry Coates left off which is to indicate that there is actually no need at all right at this moment for New Zealand to proceed to ratify at this stage. We should defer any further consideration of this legislation until the international politics of the matter become clearer for very obvious reasons.Harking back to the beginning of this debate and the quite substantive contributions made by the first two Government speakers in the form of the Hon Chris Finlayson—somewhat vaguely perhaps on behalf of the Minister of Trade but none the less well meant—and the following contribution from Mark Mitchell I identified four substantive issues that were raised somewhat vaguely. Mr Finlayson assured an unwitting House that a free-trade agreement—which of course this is not—would promote trade between New Zealand and other countries. On the basis of that reassurance he proceeded to tell us that we had no need for worries about any changes to Pharmac legislation no need to worry about changes to copyright and that we should glory in the impetus that the changes to these 10 bills are going to give to the Māori economy which is 5.6 percent of GDP. That prompted him to assure the country that the series of consultations the Government had had were entirely comprehensive and that the roadshows—the Government tried I think for a better word and it could have used a better word but it could not so it called them roadshows—and the series of hui were good for the Māori economy.That led on to Mark Mitchell claiming erroneously that there is a majority of opinion in this House in favour of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA). He reasoned his way along a tortuous path of self-delusion to the view that there was majority support on the grounds that there were quite a few submitters turning up to actually support the bill. Yes there were. That is true. There was an overwhelming greater majority opposing the bill but there were some who did turn up to support the bill—granted. But that is not the point when it comes to civic engagement and integrity vis-à-vis the New Zealand public. The critical thing is the public generally out there each individual citizen—not a corporation that carries weight and influence but the individual citizen.As Barry Coates pointed out there was one major poll that concentrated on the fact that of those who were familiar with the TPPA 60 percent were opposed. Beyond that I commissioned the Parliamentary Library to do an objective study of all the polls pertaining to the TPPA to find that on average the public opinion polls of the polls showed that 39 percent opposed the TPP and 26 percent supported it with a sizable area in the Don't know" category. So we conclude that on balance a majority of New Zealand citizens oppose the agreement. A plurality of three to two against the agreement does raise the question of whether this Government's claimed electoral mandate for this kind of treaty is legitimate or whether it requires—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member—his time has expired. I call Rino Tirikatene—5 minutes."