Hodgson Pete: ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill — Second Reading 
Hodgson Pete: ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:655;Page:4484] 
Hon PETE HODGSON (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I need not necessarily take all of my allotted 10 minutes to make some comments but I have a few things to say and I will try to say them as briefly as I can. 
The first is that this is a very important trade deal. It is a strange situation that it is not seen as being particularly important. It is not optically as important in the eyes of many people as say China or optically as important as say CER but that is because ASEAN is a collection of countries. So we do not immediately know; the ordinary person in the street might find it a little difficult to rattle off what the ASEAN countries are and as a result the importance of the agreement seems to be just passing below the radar a little bit in the New Zealand public’s eye. I will use two statistics to show how important it is. First ASEAN has more than half a billion people and has had a compound average growth rate in trade volumes of 24 percent in each of the last 3 years. That is an astonishing figure. So I want to just underscore the importance of it. Secondly everyone thanks everyone else about trade agreements and that is the right thing to do in this House but let us acknowledge Tim Groser let us acknowledge Phil Goff and let us acknowledge Jim Sutton before Phil Goff. These were the people who were involved. But now let us acknowledge the officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade who probably should not be named but boy did they put in the hard yards! It was a complex free-trade agreement because it was so multilateral and because ASEAN comprises countries that are quite different. It was not a perfect agreement by any means for that reason but it is a very very solid beginning and one that we can build on. 
I will make some brief comments about the Greens’ minority reports. In an earlier reading of this bill I took care to make some I suppose accommodating comments towards the Green Party and its approach to trade in general. Indeed the Green speaker who followed me thanked me for that and that was nice. I do not want to withdraw any of those accommodating comments because I am respectful of the Greens’ position on trade in general. They are hesitant free-traders: they are not antithetical to trade but they do not embrace it as freely as do most parties in this House. 
However if I may I say to the Greens that their excuses are starting to run a little thin in their minority reports. The bit about tobacco imports is easily dealt with. Yes we can ban tobacco imports from ASEAN countries if we want to—not that we have any but we can. We import nearly all our tobacco from Australia as it happens. If we were to have that ban we would have to ban tobacco from all countries. But the World Trade Organization rules say that we cannot pick off a particular country for a ban on tobacco if that is what we want to do as a nation; we have to do it for all countries. That makes sense because if we did it only for some we would be importing from others. The Greens have raised that flag erroneously I am sorry to say. 
The other point is that we never did have a national interest analysis on the issue of how many climate change gases would be generated by that extra trade. Well that is true; we did not. But then again if one is to approach climate change one cannot approach it through trade; one has to approach it through the economy and society as a whole. The emissions trading scheme legislation which is now on ice was a fantastic response to the issue of climate change as it affected New Zealand. It was strongly supported by the Green members and I thank them for that yet again. But I point out that if one is going to take an approach to climate change one cannot do it in such an itsy-bitsy way as in a minority report on the ASEAN free-trade agreement. 
The last thing I will say is to the Government. I am not convinced that the support that will be delivered through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise—and especially the latter—into the ASEAN countries will be good enough; I am not convinced. In the case of China we moved quickly to strengthen the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise presence there. We moved quickly to get a beachheads programme up in China; we moved quickly to have planeloads of business people go to China for the celebrations the ceremonies and so on; and we had a lot of focus on the aftermath of the signing of the China free-trade agreement. 
But it has not been so with ASEAN. The effort has been muted. What is more New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has had its budget cut. We have this free-trade agreement at a time when we are saying to ourselves that we have a current account deficit we need to export our way out of this recession so let us go and cut the budget of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise. That is just dumb. It is just dumb and I think that another Government speaker may want to get up and defend that. But I would have thought that in the May 2009 Budget there would be a significant increase in New Zealand Trade and Enterprise funding precisely because that would help to drive the engine that will pull us out of the recession we find ourselves in. Of course we all know that it will address somewhat the current account deficit as it goes. 
I am critical of the Government for that and I do not think that it has done a full rounded job. It is great that the Government has closed the deal it is great that we have this legislation and it is great that we have made the progress we have. I warmly congratulate all who have been involved. But what about the aftermath? Where is the support to New Zealand business? Where is the increased support to New Zealand business? These people may not have gone into Viet Nam or the Philippines prior. That opportunity which was not open is now open. How is it that at the same time as this free-trade agreement has been signed and is now being written into law on the passage of this legislation we have decided not to increase but instead to cut the degree of support that New Zealand businesses will receive in the export drive that must follow?