Tabuteau Fletcher: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: General Debate[Sitting date: 06 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3264. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First):I am going to get straight into it. We all acknowledge in this House that trade is critical for New Zealand’s future—there are no two ways about it. The whole House has talked about critical industries existing primary industries and in the select committee that I have attended in the past week or so industry has talked about the need and the want to get into what we are seeing as the 40 percent of global trade that is represented by the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. We know that big business is looking out for the interests of big business but I ask this Government: who is looking out for small to medium sized New Zealand business and the New Zealand people because it is supposed to be the job of the representatives of this House is it not? In fact more specifically it is the job of those who would presume to call themselves the Government. We are coming ever closer to the outcome of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Our Government or more particularly a select few Government Ministers has been remarkably silent as the endgame gets into full swing in Washington. This Government seems to think that its trade negotiators are not up to the job—they cannot negotiate. It seems to think that as we negotiate our way into global markets the endgame is all in or not at all. We have to be all in or apparently we cannot be part of this global trade opportunity. We disagree.Around the world we have seen sovereign countries—developed advanced economies—looking to remove the Investor-State Dispute Settlement clause from their supposed and from their own free-trade agreements. It is without doubt and with absolute fact and certainty costing sovereign nations around the world millions and even billions of dollars as international corporates sue sovereign nations for the apparent inconvenience of having to be for example environmentally compliant or because they are being asked to pay the country’s minimum wage. Big business it would appear does not care about another country’s environment or the rights of workers if they compromise its projected profits. These international corporates are then suing and they are suing big time. I can and always will support a business’s right to recourse in law. If its contracts are broken or if for example the Government acts in an anti-competitive manner then even big business deserves the right to seek redress in law.But here is what I do not think my National colleagues understand about what this agreement is looking to introduce. These international corporates are suing outside our domestic law their domestic law and even agreed-to international law. Law as we know it does not even come into the equation. They are suing outside any legal framework that we would call common or decent. They are using what we would call dispute resolution tribunals. A UN senior official has just recently called for talks between the EU and the United States to be put on hold. He spoke of his concerns because of his analysis of other free-trade agreements around the world and what he has seen happening particularly around the Investor-State Dispute Settlement clauses where major corporates as I have said are suing sovereign nations in these secret tribunals. It has nothing to do with our legal system; nothing to do with say America’s legal system.The National caucus as well as the New Zealand public has been assured that there will be safeguards in New Zealand’s Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. But members of this House I assure you that the evidence shows us that all around the world lawsuits against sovereign nations have been growing in number and they have been growing in size and despite these apparent safeguards the lawsuits are succeeding and the safeguards seem to have no bearing on whatever it is that takes place in these tribunals. Now is the time for members of the National Party—