Seymour David: Fighting Foreign Corporate Control Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Fighting Foreign Corporate Control Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 22 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5264. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): It gives me great pleasure to rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. I notice a slight contradiction in the two New Zealand First bills that have been presented and are soon to be voted down tonight. The first one was about Parliament introducing a statute to undermine an agreement or a contract entered into by the Crown. The second is based on the claim that the Crown is about to sign away all democratic rights and that somehow we will no longer be a democracy. I just ask members to ponder: if the first bill was going to be effective then why is the second one needed?Clayton Mitchell: It doesn’t make sense.DAVID SEYMOUR: I will give him a moment. Actually I do not have enough time for them to get that. But fundamentally the supporters of this bill and opponents of free trade I have to say tend to be of a certain type: those who wear tinfoil hats are worried about chemtrails from trains think that 9/11 was an inside job and more specifically tend not to understand the concept of limits to democracy and limits to democratic decision-making.The fact is that in the normal course of things the majority does not rule unencumbered without due process without property rights or without any type of regulatory restraint. In fact one would hope that when a Government or a Parliament makes laws it would do it with respect to all of those things. In fact one would hope that when a Government regulated it would do correct problem definitions it would identify impacts on free trade and property rights it would identify winners and losers and it would do cost-benefit analysis on a variety of different options for regulating. That is what we would all hope were the limits on legislation passed by a majority. That is something that people who are in favour of this bill tonight and opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and investor-State dispute settlements tend to have a real problem with.But they have an even bigger problem when those constraints on the tyranny of the majority may in fact be put in place or pursued by people who are not part of New Zealand because they are already opposed to limits on the tyranny of the majority they are already sceptical about property rights and due process and they are even more sceptical about foreigners. Well the fact is that New Zealand is a trading nation. We have heard it so many times before but what we need to realise is that New Zealand as a jurisdiction of around 5 million people is comparable with say British Columbia or Colorado or Denmark. If one was to go to any of those jurisdictions and say “Why don’t you pull out of your effective free-trade agreement and your integration of laws and regulations with Canada in the case of British Columbia; or the United States in the case of Colorado; or the EU in the case of Denmark because if you don’t if you continue to be integrated into this wider market then you have no democracy and your grandchildren have been sold out?” they would say “You’re nuts” to quote them—not to address the Chair. I say precisely the same thing to those members tonight.In actual fact throughout our history we as New Zealanders have gained from being able to enforce free-trade agreements even to the chagrin of foreign Governments. I need only mention the long-running apple case to say that we are a trading nation that believes in limits to Government and we realise that when we integrate with the rest of the world—Hon David Parker: That wasn’t ISDS; that was State to State.DAVID SEYMOUR: —some of those limits will be pursued by other Governments and the State will not be acting on behalf of corporations. They are going to have to do it themselves which seems to be a step backwards from their point of view Mr Parker. But none the less for all of those reasons I am very proud to stand and oppose this rather sad and all too short and poorly thought-out wee bill. Thank you.