Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): It is a pleasure to take a short 5-minute call in support of this bill and thus join with most members around the House. I will just run over the arguments which I think are being validly raised of the member who has just resumed his seat David Clendon on behalf of the Green Party.Let us firstly acknowledge the definition of what dumping is. Dumping is when country A sells goods or sometimes services into county B at a price that is lower than they are domestically available for in country A. As the regulatory impact statement that accompanies the bill says that is not technically illegal in itself in most countries but it has been first under GATT and then the World Trade Organization rules subject to anti-dumping levies or countervailing duties from country B the recipient country if country B feels it is harming its domestic industry.For New Zealand this has quite a long history. It is a type of provision that historically we have relied upon to protect some of our exports in third markets where we might be country C. Let us say it is a market for milk in the Middle East. Country A—let us say it is a European country—dumps milk powder into a Middle Eastern country that we export to. We of course do not like that practice because we do not want to see our products undercut. So there are real downsides to dumping and that is why the world trade rules allow for both anti-dumping duties and countervailing duties.What does this bill then do to change that framework? This bill allows a discretion to the Minister and sets out criteria by which the Minister will apply the discretion to allow the suspension or the non-intervention of countervailing or anti-dumping duties for the purpose of benefiting consumers in the recipient country. The classic example of this—in fact it is the reason that is stated both in the Cabinet paper and the regulatory impact statement—was the building and construction industry in Christchurch. I see we have a few Christchurch colleagues around the House. There was I think legitimate concern by the Government that a very concentrated market for importation and goods supply chain meant that prices were way higher than they should have been. This legislation is one of a number of measures that I think were rightly introduced to seek some downward pressure on those prices. I think that we on this side of the House would say that that is a legitimate goal. We want people to be able to rebuild their homes and their lives after the Christchurch earthquake without undue profit margins going to just a couple of supply chain companies. That is fair enough.The issue here—and this is where we acknowledge the argument the Greens have raised but we do not agree with it at least not at this stage—is that this is a good place to start to have the interests of consumers at heart. Otherwise you often reinforce monopolistic behaviour by producers. So we like the consumer interest test and we agree with the idea that the Minister should have to weigh up the pros and cons of the national interest the consumer interest and the precedent that is set by allowing a dumping practice. I think there is a reasonable quality of cost-benefit analysis in the Cabinet and the regulatory impact papers and in some cases such as building products they come out on the side of saying that there would be a good pro-consumer case for not imposing duties.We think that we should pass this bill. We think however that we should be carefully monitoring how it is applied and the effects that it has.Just to sum up dumping is where one country sells or exports goods to another country at a price that is lower than they are available for at home. When that occurs it is technically called dumping. It is not technically illegal under world trade rules but it does give the recipient country the right to respond if it feels it is being harmed by imposing an anti-dumping levy or a countervailing duty. Cabinet—and we agree that in this case there is a probable cause—has brought this legislation in to give the Minister a discretion to suspend or not impose those duties in some cases where the national interest benefits. The example given was building products supply for the Christchurch earthquake. Let us give the Minister the discretion let us see how it is used and let us carefully monitor the results.