Street Maryan: Tariff Act 1988 Repeal Bill — First Reading 
Street Maryan: Tariff Act 1988 Repeal Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10798] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 I rise as the third speaker on the Tariff Act 1988 Repeal Bill. As the third speaker I have only 5 minutes so I will not waste too much time traversing history. Suffice it to say that in the time of the fourth Labour Government of which Sir Roger Douglas was a key member there was huge economic restructuring and consequent dislocation particularly of 300000 people who lost their jobs in the process. Although we still stand by some of the economic restructuring it was a period that saw the Labour Party nearly tear itself apart because of the extreme implications and effects of these policies. Sir Roger has now come back to finish the job. The Labour Party stands against this bill tonight and will stand against Sir Roger finishing this job. 
The Tariff Act 1988 was legislated to begin with in order to provide for changing regulations around tariffs and the implementation of the Government’s plan to lower tariff rates to below 20 percent by 1992. Throughout the 1990s the National Government repeatedly and unilaterally lowered tariffs to the point where they were one-fifth of late 1980s levels. In 1998 the Government passed the Tariff (Zero Duty) Amendment Bill which mandated the reduction of all tariffs to zero by 2006. But the new Labour Government in 2000 amended this bill placing a freeze on all further unilateral tariff reductions until 2005 and tariff reductions were to continue as part of free-trade agreements. For Sir Roger to characterise our free-trade agreements as being only tariff reduction mechanisms is to do them a disservice. These days they are much more complex mechanisms than that which is why the logic about countries that have no tariffs not entering into free-trade agreements with New Zealand does not stand up because they continue to make gains from the other provisions in free-trade agreements that have nothing to do with tariff reductions. 
I say to Sir Roger that that logic is out of date and needs to be updated. The new free-trade agreements well may contain tariff reductions and frequently do. They are done on a calculated and measured basis in a way that allows some protection of New Zealand industry and at the same time provides New Zealand with a few remaining bargaining chips. They are not the only things but we have a few remaining bargaining chips that we may be able to deliver in the course of free-trade agreements. However they are complex mechanisms these days and they are not simply about tariff reductions. We have tariffs remaining on a number of goods. In particular we have a 5 percent customs duty on textile imports and a range of other products imported from overseas. These products include processed foods machinery steel and some plastic products. A 10 percent customs duty applies to a few imports mainly clothing footwear and carpet. Those tariffs apply on goods that are still made in New Zealand. 
I refer to a press release from the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions at the time when Tim Groser the Minister of Trade together with Simon Power the Minister of Commerce had announced that they not would be proceeding with any more unilateral tariff reductions. Peter Conway the Secretary of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions said that although the level of tariffs provided much less security in respect of local industry and employment than in the past it still made a difference to sectors such as carpets clothing textiles and footwear as well as to plastics and whiteware. He went on to say that the eventual phase-out of tariffs on items such as clothing in the context of the free-trade agreement with China and the likelihood that tariff reductions would feature in other such trade agreements means that it does not make sense for New Zealand to undertake unilateral tariff reductions. I say to Sir Roger that the process of arriving at tariff reductions these days is a much more measured and calculated affair. They are now done in the context of complicated and very sophisticated free-trade agreements.