Tirikatene RinoRINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to speak in opposition to this bill at this Committee stage. I do so as a proud member of the Labour Party which is the original party for free trade. But this bill is not a trade deal.David Bennett: Tell us another lie.RINO TIRIKATENE: It is not. It is not a trade deal because this Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA)—what does it do? It works in favour of the American multinational pharmaceutical companies. It works in favour of Silicon Valley technology companies. It works in favour of Japanese manufacturers. But it does not work for New Zealanders. Sure there are benefits that we may have in the primary sector that we are seeing but we have not had a full proper analysis to really have a full assessment of the impacts of this agreement on New Zealanders as a whole. That is why we are opposing it. Sure if we look at it protected dairy markets are still largely intact as a result of this and yet it was lauded at the time that this would be a breakthrough deal for our dairy industry—our world-leading dairy industry. Well that is not so much the case—not so much the case. But I really want to shift the focus of my contribution at this time to look at the impacts of the TPPA on Māori and in particular on that groundbreaking Waitangi Tribunal report that was Ko Aotearoa Tēnei into the Wai 262 claim. That was a groundbreaking claim all about the place of Māori culture and identity and traditional knowledge and its recognition within New Zealand laws. It covered big questions about who controls traditional knowledge and who controls artistic and cultural works—for instance our haka our waiata; our culture. Who controls the environment that created our culture and that emerged from the natural environment? Those are big issues to Māoridom—big issues—and it took 20 years from 1991 when the original claim was lodged through to 2011 for the Waitangi Tribunal to issue its landmark report a whole-of-Government report the first of its kind where it looked into and made strong recommendations in this whole area. This is the real concern that Māoridom has: that by signing away this TPPA we are losing control even more control over our taonga—and this is what it gets back to our taonga—which is there in the Treaty that was signed. That was the basis of Wai 262. The fear for Māoridom is that we will lose even more control of this by signing away our rights in this TPPA. I would like to give an example of that because within the TPPA there is an obligation on New Zealand under Annex 18-A: Annex to Article 18.7.2 to either adopt the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants or legislate for our own rights system that gives effect to that convention. That obligation could be very problematic to Māori and yet we are getting no clear signal from the Government whatsoever as to what its plans are as to how we will give expression to that. The Government needs to be more up front and that is what Māori are concerned about. It needs to be more up front so that we know exactly what that entails.This goes to the point of ratification. Why is this Government racing—wanting to dive headfirst—into ratification of this agreement when these very important side issues have not been cleared off? The Government has not been up front with iwi Māori katoa as to what it intends to do around how we implement our obligation to this. I note there is the Treaty of Waitangi exemption and it is the standard boilerplate provision that is in there. But again words can mean a lot of things but these are obligations that we apply. I would just like to give an example. What say a Mexican cigarette manufacturer wants to put my ancestors' tā moko on that company's cigarette packets? What is to stop them from trying to make money off my tīpuna and off our collective cultural intellectual property (IP)? What will our Government do? If our Government tries to move in to step in to try to—what will our Government do to try to protect our IP in that situation? How will the Treaty of Waitangi exemption apply in that scenario? Will we be hauled before some secretive international tribunal whereby another foreign State can lay claim against us for them being denied the ability to make money off our IP? I mean these are serious questions that are of deep concern to Māori. The Government has not made the case. It has not made a clear case and it has not been up front as to how it will protect our cultural IP in these matters when it has already signed away its obligation to ratify and implement or indeed put in place its own regime. I certainly hope that the Government will be doing something that is accommodating of Māori concerns and that in fact aligns with its Treaty of Waitangi obligations. But again we have heard nothing from this Government on these matters—complete silence. Sure it might be buying a little bit of time to try to implement these obligations that are imposed on it now that it has signed away and is wanting to ratify this agreement. But again it is of deep concern to Māori to ngā iwi katoa and I think it should be of deep concern to our whole country. We do not know the impacts that this will have on our cultural IP and that Wai 262 claim is still sitting with this Government. It has done nothing on it. The Government has been sitting on it for close to 5 years and in the meantime it has been rushing aside trying to go behind secret doors in complete secrecy to ram through this deal when that Waitangi Tribunal decision recommendation and report has just been sitting there and ngā iwi katoa are waiting. We are still waiting. We want a response. We are deeply concerned at what this Government will be doing and the impacts that it will have. As I have said before Māori are very well aware of signing things when things can go very very wrong. We are all too aware of the loss of our sovereignty of losing what we think we have when a piece of paper is put in front of us. That is why Māori are very concerned about the TPPA. Sure there might be other positive parts to it. I do support those. Anyone wants to support things that will help our primary sectors our productive sectors. But we need to have the full picture as to what the implications are on copyright on IP and on cultural IP especially in light of the Wai 262 report. I was speaking to the daughter of one of the original claimants over the weekend. They are deeply concerned that the Government has done nothing around Wai 262 and yet it is rushing—rushing with all the gusto that it can muster—to ratify this deal which we know is a redundant exercise because we do not know what is going to be happening tomorrow with the US elections. So why the rush? Why the rush? The agreement will not be coming into force until a couple of years from now and that is provided all the countries that are a party to it ratify it. That is far from a certainty—far from a certainty. We should not be rushing this. We should not be rushing this. There are far too many very important issues to iwi Māori. The foreshore and seabed was a lesson for Labour and I think Wai 262 the TPPA and Māori cultural IP rights should be of concern to this Government. That is why I deeply oppose this bill. Kia ora.