Carter Chris: Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Carter Chris: Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:656;Page:5290] 
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Labour—Te Atatu) 
: 
 Kia ora koutou katoa. I rise to support the Customs and Excise (Prohibition of Imports Made by Slave Labour) Amendment Bill. While listening to the presentation from National MP Tim Groser the Minister of Trade I thought back to 202 years ago when in the imperial Parliament in London the Slave Trade Act was passed in 1807. I thought about the speeches that were no doubt given in the British Parliament by ship owners from Liverpool Bristol and Southampton. I thought about the interests of the great sugar plantation owners in Jamaica and Trinidad. I thought about the American merchants who were involved in the slave trade as human beings were carted from the west coast of Africa to the slave plantations of America and the West Indies. I thought about the cotton and sugar that was returned to Britain to be processed in the mills that my ancestors and those of many others here probably worked in at that time. 
I also thought about the arguments that would have been marshalled against William Wilberforce as he proposed year after year in the British Parliament that slavery that pernicious system should be abolished. I thought that some of those speeches from some of the rich ship owners plantation slave owners cotton merchants and sugar merchants would have been just like Mr Groser’s speech. Those speeches would have been about how trade was the lifeblood of their empire. They would have been about why Britain had to be strong. They would have been about money. They would have been about why Britain could not take a lead on the issue of slavery. 
Mr Wilberforce persistent man that he was managed to convince enough British MPs to support his legislation. Then in 1833 the slaves themselves were freed in the year that Wilberforce died. Again that was an amazing action by the British Government. It was an action that almost bankrupted Britain. The Prime Minister at the time spent 25 percent of the Budget of the then richest country in the world in order to free the slaves because enough people in Britain felt that slavery was a wicked institution and should not exist. 
And yes Mr Groser acknowledged the image that we all have of the slave ships as they went from West Africa across the Atlantic to the Americas: the degradation the suffering the pain the death the indignity and the wickedness of it. But I say to Mr Groser that I have an image of children in West Africa today: one of children who are bonded slaves. I have an image of debt bonding in India in Paraguay in Peru and in other developing countries where people are sold into slavery much as they sold were into slavery on the plantations of Jamaica Trinidad and Cuba and of South Carolina Alabama and Georgia. These are modern-day slaves. Yes they exist today. 
All that my colleague is saying is that we should send this bill to a select committee so that we can look at it. We may be able to do what Belgium has done and get businesses to sign up to say they will not import goods made by slave labour. Of course at the moment we say there is a total ban on importing goods produced by prison labour. How can this be different from that? How could it be more difficult to identify goods made by slave labour and implement a ban on importing them especially if we follow the Belgian track of saying businesses can do this on their own initiative? I do not know which system we might approve or find the most acceptable. 
Like my colleague Maryan Street I am a proponent of free trade. Last year as the then Minister of Education I was with our then Prime Minister Helen Clark in Beijing when we signed the historic free-trade agreement with China. For 9 years the previous Labour Government was the most active Government New Zealand has ever had in terms of doing trade deals. We signed the four-way deal with Chile Brunei and Singapore. We signed a free-trade agreement with China and we were the first Western country to do so. We are engaged in free-trade negotiations with India and Korea. We have signed a free-trade agreement with ASEAN. Labour has a proud record on trade but we also have a very proud record on having a moral foreign policy. 
Last night in this House we debated and we all agreed that there should be a ban on cluster weapons. Why is there not a consensus here? Could it be because money is involved? Could it be that Mr Groser is very much the heir of the plantation owners and the great merchants who grew fat on the basis of the slave trade?