Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): If I may transport this House back to the year 2016 it was before 5G; it was before Bill Gates became a conspirator; it was before COVID; it was before the vaccines. It was back in the day when the craziest political operators in New Zealand—and the Greens but why repeat yourself—were campaigning against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) the big scary agreement that would take away our sovereignty. And guess what! It was negotiated in secret—because who negotiates out in the open and tells everyone what their bottom lines are before they go into the negotiation? Those were the days.There was a woman at Waitangi that year and she threw her sex toy at Steven Joyce's head to make the point. Those were the days. I wish we could go back to those happier simpler times when all the conspiracy theorists in New Zealand were just focused on the TPP. But just momentarily just for a wee moment Golriz Ghahraman transported me back to those wonderful times when she talked about how terrible the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership will be. People will have to have rules so that they can understand each other and trade and exchange goods with people from other countries and we're going to get richer doing it because we have things they want and they have things we want. By exchanging them trading value for value we can get stronger together. That's what trade is about. It is voluntary cooperation amongst adults who are different actually making a virtue of their differences to exchange things and be better off than they would be alone.One has to wonder why the Green Party are so comprehensively opposed to free-trade agreements. They're certainly not opposed to free-trade agreements when it comes to their personal consumption. Do you see Green MPs with New Zealand - made cell phones? No. They all have Apple—designed in California made in China. Do they come up and down from Auckland where most of them live to Parliament here in New Zealand - made aeroplanes? Has anyone seen a Richard Pearse special going up and down the North Island transporting Green MPs to the Parliament? No. No the Green Party are more than happy to believe in free trade for their own choices but they somehow have a phobia when it comes to making agreements with people from other countries for everyone else.Then we hear from Golriz Ghahraman This doesn't comply with our Treaty of Waitangi obligations." What on earth? Was there a promise from the Crown to iwi that we would all be mercantilist xenophobes from 1840 onwards? No there wasn't. Māori at that time were some of the most enthusiastic traders that there were and still are. The idea that to honour the Treaty is not to want to interact with the rest of the world is not only wrong; it's frankly paternalistic and a little bit insulting. I say this as tangata whenua myself. Don't you know? I'm Ngāpuhi.Now what this legislation is really about now that we've got our points in rebuttal out of the way in the first four minutes is actually creating an agreement and giving it legislative intent or legislative approval by this House so that we can trade more easily with a wider range of people. It's important at this particular point in New Zealand's history that we are able to diversify the range of trade opportunities that New Zealanders have for selling their goods from their farms and their firms to provide for themselves and their friends and their families.It's critical that we have a range of options for selling our goods and services. The more diverse the better because diversifying our markets here in New Zealand means that we have more options and fewer countries—and specifically fewer Governments—have the opportunity to blackmail New Zealand by threatening to turn the tap off. For the geopolitics alone trade is a wonderful thing. This agreement is a wonderful thing. It is people coming together and creating value but having more people to come together with so that New Zealand is less vulnerable to geopolitical manoeuvrings of certain countries. That could only be a positive thing.But perhaps the Green Party and other opponents are somehow opposed to what trade has done for the world. They talk about poor people. Well let's have a bit of reality. There are fewer poor people in the world than there have ever been and the reason for that is trade. Over the last 40 years the evil neoliberal era billions of people have had jobs have had capital investment have gained skills have had opportunity to do what people in New Zealand would like to do: to exchange value for value get stronger together to have somewhere to sell the goods from their farms and their firms to provide for their friends and their families. Billions of people have come out of poverty. Just two years ago for the first time in human history less than 10 percent of humanity lived in absolute poverty. It's swept through China. It's sweeping through Vietnam who are part of this. Before that it swept through South Korea. Let us hope that one day the North Koreans stop practising so much Green Party policy and they are able to live free and trade and become wealthier and escape absolute poverty too. Let's hope that it sweeps through Africa and all those impoverished people that we see on the World Vision ads with the distended bellies are able to trade and create value and get the things they need to live better lives and that we reduce poverty on the dark continent as well.This is the future. It is not only a good thing that we are trading for ourselves; it's actually a power of good for the world. You have to ask yourself: why would the Green Party be opposed to that? Well I can only guess that it's simply about control. You see the defining characteristic of the left in New Zealand is not kindness or a will to do better. People on this side of the House have those values thank you very much. What defines the left in New Zealand and beyond is a will to have control.They don't like free trade. They don't like a framework and a set of rules that means that someone with a firm producing a product has a wider range of people to sell to. They don't like the fact that we have a wider range of goods to purchase. They don't like the fact that we can make choices in our lives about which adults we do business with even if they're in other countries. They don't like it. They like to be able to control the goods and services that New Zealanders consume and the customers that New Zealanders serve. Free trade is bad news for big Government because it gives people options and alternatives that the Government which evolved to control the nation State cannot dominate. It gives us options and opportunities outside our borders and that is what the left in New Zealand hates. In a word it is freedom.But don't worry too much. Don't worry colleagues in this House because we know from the Green Party's own behaviour that they don't really believe it. Thank you Mr Speaker.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members it's come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. Sitting suspended from 6.04 p.m. to 7 p.m."