Williams Andrew: Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16542. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First):Thank you very much for the call on the Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill which was introduced in 2008. Can I also on behalf of New Zealand First just reassert the fact that this bill was brought to the House during a sad dark time in Parliament—when New Zealand First was not in this House between 2008 and 2011. The bill has taken close to 6 years now to be back in this House. But now that we are back in the House in a more enlightened time with New Zealand First here to represent the interests of New Zealanders first I am very pleased to speak on this bill.It is somewhat ironic that I sit on the Local Government and Environment Committee. The Government is very quick to criticise local government for supposedly having what you could regard as being inadequacies in terms of its efficiency according to the Government’s agenda. To therefore see a bill like this which has taken 6 years to get to this point would actually raise the point that if central government takes 6 years for a flimsy bit of paper—a bill that is only 23 pages long—to get through this House then much of the finger-pointing from central government at local government for not doing its job adequately is certainly not founded on any fact at all.This bill is about putting in place safeguards to basically ensure that there is not dumping on our market. It is basically an anti-dumping bill so that if an international organisation were exporting to this country and were seen to be dumping goods here in this market the Minister would have the right to intervene. This is in accordance with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and to meet WTO recommendations and standards that this be implemented. Therefore New Zealand First supports it because we do feel that is right and proper. If New Zealand is seen as a dumping ground—and there have been instances where because we are an island nation and because we are away from many of the major markets we have on the odd occasion been seen as a place to conveniently move goods to to get rid of them because we do not have common land borders with other countries. Therefore goods can be offloaded into this market and got rid of without too much effect on any other neighbouring markets. Therefore it is a good measure to give the Minister the ability to move in with safeguards if such an occurrence occurs.Having said that the question does have to be asked whether if this was such a good measure—and it was brought in by the Hon Lianne Dalziel introduced in 2008 under the former Labour Government obviously with the support of the New Zealand First Party at that time—why has the National Government taken all this time to bring in something that basically does safeguard local industry in New Zealand from dumping? It is a sad indictment on this Government and that is no criticism of the current Minister of Commerce because he has obviously been given a hospital pass on this one and he has picked up the ball and is running with it and good on the Hon Craig Foss for doing that. But it is an indictment on his predecessors whoever those Ministers were that this bill has taken this amount of time to get through the House.This measure does give a level of protection to our industry to our manufacturers to our local producers in New Zealand to stop international dumping on our market. New Zealand First has been very adamant that we do have to ensure that this Government does protect what happens here with our industries in New Zealand. It is surprising that this Government has paid lip-service to that by not bringing this bill through the House much quicker than it has. It would be interesting to have this quantified and it would be very interesting to see what instances may have occurred in those years intervening between 2008 and 2014. It would be very interesting in terms of this to see what effects there may have been on some industries. We have seen industries close down in this country and move their manufacturing offshore. We have seen companies in New Zealand sail close to the wind in terms of their economic viability. It would be interesting to see whether in the 6-year period had this bill been in effect in 2009 or 2010 when the National Party which by that stage was in Government some of the trade and industry in New Zealand would have been better protected as a result of having this bill in place.New Zealand First has always said that we will support good policy and we will oppose bad policy. In this instance we believe that this is good policy. This is good for New Zealand and this is good for the economy of New Zealand. We believe it is in the interests of our WTO commitments globally in terms of ensuring that the right rules and protections are in place on the global stage. New Zealand First will therefore be supporting this bill and commending it to the Committee.