Roche Denise: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRoche Denise: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 17 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6820. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENISE ROCHE (Green): I rise to take a call for the Greens on the Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill. We will be opposing this bill. You will have heard from previous speakers from the Greens co-leader James Shaw Julie Anne Genter and Russel Norman who all talked about the reason which is around the lack of enforceability of the so-called labour and environmental protections in this bill and the insidious investor-State dispute mechanism.Let us look at the so-called benefits to the New Zealand economy that this deal will bring. Too many times this Government has announced something that was supposed to be a good deal but that has later flopped. Too often the analysis has been around the short-term view of what constituted economic efficiency and it leaves the people behind. I guess the Skycity deal is a classic example. Another sad case of this was when the Government awarded the KiwiRail contract to a Chinese company gutting the Hillside railway workshops in Dunedin and degrading the industrial capacity of this nation. The fact that this Government thought that that was good economic policy and thinks that this deal is good economic policy should have members across the House extremely worried.The investor-State dispute process is also of concern. It has the potential to impose a number of unplanned costs and threatens the sovereignty of our country. Consider the recent case of Bilcon and Canada where the Canadian Government was sued by a global mining company for $300 million in damages for daring to put in an environmental review. There have been more cases where environmental labour and cultural rights have come up against the profit imperative and frankly they have lost. The investor-State dispute provisions are too threatening to New Zealand’s sovereignty and impose in the Green Party’s view an unacceptable risk. The Australian Productivity Commission’s review on trade agreements concluded that the investor-State dispute settlement process has created “potentially large unfunded contingent liabilities dependent on decisions by international arbitration tribunals” and that the costs to defend these decisions were “unknown unfunded and likely to be substantial.”I would also like to talk about workers’ rights and how this bill has the potential to exacerbate an already bad problem of labour rights. The Greens stand up and will defend workers’ rights both here in Aotearoa New Zealand and also around the world. South Korea has a particularly bad problem with migrant farm labour abuse. In 2014 Amnesty International released a report describing the industry in Korea as rife with exploitative practices. This bill does contain a very nice chapter—some protocols around labour standards—but as my co-leader has already pointed out they are neither binding nor enforceable. A recent report in May 2015 by Channel NewsAsia quoted the National Human Rights Commission for Korea investigator Yook Seong-cheol who said that making sure the Korean agricultural sector remains competitive is a priority for authorities and that drastic changes to immediately improve pay and conditions for workers may not be welcome or sustainable. There are essentially already incentives for migrant labour abuse in South Korea and they will be strengthened if they have to compete with New Zealand in what is our most competitive area agriculture.We are big fans of trade agreements but they must bring mutual benefits for everyone.David Shearer: No you’re not. You vote against them every time. When was the last time you voted for a trade agreement?DENISE ROCHE: We support trade agreements that respect sovereignty Mr Shearer. We support trade agreements that have respect for human rights for labour standards—and I would have thought Labour would support that—and the promotion of sustainability. There is too much at risk in this trade deal and so we will be opposing this bill.