Young JonathanJONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): I am pleased to stand and speak this evening. I acknowledge the member opposite whose bill it is. It would be obvious by now that we are not supporting the progress of this bill the Our Work Our Future Bill even though the sentiment of this bill is something that I believe New Zealanders would obviously understand and aspire to.People will purchase products for themselves for their businesses and for others from that which is offered that also offers the very best value for money. It is important for us to understand the principle of competition. Competition is the process of rivalry between firms. Firms compete on the basis of price and quality to sell products to customers. The process of competition between firms drives firms to lower costs improve quality or develop better products. In a competitive market these benefits are passed on to consumers.Although this bill proposes mechanisms that would enable New Zealand companies to have a stronger advantage in this process of procurement we cannot move away from the principles of competition. We are living in a global economy where we believe that free trade is important especially as we are in a country where we export 85 percent of that which we produce. So when we have competition when we have open doors of trade and because we are New Zealanders living so far from markets that we need to ensure that our products and our processes are of the very best in order to compete to overcome that tyranny of distance what we need are open markets that we can engage with and transact with.We have heard this evening in different speeches that New Zealand has joined the World Trade Organization Agreement on Government Procurement guaranteeing New Zealand businesses access to bid for an estimated $2.3 trillion in annual overseas Government contracts. So if we seek to put non-tariff barriers in place as many other countries do and we start to live in that world increasingly what we will find is that the opportunities and the access that we have as New Zealand businesses—New Zealand manufacturers which are full of New Zealand workers will not have the same opportunity that this bill aspires to. So I believe that what we should do—and the Labour Party has said in the past that it is a party that does believe in free trade—is we must continue to develop those relationships with nations around the world in order to see those opportunities come before us.The New Zealand economy is doing far better than most other economies around the world and that is a good thing to see.Andrew Little: Tell the people who can't get a pay rise.JONATHAN YOUNG: Well the reality is that the OECD has said that New Zealand has the fourth-highest increase in the world around real wages. The OECD makes that comment; it makes that analysis. So things are better in this country than some would have us believe. We have interest rates that are at their lowest since the 1960s we have a net external debt position at its lowest level since 2003 and exports are up $8.4 billion or 13.4 percent from 3 years ago. Our economy is doing very very well. As I come to a conclusion in my next 9 seconds I would say that trying to create mechanisms to change that in the way that is proposed will not serve us well. Thank you.