Parker David: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 10 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7806. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): Can I concur with my colleague Grant Robertson and the Minister of Finance’s comments. I do think it reflected well on New Zealand that we were early to the party when it came to saying that we thought that this was a good idea and that we then tried to mould it into a well-governed organisation that will do good in the world. I know that some of the opposition in other parts of the world was not just against the potential—as the Hon Bill English has said—misuse of this fund as an instrument of Chinese Government policy which was one of the original concerns. Actually their concerns were sometimes just about the rising influence of China and a desire that China not be able to exert the influence in the world that it can through this new agreement. That was an inappropriate reason for opposition to this Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and I am pleased that the New Zealand Government got on the right side of that debate from fairly early on.There is one issuein particular that I would like to raise in respect of Part 1. Part 1 as the Minister has already told the Committee inserts the articles of association that are set out in new schedule 8 in the schedule of this bill. It does that at clause 5 of the bill. Those articles of association include the number of shares that the New Zealand Government subscribes for and everyone who subscribes for a share takes up a capital subscription—or a capital risk if you like; some of it has to be paid across but some of it is just there to be called upon if needed. Every 10 of those shares carries with it a $1 million capital subscription so New Zealand’s capital subscription is $461.5 million for 4615 shares. I have done a quick calculation as to what New Zealand’s share of the total is because there is $75000 million of capital being subscribed for. As a consequence New Zealand’s contribution is 0.64 percent of the capital roughly—less than 1 percent.The proportion that New Zealand takes in these organisations—and the IMF is the same—is lower than it would have been in yesteryear because the New Zealand economy has not grown at the same rate as overseas economies have and as a consequence our proportion of the total of these capital funds is less than it used to be in yesteryear. We saw that—I am not sure whether it was earlier this year or last year—when an Act of Parliament was brought in to change another of the agreements under the International Finance Agreements Act where we amended the IMF articles to note the changing proportion of different countries in the world economy and New Zealand’s percentage of the total capital went down because our share of the world’s economy went down because New Zealand has not done as well as some other countries. At the time of that debate the International Finance Agreements Act was amended to enable amendments to articles of association by way of regulation by the executive rather than bringing those agreements back to this House.The effect of this amendment bill in concert with the earlier amendment bill that says these things can be changed by regulation is that this Parliament is setting up a system in respect of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which is what this bill is mainly about that in the future we are handing over to the executive the power to change. We objected to that at the time when the regulation-making power was being conferred on the Minister of Finance and the Government because we think that we should have these important agreements coming back to this House when they require alteration. It actually does not happen very often. I think the IMF articles have been changed only a few times since they came into force many many decades ago so it is not an onerous task for Parliament to keep an oversight of how our participation or how the rules of those organisations change.I am not going to take much longer on that point other than to note the fact that I would like the Minister in the chair to respond with why it is that he thinks that when New Zealand’s obligations under these articles change because of a change in the articles—where they do have significant monetary effects for New Zealand—why that sort of thing should be able to be done by the executive rather than coming back to this Parliament because that is what we are doing with this clause.