Curran ClareCLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): There has been a lot spoken about on this bill in the House over the last couple of days and I think it is pretty clear that it has come down to the fact that while New Zealand already has an existing system in place to apply these countervailing duties on dumped goods what this bill is doing is applying a ministerial discretion not only about whether or not a public interest test investigation can be undertaken but then once that investigation is undertaken what the outcome of that is going to be.What the big concern is not only on this side of the House but throughout our productive economy from Business New Zealand down to the small flower-growers in New Zealand is that this puts too much power in the hands of a Minister to make a decision based on a competing set of priorities with the concern that there might be the ability for influence provided by big countries with interests in putting their dumped goods into our country which will have an adverse effect on our productive economy and on our industry.That is the crux of it and I have not heard any arguments provided from that side of the House—from the new Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Jacqui Dean down through the National members who have got up and defended this bill as to what the overriding reason is. I think the last speaker Simon O'Connor got up and talked about the Christchurch earthquake as needing to bring in building goods—6 5 or however many years later that is no longer the case. Brett Hudson got up and talked about the fact that Oh well we don't want to do it on a bill-by-bill basis; we need to take a governing approach to this." and yet there is no actual justification for this.Our nearest neighbour Australia—the Australian Productivity Commission looked at this. In fact it has had two goes at this and both times the Australian Parliament decided that it would not go down the course of action of introducing a public interest test. We are undertaking a lot of harmonisation legislation—moves towards harmonisation and different sorts of regimes whether it is the accounting the intellectual property the patent attorneys or the training regime for that. There are many other kinds of areas where we are looking at harmonisation with Australian law. Why is it that we are not doing that in this case—that we are not looking to be more in line?The argument used by the Government is "Oh no Canada has a public interest test." Well I went and looked up what that test has resulted in. Since 1990 the public interest test has been considered by Canadian authorities in five cases with a further 12 requests that have been rejected. A reduction of duties was recommended in four and the Canadian Government accepted this in three of the cases. I do not know what the overriding argument is. What is the issue here? I think Michael Wood was right to say that this legislation is a solution looking for a problem. So there are many things to be very concerned about in this legislation. I am not going to relitigate all of them; I just want to touch on the fact that there are deep-held fears that the public interest test will harm our domestic industry. Introducing what is called a consumer test or a public interest test may end up harming our productive economy. How can that be a good thing especially when our exports are not going forwards; they are going backwards? This Government claims to have a goal although it has gone quiet on it of having exports at 40 percent as a percentage of GDP. As David Parker I think pointed out earlier today we are back under 30 percent and around 27 percent. So how is it that this is actually good for the New Zealand economy? What is actually the benefit here?The other issue that I am concerned about is the time taken. A number of the submitters on this bill talked about the time taken to undertake an investigation and the impact that has on their industry while that happens. We heard from the steel industry that this legislation could actually end up sending it out the door. If there is a glut of for example Chinese steel on the New Zealand market it will affect the New Zealand steel producers. If there was to be a public interest test undertaken—if there was to be the time taken to do that—what impact is that going to have on industry while we wait for the outcome of that? The eight factors to be taken into account and the lack of prioritisation or any sense of what the weighting is of those factors—whether it is lowest price or whether it is increased choice or whether it is the quality of the product and the impact on the producers—there is no sense in the Government's intent in this legislation as to whether any of those factors are to be considered any more important than any others. Therefore it provides more uncertainty for our producers. It makes us wonder why on earth we are having this legislation in the first place.So Labour opposes this bill. We supported it at first reading because we thought you know it was worth having a discussion about. We realised very quickly as submitter after submitter after submitter came before us and pleaded with us and wrote to us afterwards with more information how concerned our producers were in our country. As a result of that the Opposition took the view that this was an ill-thought-out exercise. As the Commerce Committee is a split committee the bill was sent back to the House unamended and at the Committee of the whole House stage the Government used its majority to force it through. So here we are in the third reading having a debate about a piece of legislation that could have a significant adverse effect on the New Zealand economy and our ability to be a more productive economy. You have to ask yourself why that is what the influence is that is being brought to bear on the Government in order to introduce this public interest test and to potentially allow large amounts of products to be dumped in our market and affect our economy. I think that is the $64000 question before this House today. The Labour Party absolutely opposes this legislation."