Shearer David: Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16536. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert):I began speaking on this bill the Trade (Safeguard Measures) Bill some time ago. It is a very uncontroversial bill and certainly the second part is uncontroversial. It is largely technical in its nature. It is really to replace New Zealand’s current safeguards regime with a new regime that is consistent with the World Trade Organization (WTO). That is something that we have been a vanguard on as a country in terms of our policies on free trade. In fact we have eliminated pretty much all of the various tariffs and restrictions in order to enable people to trade into New Zealand. It stands us in good stead with regard to future free-trade arrangements that we might be making with other countries in that we in many ways have already taken the tough decisions that have gone on in the past. So in the future it will be other countries that will have to be making those tough decisions rather than ourselves.However as this bill quite rightly points out there are some issues even within a free-trade environment that we want to be able to protect ourselves from and make sure that we are properly safeguarded from. The existing Act the Temporary Safeguard Authorities Act 1987 has served us well. It has not needed to be implemented or enacted very frequently. That Act was subject to a review under the Labour-led Government. I think it was Lianne Dalziel from memory who enacted that and it included quite a large amount of public consultation. This bill is really a result of the work that went on in that consultation.Not only does this bill produce compliance with the WTO rules but it streamlines the process of responding to allegations of dumped or subsidised goods that might hit our shores. This is really the guts of this bill—in the first part but also of course in the second part which we are talking about here. It ensures that we are well protected against that happening. Of course we have a relatively open border that enables trade to occur. We would like to see free trade occur right across the world. If we had free trade across the world we would not have many of the Third World poverty problems that we have at the moment—if those Third World countries were able to get their goods into developed markets. But we also want to make sure that we safeguard New Zealand our manufacturers and our producers against the dumping that could occur by a less-scrupulous importer that might want to bring in goods that would undermine our market. That was not what we intended our free-trade agreement to stand up to.The purpose of this bill is to make sure that this precaution is put into place. It is more cost-effective. It removes the requirement to establish a temporary safeguard authority. Instead it rolls that in as part of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—“MoBIE” the long acronym—which is headed by the “Minister for Everything” Steven Joyce so that the ministry now takes that role instead of the quaintly coined temporary safeguard authorities. Instead we use that expertise inside the ministry so it enables it to be more cost-effective.The bill is timely. It is important at a time when domestic spending is constrained that New Zealand has the right tools to enable our ability to expand into markets and ensure that we are well protected from less-scrupulous players that might want to come in here and dump their goods inside our relatively open borders.This is a good piece of legislation. It is something as I said before that was initiated under a Labour Government. It was picked up by Simon Power many many moons ago. Simon Power has left this place and gone on to other things. It has now been picked up finally in the sixth year of this Government—I do not know what else it has been doing—and we welcome its introduction and the need for this piece of legislation.