English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:612;Page:9088] 
6.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Will she be asking President George W Bush to add New Zealand to the list of countries with which the United States of America is negotiating bilateral free-trade agreements when she meets him at the APEC summit next week? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK (Prime Minister) 
: 
 I will register New Zealand’s interest in ongoing dialogue on trade issues from the multilateral to the bilateral level. I expect the main focus of the meeting will be on the many positive things New Zealand and the US are doing together. 
Hon Bill English 
: When will the Labour Government give up on its relentless official optimism behaving as if trade negotiations have almost started—if they have not actually already started—when the truth is that there will be no negotiations about a free-trade agreement; and why can she not be honest about that? 
Rt Hon Helen Clark 
: That is not a view the Government accepts. I note also that other commentators have stated that the US does trade agreements only where it believes there is a net economic benefit to the US. “They don’t do them as a favour to everyone else; they do them as a favour to themselves.” Those words came from the Leader of the Opposition after his trip there in June. 
Hon Richard Prebble 
: Why will the Prime Minister not concede to this House that the proper way to interpret the US Ambassador’s speech last week in which he said New Zealand would not get a free-trade agreement is that the United States does not accept the way she and other members of her Government continually give the public of New Zealand an optimistic view of our trading prospects when the real reality is that the world trade talks have collapsed when every other member of the Cairns group of free traders has a prospect of a free-trade agreement with the United States and when New Zealand under her administration has never been more isolated? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Last week the ambassador most certainly did not say that New Zealand would not get a free-trade agreement. This Government with the strong support of other advocates for New Zealand—and I include the Rt Hon Jim Bolger in that—will continue to mobilise business and congressional support in support of New Zealand a very old friend of the United States. 
Rod Donald 
: Will she guarantee that her Government will never weaken our foreign investment laws our quarantine rules or our GE labelling rules or abolish Pharmac in order to get a bilateral trade deal with the US as the Australians have been asked to do by the United States let alone sell out on our foreign policy and our nuclear-free status? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: New Zealand has vital national interests to protect when it enters into discussions and it is important that they are protected. I would also say that in respect of foreign policy these positions are arrived at over a long period of time and as I have seen a range of newspaper editorials from one end of the country to the other say long-considered and popular foreign policy positions are not to be thrown aside lightly. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can we take it from the Prime Minister’s answers that the Government’s position now is that it will show up for free-trade negotiations with the US even if the US has said that it will not? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: Obviously it takes two to tango but I am confident that this country has very substantial support within the United States and we will continue to work on the relationship. 
Hon Bill English 
: Does the Prime Minister intend to tell President Bush when she meets him to stop trying to push New Zealand around? 
Rt Hon HELEN CLARK 
: What I will say to the President is that the relationship between my country and his is one of great value to us and we will continue to give it the highest priority.