Parker DavidADDRESS IN REPLYDebate resumed from 9 November.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): We heard time and time again when New Zealand was unfortunate enough to have that crowd on this side that it couldn't be done—it couldn't be done. They told us that a ban on the foreign buyers of New Zealand homes would breach our existing free-trade agreements. Were they correct? No they were not. They said it would breach the China free-trade agreement. Would it have? No it would not have. In fact that agreement was so well drafted by the prior Labour Government that we always protected the right of a future Government to ban buyers of New Zealand homes as China has the right to do in respect of New Zealand buyers of homes in their country and as China has in fact done in respect of some of their big cities—putting aside the fact that you actually can't buy freehold land in China generally anyway.They said it couldn't be done because of the South Korea free-trade agreement. Were they right? No they were wrong. Again they were spinning. They were misrepresenting the situation. They told us and they told New Zealanders that it couldn't be done in respect of the original Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement or the renegotiated improved agreement. Were they right? No they were wrong. That's three out of three so far and the list goes on. There is only one free-trade agreement where there is a slight complication and that is the Singapore closer economic partnership. The proposed ban on the sale of existing homes to foreign buyers is consistent with all of our other agreements.Now what would have happened if National if had been re-elected and had signed the TPP? Would that have prevented policy space for a future Government to ban it? Yes it would. So what that Government was doing was unnecessarily trading away the sovereign rights of a future New Zealand Government to stand up for New Zealanders and say Look there are some problems with the excesses of global capitalism in the world. There is this enormous transfer of wealth compounding every year which means that the world's wealth—not just in New Zealand but even more so overseas—is increasingly intensively held by the 1 percent." Indeed it's a fraction of 1 percent and that fraction of 1 percent of the world owns more and more of the world every year. The National Party say "Well it's OK. We think those 1 percenters from overseas should be able to come into New Zealand and outbid a New Zealander for our homes." On this side of the House we reject that. We think that is abhorrent. We think that one of the ways you have to protect a liberal open democracy connected to the rest of the world is you have to protect your local citizens. And in the Labour Party we are proud to stand up for New Zealanders. In fact we are proud to put New Zealanders first—proud to put New Zealanders first.We have fought hard on the international stage to protect the interests of New Zealand. We have advanced the interests of New Zealand. The other side said "Oh look. You don't need a ban. You need a stamp duty. A stamp duty will work." They said "A stamp duty's the answer." Were they right? Could that be done? No they were wrong. The advice that we've had from officials is that a stamp duty would breach the agreement that the National Government negotiated with South Korea just a couple of years ago. I mean that agreement was an example of the ineptitude of the National Government.Madam Deputy Speaker do you know—and congratulations Madam Deputy Speaker on your appointment—that under that agreement Korea retained the right to ban New Zealand buyers of their homes but the New Zealand Government said that they were giving it away? They pretended they had. They actually got that wrong. They didn't even understand their own free-trade agreement. Then the nonsense of that was further shown by the fact that Australia negotiated that right for themselves in their agreement the year before.Hon Phil Twyford: So why didn't National?Hon DAVID PARKER: Look National's incompetence in respect of trade has been shown up. They never landed a decent multilateral trade agreement while they were in power. It's taken Labour with the support of New Zealand First and the Greens to actually protect the interests of New Zealand in respect of land. Other provisions that are protected—and the prior Minister and the prior Government do need credit for some of this. There is a good Treaty clause which the Waitangi Tribunal has been happy enough with that protects the rights of a New Zealand Government to do anything in the name of the Treaty—except post high tariffs but anything in the name of the Treaty. It is a subjective clause. It is not subject to investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions. It's a very good clause.The prior Government did protect the model of Pharmac. We acknowledged that before the election. They did that well. This further agreement the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) further improves upon that by suspending some of the patent provisions that would have put up medicine costs to the New Zealand Government—not by an unaffordable amount but by some tens of millions of dollars every year. Those provisions which were extending data exclusivity for biologic drugs have been suspended.We have narrowed ISDS clauses in a number of ways. The most easily understood is the example of the Waterview tunnel. If that was built in the future by one of the original TPP12 countries as negotiated by National and they had a dispute with the New Zealand Government over the building of Waterview tunnel they could have taken them to an international investor panel an ISDS panel and effectively litigated their complaint there. This agreement narrows the effect of the ISDS clause—and there was objection to this from another country in particular right to the end of the negotiations so we were arguing hard for this. That is no longer allowed so if you've got a contractual dispute from an investor in a contract with the New Zealand Government they've got to litigate that dispute in the New Zealand court system rather than go to an ISDS panel. As the Prime Minister noted we have got a longstanding agreement with Australia that we do not need these things between each other so we've renewed that earlier provision so that the exempting from ISDS for the Australia - New Zealand relationships continues. Further than that we sought side letters to similar effect with a number of other countries. I can't name them nor the number because those are still in negotiation.The negotiations themselves were somewhat interesting—actually before I go into the negotiations the highest ever labour and labour enforcement standards are in the agreement. It's been a matter of record that a transitional period has been agreed for Vietnam before the enforcement provisions take effect which gives them time to update their labour laws so as to allow freedom of association and prevent child labour and the like. The environmental space to regulate is very wide and we are confident that the Government has got full ability to regulate for the environment for health and safety for labour laws and for taxation. Public health and education are absolutely protected. There is no risk to them. One of the things we're going to do to take that message out to the country is to better consult with civil society because one of the reasons there's been a bit of a backlash against trade agreements is that Governments have (1) allowed the investment protocols to go too far and we as a Government are pushing against that and (2) failed to properly explain the effect of these agreements.The negotiations were at times derailed. It looked like it was completely off. It is now back on the rails. We now have a stabilised legal text. There will be gains for our exporters which builds competitive advantage for New Zealand which will mean more high-value jobs especially as Minister Jones has already said in the regions that grow and produce agricultural products. This shows what a good Government can do in three weeks. We've got three years. By the end of three years New Zealand is going to be a better country than it is now. We are going to be more prosperous we're going to be fairer and we're going to knock the rough edges off the extremes of global capitalism so that we protect the interests of New Zealanders and are a fairer as well as more prosperous society."