Martin Tracey: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMartin Tracey: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 24 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:7085. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First): Kia ora Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise to take a short call on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Fletcher Tabuteau. I also want to join with others in the House to acknowledge the members of the negotiating team who have had as all documents tell us a very difficult task to do. I can say only that I think it has probably been made even more difficult by having a Minister of Trade such as Mr Groser who earlier today acknowledged that he has no belief that any country should protect its own sovereignty. I think that was a really interesting contribution from Mr Groser—that he does not believe that any nation should insist on or have as a bottom line keeping the ability to make its own laws and having a Parliament such as this to create its own future for its citizens to decide what laws it would or would not like to put in place. Mr Groser believes that those are a tradable commodity; New Zealand First does not. So New Zealand First will stand with the Green Party in opposing this bill.The Green Party member Mr Shaw I think just expressed exceptionally eloquently as to why the Green Party is not supporting this bill. Certainly I do not believe that New Zealand First would come up with any dispute with the contribution that Mr Shaw made. However the majority of New Zealand First’s opposition is around the investor-State dispute settlement clause. We acknowledge Mr Goff’s and Mr Shearer’s contribution. We also know that they have no alternative but to stand and support this bill because being part of Governments before they have entered into trade agreements where there have been investor-State dispute settlement clauses.I was sitting on the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee when the negotiators came to brief the select committee on the completed process. I asked the question: what had the South Koreans asked for from New Zealand? All they had asked for was the investor-State dispute settlement clause. It has been stated in this House and I think it was Mr Shearer who stated that he believed that they asked for it only because they like to keep things consistent. That may or may not be the case but that does not mean that New Zealand has to accept it.I think the other thing that is important too is that when we enter into these trade agreements there is one set of criteria when you hit the border. So what we are talking about here is some tariffs. We do note that with regard to milk powder it keeps its 176 percent tariff. So that was not a great win for that particular industry.We do note that once you get past the border there are other barriers that could have been discussed and should have been discussed and that we have not heard anything about. For example there is the $20 billion of subsidy that the South Korean Government gives to agriculture once you get past the border. It is one thing to negotiate a deal and negotiate away your possible sovereignty to actually have a little bit of tariff leverage at the border but it is another thing once you get into the country—if your Government is now all hands-off and patting itself on the back because it is on this incredible race to try to go down in the history books as the Government that got the most trade agreements and not necessarily the most high quality trade agreements. That is one of the reasons why—and the predominant reason why—New Zealand First is actually opposing this bill.I think it is a very good example of why one should be concerned and looking at the fine print and the small details of these sorts of agreements. An excellent example I think is from—let us just talk about it—the procurement policy of Auckland City. The procurement policy of Auckland City when it was first created back in 2011 or whenever was rewritten. The local boards lobbied very very hard for local contractors to be given some form of advantage under the procurement policy of Auckland City. I think that a lot of councils do that. A lot of councils and local government want to make sure that their local contractors have an opportunity to tender and that if the tenders are balanced financially and with regard to the structure and the content of the tender then a local contractor is given that little bit of an edge because councils know there is local employment. It moves around the particular community.With regard to the procurement policy of Auckland City what was most interesting when it was finally written down after all the input from the community local boards and so on was that Singapore and Australia were defined as being local. So Singaporean and Australian companies were defined as local under the procurement policy of Auckland City and would be given the same advantages as any other business inside the boundaries of Auckland. Why was that? It was because they are included in trade agreements. Under the fine print in trade agreements the council could do no other. If we have a Singaporean company an Australian company and a New Zealand company or a company from Auckland putting in a tender for the same piece of work and the content was the same and the pricing was similar and so on and so forth they would have been breaking trade agreements and they would have been breaking laws to give advantage to New Zealanders. That is why New Zealand First stands against these types of agreements and we will continue to stand against them.It is all very well for Mr Reti—and I see that the campaign for Northland has started up. I can see that—[Interruption] Is it not funny how doctors like to be called “Dr” all the time? Righty-o. It is very interesting that Dr Reti has decided that—well obviously he is campaigning for something although I am not quite sure what. But it is interesting that the campaign for Northland has begun already. So Northlanders should be pleased that the moment that Northland elected somebody else who was not a National Party member they got an awful lot of attention coming from this Government. I would suggest that the best bet for the future is to continue to have a member not actually from the Government benches.I come back to the bill. I just want to quote from Mr Tabuteau’s second reading speech: “South Africa Germany and France are all investigating how to remove themselves either from trade agreements entirely that have investor-State dispute settlement provisions in them or to remove the investor-State dispute settlement provision itself from their trade agreements. They understand that this is an … attack on the democracy and the functioning of their Government within their country. They understand that. They have seen the evidence of it and they are desperately now trying to do something about it. The unfortunate reality for them is that they are beginning to discover that it is not that easy to get yourself out of these trade agreements once you have signed up to them. We are talking about 20 to 25 years’ notice in order for those countries to take themselves out of these trade agreements with the likes of the investor-State dispute settlement provisions in them.” It is too difficult to get out and it is too easy to get in.What we have also heard today in people’s contributions to this House—and again interestingly enough from the Labour benches—is that although we have had investor-State dispute settlement clauses we have never been taken to court. We have never had a problem so far. They do however appear to be the thing at the moment. They do however appear to be the cool thing to put into trade agreements. So it is only a matter of time would be what New Zealand First is saying. Just because something has not happened does not mean it will not.The other thing we have heard is that of the number of people who have had to go to tribunals under this 85 percent have won their cases. Nobody has mentioned the cost to those nations to actually go and defend themselves. Nobody has mentioned the cost. Even when they have not been found to be in breach or whatever nobody has tallied up the figures. What we know is that there are some companies in the world that have more money than New Zealand has put together. So what we know is that there are companies out there that can take our country to the cleaners because they have more money to throw at an issue than we have.The question is why we would place ourselves in this situation. The relationship that New Zealand had with South Korea was strong enough—strong enough—to create a trade agreement without selling our sovereignty. Perhaps what we need is a Minister of Trade such as the Rt Hon Winston Peters who actually believes in the sovereignty of the nation who has the capacity to stand his ground for his country and who is respected by all of Asia.