Robertson Grant; Tisch LindsayParts 1 to 12 schedules 1 to 4 and clauses 1 and 2GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I raise this point of order now so that there is perhaps some time while the debate goes on and over the dinner break for a considered ruling from you. I am raising this point of order under Speakers' ruling 130/2 around the issue of commencement dates. Speakers' ruling 130/2 says: An amendment to a commencement date must provide certainty about when the Act is to come into force. An amendment that relies on an indeterminate event is not in order." The amendment that has been made to clause 2(2) of the bill—the commencement date—says: "That date must be the date on which the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement done at Auckland on 4 February 2016 enters into force for New Zealand." As is well known and perhaps dependent on events that might take place tomorrow in the United States that is not a date of which there is any certainty at this time. I am concerned that the amendment that is proposed in the legislation under clause 2(2) in fact breaches Speakers' rulings and would be out of order. So I would seek your guidance on that and perhaps a considered ruling.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Thank you for that. I will seek some guidance on this matter. This was a provision that was put in place by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee and agreed to at the second reading. It happens to be here but I do take on board what you are saying. I am happy to seek advice on that matter.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central): It is a pleasure to take a call—the first of a number of calls I hope to take—in the Committee stage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. I want to start my contribution—or I would have done had we been doing a clause by clause debate—with clause 1 which is the title of this bill. This emphasises part of the problem that we have here today. This bill is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Amendment Bill. As is the nature with legislation like this there is not actually any one piece of legislation to amend. There are a series of very small and in many ways inconsequential amendments to a number of different Acts: the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act the Copyright Act—actually the amendments to the Copyright Act are not inconsequential and I will come back to them in the fullness of time—and also around the various trade provisions in Acts that we have.That is part of the issue here because many New Zealanders have been concerned about something called the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) as named in clause 1 of this bill. But as such it does not exist in New Zealand law. That highlights the problem of the fact that this Parliament has not had an adequate opportunity to debate the overall nature of the TPPA and of the ability for New Zealanders to reflect their concern about that.I think over the years it would be fair to say that I have changed my views somewhat around Parliament's role in looking at agreements like the TPPA. This is because as trade agreements themselves have changed and developed from being fairly basic agreements about market access and services and access of goods and services to markets to the more complex agreements like the TPPA—the 6000-odd pages of it—I think there is a greater case for more public scrutiny and more public debate on whether New Zealand should be part of these agreements. The issue we have today as we come to debate this is that New Zealand has already signed up. New Zealand has already signed up—this is the ultimate box-ticking exercise; this is the ultimate arrival in Parliament where—Todd Barclay: Sit down—sit down.GRANT ROBERTSON: Ha ha! Todd Barclay has just told me to sit down. That is not going to happen Mr Barclay. In fact Mr Barclay if you keep that up you are going to be here for a very very long time because this piece of legislation is not supported by a lot of New Zealanders—not because of the detail of the amendments to the Acts that are contained within here but in part because Mr Barclay and his Government have decided not to take New Zealanders with them have decided not to have a proper discussion with New Zealanders about the benefits and the costs but rather to sign up and then come looking for a rubber stamp from this House. That is not what we are elected for. We are elected as members of Parliament to actually represent our constituents and to debate and decide upon what is best for New Zealand. This is the sovereign Parliament of New Zealand and I am sorry to say that the way that the National Government has approached this agreement means that the sovereignty of this Parliament has been undermined.I would say when I look at the title clause and I see the "Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement" I wish that we were really debating that agreement; that we were really debating the pros and cons of that—the costs and the benefits. But instead the legislation is actually a series of technical amendments to various pieces of legislation that are affected. There should actually be I would say considerably more bits of legislation being amended here—were it not for the fact that New Zealand has actually largely removed most of the tariffs that would potentially have been in another country's piece of legislation ratifying the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Over the years our lay down misère approach as I discussed in the second reading to trade negotiations means that New Zealand ain't got much left when it comes time to negotiate in trade agreements. That is the case for New Zealand when it comes to the TPPA.The second point I want to make about the name of this piece of legislation is that actually in some ways it is a bit more honest than some of the commentary from the Government has been about what is actually happening here. We keep getting comments from National Government members about how anyone who is opposed to this is opposed to trade. Well what utter and complete nonsense. I have stood in this House before and debated free-trade agreements (FTAs) and they have been called free-trade agreements or free-trade ratification agreements. This one does not say that. This one calls it the "Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement". That is actually a reasonably fair reflection of an agreement that goes well beyond actual market access the actual tariff debates—in fact we do not have a lot of that in here. What we have are things like amendments to the Overseas Investment Act because actually the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an agreement—yes about some market access provisions—but also about the way Governments regulate and about the way Governments make their decisions; the kind of decisions that this Parliament should be making.The frustration for members on this side of the Chamber is that we are not actually in here today debating for instance the decision of the National Government to deny a future Government the right to say who it is who should be able to buy residential property in New Zealand. In other Parliaments around the world when they are debating the ratification—when they are in Australia or when they are in Vietnam—it will be debated; in Singapore it will be debated. This is because those countries decided that "Yes we will actually reserve the right of our sovereign Parliament to make a law in that way." But that is not here. That is actually not one of the clauses that we get to debate today because the Government did not come to this Parliament before it signed up to that—or in fact signed away the right for New Zealanders to do that. So this agreement the TPPA is fundamentally different from the New Zealand - China free-trade agreement or the New Zealand - Korea free-trade agreement which we have debated before in this House and which the Labour Party not only initiated but in the last 8 years has been prepared to support—the ratification of those agreements. This one goes further. This one goes further and at the same time the Government has done as little as possible to take New Zealanders with it in going further in explaining what some of those benefits might have been and being honest about what the cost might have been. I do want to say this now that the Minister in the chair Todd McClay is here—because he was not here when I said this in the second reading—and that is that actually I think he has started to do that now that he has got into the job. He has actually started to get out and get around New Zealand and say: "This is what's happening." Well sorry it is too little too late because the previous Minister Minister Groser knew so much more than the rest of us did—Hon Member: About everything.GRANT ROBERTSON: About everything actually but about this in particular. He did not need to do it he knew everything; free trade was in his blood. This is the man who once said that Closer Economic Relations (CER) should be called GER—"Groser Economic Relations"—because he was the third secretary in the embassy in Canberra when it was passed. It is that attitude from Mr Groser that typifies what is wrong with this agreement: negotiated without being transparent for New Zealanders about what was involved and relying on "constructive ambiguity" as he told Mrs King and myself in a meeting where he said we could talk about everything he said. When we questioned whether or not New Zealanders would pay more for medicines because of the changes that were being made here around patent law he said there was constructive ambiguity. Constructive ambiguity—that is as good as it gets from this Government when it comes to the TPPA.So it is difficult for members on this side of the Chamber to be able to stand up and make the contributions that we need to make on this because actually the legislation in front of us does not give the full picture of what the TPPA is and we have not been included in the debate at the appropriate time. I know from when we did less complicated trade agreements like the New Zealand - China FTA that we worked hard in Government to make sure that stakeholders knew. We met with unions we met with environmental groups we met with businesses and we talked through what we were doing. We trusted those people to have New Zealand's best interests at heart and to be part of the discussion. Not this Government—total veil of secrecy and then Mr Groser telling us at the end to trust him and that he knew everything. The sad reality is that he told us this would be a gold standard agreement. It is not a gold standard agreement—it falls miles short of that in every respect and at this stage it does not even look like it is going to enter into force anytime soon. So here we are debating to ratify something that probably will not ever exist that will be renegotiated and that was put forward by a Government that did not do for New Zealand what it should have. This could have been done so much better than it has been."