Locke Keith: Tariff (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Locke Keith: Tariff (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:630;Page:1999] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party opposes this legislation. It is legislation required to implement New Zealand’s adherence to the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement which the Greens oppose as not being in accord with New Zealand’s best interests. This is an ideological agreement that wrongly sees free trade with the countries involved as the answer even though we are not on a level playing field with them in terms of wages environmental and labour standards or State support systems. As I said in the first reading debate the Green party supports trade agreements but not ideological free-trade agreements. We support the CER agreement which has brought many benefits to New Zealand and operates in tandem on both sides of the Tasman with Buy Australian and Buy New Zealand Made campaigns. The Green Party under the terms of its relationship with this Government is in charge of a “buy New Zealand” campaign that we hope will produce benefits within the framework of the CER agreement. The CER agreement has some downsides as well which are outlined in the relevant report—and particularly in my minority comments on it—presented by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee a couple of parliaments ago. 
In my first reading speech I covered the range of Green criticisms of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement. I will not repeat all of them now. In this speech I want to concentrate on the service component of the agreement that this bill implements. I am particularly worried about the negative list of commitments New Zealand and the other three countries make in the services area of the agreement. This is quite new. It does exist in the CER agreement but in free-trade agreements generally it is a new approach. It means that if New Zealand does not put a certain sector on the negative list from then on that sector has to be open to foreign providers—for New Zealand and the other three countries to be on an equal footing. As things roll on with other free-trade agreements—bilateral agreements multilateral agreements and the World Trade Organization General Agreements on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations—that access to our service sectors will be extended to other foreign providers. 
I want to go over some of the problems that the negative list produces in the services area. First there is the problem of a Government making a mistake in failing to list a particular sector of importance to the New Zealand people. That failure will then bind future Governments. We already have the problem for example in relation to a mistake made by a previous Government in the GATS commitments relating to audio and visual products which means that it is hard for New Zealand to introduce local content quotas for radio and TV other than voluntary quotas. 
Second a sector can be left off the list and then technology may change in a way that was not foreseen. New Zealand then becomes defenceless in terms of upholding its interests against foreign providers because it is no longer able to deny them the same treatment. The United States had this problem in the area of betting services when it allowed foreigners in. Internet gambling then came along and although the United States Government wanted some local control in the area the cat was already out of the bag. Antigua and Barbuda took a case to the WTO against the US on the Internet gambling issue and won. 
Clearly the whole information technology sector is one in which all kinds of changes may occur that we do not foresee at present. In New Zealand we have already found that we are hamstrung in the information technology area by Telecom which has a monopoly over the local copper wire loop. Under the agreement and the whole GATS approach that New Zealand has committed to if we are bound into commitments when confronted by problems like this we must use the least intrusive means of regulation which of course plays right into the hands of organisations like Telecom. Telecom is arguing that its approach to broadband is the least intrusive approach and that it should be the one that the New Zealand Government adopts. Surely the New Zealand Government should reserve its right to intervene on a whole range of sectors without such restraints particularly if players who are effectively monopolies are stuffing things up and not investing properly in the sector etc. We have seen tragedies across a range of infrastructures—for example rail with Tranz Rail airlines with Air New Zealand’s earlier failure and also in the telecommunications area with Telecom. 
As with a lot of legislation that passes through the House there is now sometimes a tendency to look at it in terms of how a Labour-led Government might implement it as opposed to a Government of the future that might be further to the political right. Take for example the reservations on the negative list of services under annex IV of the agreement. They include reservations over social services established for a public purpose such as public education public housing public training public transport and public utilities. That sounds good on the surface but then what happens when for example a future Government applies voucher-type solutions in those areas as National and ACT tried to do? Already the public support for housing—the accommodation supplement—goes mainly to private housing. So there is a difficulty in disentangling the public and the private in terms of those reservations. 
If National brought in education vouchers as its prime means of funding education with no discrimination between their use in the public and private school sector then the reservations in the bill would mean little. The present Government is really keen on making the provision of private education open to international providers partly because New Zealand private providers are selling services in other countries. But could our whole education system here in New Zealand not be distorted in favour of private providers and foreign private providers if the open foreign access was combined with a new voucher system introduced by a future Government? 
The public transport reservation could also be bedevilled by open access to foreign passenger-transport providers private providers or private road builders under moves towards public-private partnerships that move to the provision of private roads which the National Party is talking about increasingly. Future right-wing Governments might go down that track. How does the reservation in the agreement apply under that scenario? Because of the ratchet provision in the agreement once a future right-wing Government goes down what is effectively a privatisation track a future centre or centre-left Government would find it very difficult to reregulate without affecting the agreement rights in the system of those foreign providers. 
We already have light-handed regulation in areas like taxis construction and the provision of private education services—and we know that every time we see a huge queue of taxis at the airport hear about more leaky buildings or read about dodgy foreign education providers with inadequate courses. Under article VI of the GATS we are not supposed to reregulate once we have deregulated. Would the public utilities reservation in annex IV of the agreement include environmental services or waste facilities? It is not clear. There is no specification in the annex. And who would determine if they are covered? That would be done by an international arbitration mechanism. It would not necessarily go New Zealand’s way. There is a lot of looseness there. 
Also interesting is the reservation for maritime and port services. It is true that up until now we have not had foreign provision of those services. But now we see Hutchison Port Holdings—a huge multinational company run by a Hong Kong billionaire—being offered control of the port by the Christchurch City Council. That will not be in the interests of Canterbury or New Zealand so it is hard to see how those mechanisms in the agreement will help the New Zealand people.