Clark David: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5630. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 I have pleasure in speaking to this bill the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill which the Labour Party will support. I believe this is a split call so I shall limit my comments to what is necessary. Had I more time I would stray on to other aspects of international obligations such as the obligation to protect the Maui’s dolphin. I understand New Zealand was the only country recently to oppose greater protections for the Maui’s dolphin in a gathering that happened here in New Zealand. I fear that if I do not take this opportunity now I will not have another chance to express my discontent at that decision because we know that there will be no legislation coming before the House to strengthen protections— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Order! 
Dr DAVID CLARK 
: I will not speak today about that Mr Assistant Speaker. 
I will instead focus on the purposes of the IMF which we know is there to provide economic stability. It has 188 member countries and it is there to protect the stability of the international monetary system the system of exchange rates and other international payments that enable countries and their citizens to transact with one another. It also has a mandate for promoting sustainable economic growth and for increasing living standards and reducing poverty. It has total quotas of $360 billion and it has pledged other commitments of $1 trillion. It is a big organisation. It is important to our world economy and New Zealand has a place in that world economy which is important of course to us as it is to others. We take our responsibility in the Labour Party seriously as an internationalist party that believes that New Zealand should honour the international obligations and agreements that we have entered into. 
I want to also note for the record my appreciation for the contributions of the Treasury officials who appeared before the select committee during the process of reviewing this bill. I thought they did a sterling job of researching our requests and reporting back. We see the good work of officials on a daily basis in this Parliament but I thought that the officials who worked on this legislation and sought to answer the questions we had did a job that was worthy of particular mention. 
One of the concerns about this bill that we in the Labour Party have is the way in which future changes will be made. The future acceptance of updates to IMF articles will be ratified by regulation rather than by legislation that comes before this Parliament. We believe that it should come by way of a statute that comes before the House and is given due consideration right here by all members of this Parliament so that we can take those international obligations seriously debate them and decide upon the appropriate way to take them forward. When we get into a position where that transparency is removed there are always risks involved and we do not have to look too far. We look at the lack of transparency around the extensions proposed to Skycity and see what kind of furore that creates in the wider public and concern about the way in which the Government transacts its business. If we also look at the asset sales agenda of the Government and its claim that it has a mandate to sell off our State assets we again see the protests and the upset that it has caused amongst members of the public who voted in support of this Government but now find that it is doing things with which they do not agree. 
The importance of transparency remains. We are not comfortable with the fact that these decisions will be made by the executive rather than coming before the Parliament although we do agree that we need to meet our international obligations and the agreements we have made in terms of our commitment to a trading environment that is stable and in the interests of sustainable growth in the wider world economy. Thank you.