Browning Steffan: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 22 September 2015. Volume:709;Page:6839. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I rise to take a call on the Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill. The Greens are not supporting this bill. We would like to see fair trade rather than free trade. We have got a number of concerns with the free-trade agreement. There is no opportunity for Parliament to vote on the free-trade agreement itself. This bill is only the legislation around it. It deals with legislative changes such as the tariffs and there are a number of questions around those tariffs.What really motivates me to get up is that every free-trade agreement that we seem to be involved with deals out some New Zealand producers some New Zealand businesses and some New Zealand wage earners because it is not even. If it was fair it would be fine. It is good to see that there are labour and environmental provisions in this agreement but they do not go far enough. It is still not an even playing field for New Zealand producers of those products that we may bring in from Korea and that has been the case time after time after time. It is good that there are benefits—and I acknowledge that—for my friends in the kiwifruit industry my beef farmer friends and some in the dairy industry. But some of those—kiwifruit I think is one of the better ones—get the full benefit I think in about 5 years. Beef and dairy are light years away before they get the real benefits of this.I notice that in 5 years’ time 67.4 percent of the things we are exporting are benefited by the agreement in 10 years it is 79.3 percent and in 15 years it is 97.8 percent. We are nearly there in 15 years. For Korea it is the other way round and she is all over Rover—a lot of it is already—in just 7 years. Then we have a number of product-specific rules and I note that for rice and processed grains we had to accept more restrictive provisions for certain whole foods and products made from them. There are people in New Zealand who want those products. Why are we not getting the same deal as the US and Australia? I think we have sold out rather too easily and I am concerned that our producers of products that we will allow in from Korea do not have to meet the same environmental or labour standards. Why should they not have to match that? Why are we not putting up our tariffs and things to make sure that our producers of the very same goods have an absolutely equitable playing field?I was very concerned to hear that this bill updates the China investor-State dispute settlement provisions. Just wait and see as those provisions do bite us in the butt in time. We may not have a record of being sued just yet but we all share the neighbours—like Australia our friends in Europe and elsewhere and South America and other countries—that have been subject to those provisions by the various corporates. Yes this does not seem to be maybe quite as bad as what we can expect under the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement but it is still heading down that same track.I note that there is quite a delay before beef gets the full benefit from any tariff reductions and I wonder whether that is because we have got a bit of a bad track record selling beef over there. We had a shipment sent back when they found endosulfan residues in beef and we nearly lost another one and we then decided to get rid of endosulfan off the shelf. Would it not be good if the environmental provisions meant that we were actually producing the best product possible—organic-type products without any risk of residues in them? We would not need to be going out and selling ourselves into a weak outcome because we would have product that was absolutely top class and in demand as being the best in the world the most favoured stuff which is genuinely clean green and 100 percent pure. We would be getting good deals and not because we have a track record of some rubbish that has been contaminated because we are a pesticide-focused country. This Government is doing nothing in this agreement here about making sure that we do not get residues back the other way either but we are not doing anything else to make sure that we have got the best possible product and are getting the best most favourable deals because we are absolutely at the top of the play in our primary production.The Greens will be opposing this bill but we really look forward to getting some fair trade in the future rather than these free-trade agreements that are not actually fair. Thank you.