Tabuteau Fletcher: Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTabuteau Fletcher: 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.]FLETCHER TABUTEAU (NZ First): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Tariff (Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand and the Republic of Korea) Amendment Bill. I just want to take this initial opportunity to speak to a suggestion from Mr Goff that New Zealand First members amongst others must explain themselves on their stance on opposing this legislation. I say to Mr Goff that the first and foremost reason for opposing this legislation is consistency. New Zealand First has been consistent on the position of investor-State dispute settlement from the start. This is a piece of legislation that would enable the enactment and the agreement of the free-trade agreement between New Zealand and Korea and in that trade agreement there is the investor-State dispute settlement provision. For some reason the Labour Party has decided for this one it is OK but for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement it is not. I say that New Zealand First has been consistent.The Minister of Trade himself spoke about this trade agreement having need for the arising of this legislation and spoke about the lack—or not so much a lack but the fact that this was not the finest work of the negotiation team. He acknowledged it but he said it was the best that they could do. But in the discussion highlighting some of the issues that Mr Goff raised the Minister spoke about the ambiguity of the readings of the parts and the interpretation of the schedule of exclusion and the appendices. So I just want to raise that point because just between the National Government and Labour there is ambiguity about the interpretation of the trade agreement. If you have it here imagine if you have international corporates looking for ambiguity in this legislation and trying to use it to create a rort for their own benefit. They will find confusion.We know and we have consistently said—and we have not done so in isolation—that this is an issue for much of the trading world. The investor-State dispute settlement is a mechanism outside justice outside New Zealand’s legal system outside the World Trade Organization system for example and outside the jurisdiction of the international corporate’s home jurisdiction. What I am saying there is the tribunal arising from investor-State dispute settlement exists outside mainstream legal systems. That is why it is called a tribunal. The process of passing this legislation tonight enables these international corporates to use investor-State dispute settlement an undemocratic principle outside legislation. It enables the rorting of democracy.I just go back to what the Minister said about it not being a quality agreement. I just want to raise the point that this is a catch-up trade deal. We did not go in with the first-mover advantage. This National Government has been in catch-up mode with trade in South Korea for its entire term. It does not seem to have wanted to do anything about it until now. There have been a few years of negotiation I acknowledge and now we are at this point. But what we seem to have created in this process in terms of a languishing process is that for some reason it has now become appropriate to accept lesser terms of trade and I point to the trade of milksolids as the prime example. I am talking about our primary industries where you are talking 65 percent or 64 percent of the New Zealand economy. You are talking about a significant portion of our exports overseas and milksolids being a significant portion of that.We are told by this National Government that this trade agreement is a good one and that therefore we need this legislation to enact it but the reality is that it applies after approximately 20000 tonnes of trade. I acknowledge that that will be adjusted over time but after that current figure which is a small figure—it is a small amount of milksolids being traded to South Korea. It was spoken of before as one of the reasons why it was not a high-quality agreement. You are talking about a 176 percent tariff being introduced on a fundamental component of our exports with the rest of the world and especially South Korea. So it is very very hard for anyone to stand up tonight and say that this is a good trade deal.Another part of this agreement was around seafood. The reality is you are talking about 33 percent of our seafood industry being tariffed at approximately 15 percent essentially in perpetuity as with the milksolids. New Zealand First has said from the start that just because we are in catch-up mode just because we were not a first mover and this Government has languished in terms of discussions around trade deals that does not mean that we should have given those trade parts away for our core industry. It is not really acceptable.The other part of this trade agreement is that in agreeing to this Labour—I have said it before—and this Government are allowing investor-State dispute settlement to become part of another trade agreement around the world with New Zealand in our trade with member countries. It is a rort. Europe is now investigating this as an issue. The Minister himself has spoken about wanting to now begin discussions with the EU and I highly commend him for that. What the first part of the discussion should be is—because I would suggest to the Minister that we should be part of the first discussion around removing the investor-State dispute settlement provision from those multilateral or bilateral trade agreements whatever the case may be in that particular instance. We know in that instance that that trading partner which we would love to trade with is absolutely dead keen itself to remove the investor-State dispute settlement provision from its trade agreements also.The Minister spoke about investor-State dispute settlement being necessary as did Labour in this case. We have had reports out from the business community of late speaking about how they are not an attack on the sovereignty of our nation. They spoke about Third World nations and the need for protection when we trade but they failed to respect the fact that Germany is hardly a Third World nation and Canada is hardly a Third World nation and right now they are being sued under investor-State dispute settlement provisions with their trade partners that would presume to tell them that they cannot remove nuclear power from their countries or presume to tell them through legislation and legal suit that they cannot protect their environment. So the analysis is flawed. It does not acknowledge very real issues with investor-State dispute settlement and the members on both sides of the Chamber need to acknowledge the very real threat that is investor-State dispute settlement. Thank you.