Labour-Free-Trade-Record

Greatest sadness you know out of the India free trade deal for me to this point is that the rhetoric has not Not paid due respect to where free trade basically began, New Zealand. We are the pioneers. Well, the modern pioneers anyway. The concept, if you study it, goes back to the mid-1800s where Britain and Europe had various deals. The GATT agreements of the 1940s made significant progress, but the deal with Australia in the 80s put it well and truly on our radar and along with Roger Douglas, Mike Moore made a name, if not some fame for himself with the desire to do cross-border business free from the impediment. of tariffs and for a while free trade deals had their time in the sun they got i thought anyway a bit watered down with these block deals the cptpp is your classic even our eu deal is widely accepted as being inferior to proper one-on-one deals like china or now india because when you get 27 nations of course in the eu there's bound to be a bunch of protectionists in there india is also worth respecting because it's india and it's been a prize for many many years it's the last last truly large country, and not just that, but a truly large country actually going places. If this country has an international calling card, it is trade. We box above our weight. We do business on quality. We buy and sell on fair price, not a jacked up protected price. Within all deals, you will find critics and clauses that aren't perfect. I mean, it's free trade, not perfect trade. And even a free trade deal technically can and does host tariffs. But But with the intent, and indeed the outworking of them all, is that business between two countries is better, freer and bigger than it was before signing. New Zealand first are on the wrong side of this, and irony, it cannot be lost surely that its leader is a foreign minister who spends his time globally looking to engage and encourage engagement between countries, and nothing encourages engagement more than doing business. Labour says it's not the deal they would have done. Isn't it? What is the deal they did when they were in power? Oh, that's right, there wasn't one. This, without a shadow of a doubt, in twenty years will be like China. Big, bold, successful, constantly being upgraded. We will all see it eventually, but in the ensuing years, sadly, since we were free trade evangelists, we've become increasingly myopic, if not racist. Free trade is what we are good at. We should celebrate what we're good at more.