Flavell: Finance Agreements Amendment Bill
te-pati-maori
Thu May 10 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Flavell: Finance Agreements Amendment Bill
Thursday, 10 May 2007, 9:29 am
Speech: The Maori Party
International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill
First Reading; Te Ururoa Flavell,
Foreign Affairs and Trade Spokesperson for the Maori Party
Wednesday 9 May 2007
The legislative schedule before the House today has exceeded itself with the use of acronyms. This Bill makes its own contribution – IMF, MIA, MIGA to name a few – and includes such tantalising terminology as neo-liberalism; multilateral investment; global trade and investment liberalisation.
Well in my preparation for this Bill, I came across a new principle which I want to share in this debate.
It is a principle coined by Professor Jane Kelsey on behalf of ARENA - that’s short for Action, Research and Education Network of Aotearoa. Professor Kelsey has introduced me to the ‘Dracula principle’, that is the destruction of obnoxious agreements by exposing them to the light of day.
It is a principle that we in the Maori Party, wholly endorse for the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill.
The context of foreign investment and a nation’s economic relationship with the world is of course a key issue for any political party. It is also a context which has been part of an ongoing debate within Maoridom in particular and within the indigenous global community as well. It is a context probably best explained by a native American activist who said that neo-liberal globalisation, “is just a different version of the same old cavalry”.
Tangata whenua have long wrestled with the notion of foreign investment, from the first colonial land speculators to the hugely controversial Multilateral Agreement on Investment or the MAI proposal put forward in 1997 to remove basically all restrictions on foreign investment.
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Maori up and down the length of Aotearoa attended hui, wrote submissions, and took to the streets to speak about how they believed such a proposal would open the floodgates to wholesale exploitation and appropriation of our lands and resources; threatening the very integrity of the nation.
It is an interesting co-incidence in that today, in a day in which we the Maori Party released a key policy platform in order to ensure that all parties to the Treaty settlement process are on a level playing field; that we think back to the way in which earlier foreign investment agreements sought to relate to the Treaty.
Signing up to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment would have required the New Zealand government to force the pace on Treaty settlements, settling all claims by the year 2000.
We would say to this House, sovereignty was not ceded by the Tiriti o Waitangi. Nor should the Government yield its false claim of sovereignty to anyone else but Maori.
The Treaty must stand to continue to protect future Maori generations, and to guide Aotearoa’s future.
And consistent with this, the Maori Party today announced the establishment of an Independent Settlements Authority.
But what do we have here with the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill? Yet another agreement signed up to by the Government without the involvement of tangata whenua; without any kind of agreement from Maori as the partner to the Treaty.
In 1997, the Law Commission produced guidelines which I would recommend to this House for background reading to this Bill.
Their guidelines, entitled The Treaty Making Process: Reform and the Role of Parliament recommends that a treaty impact statement should be prepared for all treaties to which New Zealand proposes to become a party.
It states further that the impact statement should set out any consultation undertaken with Mäori, and whether the Treaty will have any effect upon the rights guaranteed in the Treaty of Waitangi.
Mr Speaker, Treaty clauses have been included in recent agreements, such as the 2006 Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership, as a result of Maori challenges and pressure. But such clauses are always limited because it is left up to the government of the day as to how to they choose to fulfil their obligations under the Treaty.
The clauses are also meaningless if they lack any prior dialogue or debate between Maori and the Crown as to whether the agreement is a good idea in the first place.
The Crown’s fundamental obligations to tangata whenua as guaranteed in Te Tiriti o Waitangi are over-ridden by this Bill to confirm New Zealand's membership in the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency; not least of which is because it has already been signed up to - on 6 September 2005 – conveniently, and not without surprise – some two weeks out before the General Election.
The Bill accords with the economic pathway brought in by Labour and National governments who instigated and then extended a massive programme of corporatisation and privatisation; and between them removed essentially all restrictions on foreign investment.
By the mid 1990s foreign buy ups were in prime commercial and residential property, overseas ownership of New Zealand companies had increased by 145%, and local manufacturing had plummeted and with it employment levels and rates of pay.
Mr Speaker, we stand in this House today, to make it quite clear that Maori have strongly resisted foreign investment agreements which willingly give investors rights over land and resources which right now, we are contesting through Treaty claims.
We must continue to act locally; and think globally.
The international trade agreements that successive governments keep signing are simply another mechanism, along with the Treaty settlements process, which lock us all further into a neo-liberal net.
All that the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency does is to give more power to the big corporations which dominate the world economy. It is another corporate steal, providing for yet another quantum expansion of corporate power.
A net in which the 'market mentality' is extended to commodify all aspects of life, including those that were formerly outside its domain - community, iwi, identity, in other words humanity itself.
And yet we in the Maori Party know that the "market" only exists because the State allows it to exist. So much so that 85% of the world’s wealth is controlled by 20% of its population, disciples of the "market" who are supported by the State to ensure that the advantages they have are maintained. Now is that fair, if it is not, what are we going to do about it?
The agreement guarantees that corporations shall be supported to continue and indeed grow activity for private profit, rather than investment which actually benefits a country and its people.
Mr Speaker, no one in this House can overlook the reality that the gaps between the haves and have-nots have grown dramatically over the last 20 years, with our most vulnerable members of society - Māori and Pacific people, beneficiaries and low-income families with children – showing significant increases in the proportions of people in "severe hardship.
Child Poverty Action Group health spokesperson, paediatrician Professor Innes Asher, has told us that the vast range of health statistics show that New Zealand's large income gap contributes to the poor health of low-income earners and their children.
And so we wonder, how will foreign investment do anything to improve the income and other resources available to our poorest families with children?
How will the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency respond to the costliness of the long-term effects of increasing inequality and poverty on children, their families and society?
The Maori Party will not support this Bill.
We will stand alongside all of those who have stood previously, against successive moves to remove virtually all restrictions on foreign investment.
We will stand with Maori, with activist unions, with students, with Grey Power, with anti-free trade groups, with local Government.
We will vehemently oppose any deals being done with international corporates which invite foreign investors to come in and remove jobs and businesses and slash pay rates and work hours; to come in and take the land and resources which Maori are already contesting Government for;
Finally, I return to another Hikoi; which like the great hikoi against the Foreshore and Seabed Act of 2004, also mobilised New Zealanders into action.
The Hikoi of Hope of 1998 arose from a call from Anglican Bishop for New Zealanders to re-examine the wider choices we were making as a nation.
The Bishops challenged Government to focus on the big picture on jobs, the health system, benefit and wage levels, housing and education; to respond to the trends of the time which were described as deeply disturbing.
And so with that, they launched five planks: Poverty; housing; health; education, and job creation.
Now as we debate yet another item on the Government’s global liberalisation agenda, it is useful to remember the people – the vulnerable, the poor, the people who are clearly not benefiting from foreign control.
As we lead up to Budget day next week, we say, the priorities of this Labour Government, the priorities articulated in an International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill, are not the priorities which advance our nation and we will oppose this Bill.
ENDS
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