Labour and National united in free trade at any cost

The release of the National Party's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Discussion paper today has made it crystal clear that Labour and National are united in their pursuit of free trade deals with China and United State regardless of the cost to New Zealand, says the Green Party.

"National and Labour remain united in their commitment to a free-trade-at-any-cost agenda, regardless of the social and environmental impacts," says Dr. Russel Norman, Green Party Co-Leader and Trade Spokesperson.

"When National was last in power they made WTO commitments which mean that it is now WTO illegal for the New Zealand Government to introduce mandatory minimum New Zealand content quotas on television or radio. And so we're getting overrun by American TV re-runs.

"When we asked the Minister of Forestry, Jim Anderton, to restrict the import of furniture made from illegally and unsustainably harvested rainforest timber, he said he couldn't because of WTO rules. So now we are over-run by imports of outdoor furniture made from endangered species.

"National and Labour are envious of the Australia United States Free Trade Agreement, but fail to understand the lessons of that deal. The first lesson is that it was not a free trade agreement at all - Australia gave tremendous access to US exporters and got very little in return.

"The second lesson is that the number one target for the United States in the trade negotiations was Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The big pharmaceutical companies hate schemes like the PBS that use bulk buying, competitive bidding processes and generic drugs to drive down the cost of pharmaceuticals. Pharmac is even more successful than the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and the US will demand that we disable Pharmac as part of any New Zealand US trade deal. And then our pharmaceutical bill with skyrocket.

"And doing a free trade deal with China will inevitably compromise our labour and environmental standards.

"It's great that National have finally seen the light on the nuclear issue, but it is has simply thrown more light on the similarities between Labour and National on trade issues.