Damien O'Connor: Labour's Trade Spokesperson on Labour's hesitance to support the India Free Trade Agreement

So let's wrap this short week with hopefully some insight into the increasingly sticky

FDA deal with India.

So Trade Minister was here yesterday, seemingly confident what ever hurdles we have we could

resolve.

And you see, on first, of course, are out so Labor are better up in terms of numbers, but

they've got a letter containing issues that Trade Minister Damien O'Connor who is with

us.

Damien, morning.

You're right.

How are you, mate?

Very well indeed.

I've read the letter from Hipkins, or I think the latest letter from Hipkins to the Prime

Minister.

So you've got migrant issues.

Is that directly tied with a trade deal?

In other words, are they not separate things that a government who are awake and, you

know, with a good grip on the wheel would deal with any way?

Look, there are guaranteed places, work permits into New Zealand in this trade deal.

They aren't usually in a trade agreement.

There's provision for migration and work permits, but not guaranteed numbers.

So that is different, and it's something that has to be considered.

But clearly, once they've served up fears and concerns, and Chris Hipkins got a number

of emails and letters saying, you know, we're going to let flood New Zealand with migrants.

That's not the reality, but we had to ask questions about the provisions and the safeguards

for that.

We don't want thousands of students coming in as happen under the tea government to

shonky education courses being exploited in the workplace.

We don't want to get back to that again.

Once students do that up, we have to have assurance that that won't happen.

And haven't you got assurance because I wouldn't have thought, given we don't have that

and given we have tied that up?

Well, no.

But government shrunk the little everyone's spectrum.

Now, everything they have done has to remove, has been removed to protection for workers

in our country, not enhanced them.

So what we're doing is potentially bringing in another pool of young students and

those who are enthusiastic and they'll be working, we don't want them exploited, we want

to make sure there are people on the ground who are going to check the workplaces and make

sure that exploitation is not occurring.

Well, hold on.

When you say students in workplaces, are you talking about students coming in and going

to shonky education facilities, or are you talking about students coming in who might

end up with a visa and doesn't, the visa solve the problem, going into some second

rate job?

There are two issues.

There are student numbers.

Right.

And they have, they have work rights with those, those axes.

So, so those numbers are not capped, there was a little bit of confusion.

Minister said they were capped, they're not actually capped, but of course we have the

ability to control the quality of the educational institutes, making sure that they're not shonky.

So there is an ability, but we've got to have labor inspectors out there making sure

that that abuse is not occurring.

Modern slavery legislation is something that we raised, the government committed to Bill

now that that to member from Labour and member from National have agreed, it's in the

order paper, but the government bumped that bill down the order paper, that's the modern

slavery legislation, we want to put back out so that these things are being dealt with

properly in New Zealand, and we're not opening the door to a lot of well-meaning, well-intended

Indians coming into the country who will be exploited, that's what's happened in the past

across other nations too, we don't want it to be a repeat.

The number of students, don't we want more students, I mean, because they come in,

they pay, they go to university, it's good for the bottom line.

Yeah we do, absolutely, but we just don't make sure when they come in, legitimate courses

getting a proper education and a place to live and not being exploited.

I just, having read the letter, having talked to, you know, McLean a number of times now

having, I just don't see this, you're sort of there, aren't you, really, I mean, we're

not that far apart, this is too big a deal to cock up in the long term, isn't it?

Because there's a commitment to best efforts, it's not an absolute commitment, we get that

but we need some explanations to what happens, if in 15 years' time we haven't invested

33 billion New Zealand dollars in India, what will that mean for exporters who might have

committed less money than that but money to the Indian market?

So these are questions that we would have asked through the process had we been consulted.

National, you know, Christian, Christian Relaxan held, tried his own hands by saying,

I want this done deal done within three years and then hadn't done a deal with Winston,

so had to come back in the last minute and ask us to support this without the knowledge

and the background that we would normally have expected.

Yeah, but, I mean, you're a decent bloke, you've been on the plane from Cameroon with McLean

for hours on end, I don't know how long it takes to get from Cameroon back home,

but I mean, didn't you sort this out over a drink on the plane for goodness sake?

None of this seems to be a hurdle, you can't get over.

No, no, absolutely, we hope we can get over that.

But ultimately, you know, this is a political decision between the leader of my party

and the leader of the National Party who needs our support, you know, it's not,

we don't often as an opposition, you know, support the government,

we're sensible, we do, we need to know that we're not opening door to some of the claims

that Winston is wildly making about this.

We need to be able to answer to the public

and say this is a genuinely good deal for New Zealand.

It's not the one that Labour will negotiate it,

but nonetheless, it's a good step forward.

Good on him, you have a good ease to appreciate it though.

They're Damien O'Connor, Labour Trade spokesperson.