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The EU is already a very significant trade and investment partner for New Zealand: it is a top export market, and a very important source of imports. A closer trade relationship would offer significant new opportunities to both sides to expand business in agriculture and food as well as technology, services (including tourism, education and environmental services), niche and high-value manufacturing, research and investment.

ExportNZ has long been on the record supporting the moves towards what is now the CPTPP, from its original conception through to its signing in Chile in March. We applaud the new government for continuing the efforts to complete the agreement.

While we are fully supportive of more scrutiny and transparency being applied to rate setting amongst shipping lines, we were concerned that the previous version of the Bill went too far in including “route sharing” arrangements, as this could have constrained the ability of shipping lines being able to find the most cost effective way to move freight in a timely and dynamic way to the best advantage of exporters.

The proposed vision is very ambitious we wonder if it is a bit unrealistic given we are a country of not quite 5 million people from a geographically remote part of the world. We don’t have big numbers of consumers on our doorstep like other small advanced economies and we are not logistically ‘on the way’ to anywhere. We don’t have big military or pharmaceutical industries, which are usually big drivers of RSI spending internationally.

I am writing to express ExportNZ’s support for BusinessNZ’s submission to the Productivity Commission (the ‘Commission’) on its Issues paper entitled ‘Low-emissions economy’, dated August 2017. As with BusinessNZ, we welcome the Commission’s issues paper outlining its thinking about how New Zealand can maximise the opportunities and minimise the costs and risks of transitioning to a lower net-emissions economy. The Commission recognises that is not an insignificant challenge and has worked through a wide range of issues in a methodical, deliberate way, and should be congratulated for its thoughtful assessment of the issues it has undertaken in a relatively short period of time.

ExportNZ welcomes the opportunity to submit on MFAT’s Trade for All consultation. We believe trade should, and does, benefit all New Zealanders. According to NZIER’s report ‘Distributional aspects of New Zealand’s tradable and non-tradable sectors’ from July 2018, the GDP contribution of the tradable sector made up 47 percent of the total GDP for NZ in 2017.

The Coalition Agreement between the New Zealand Labour Party and the New Zealand First Party includes, among other commitments, to “strengthen the Overseas Investment Act” . In addition, the Government has clearly stated its intent in its first 100 days in office to “ban overseas speculators from buying exist ing houses” .

ExportNZ absolutely agree that climate change is a very real global issue that needs to be addressed, and that New Zealand must do its part. However, we question whether the Zero Carbon Bill is the solution to New Zealand’s climate change commitments, given the current target of a 50% reduction of GHG from 1990 levels is already a stretch target and will come at an annual real GDP cost of $8.6 billion between 2017-2050, according to NZIER economic modelling.