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.