The China FTA highlights both the best and worst of the New Zealand public service. The China FTA has been very well negotiated and has exceeded expectations. But it has also highlighted a weakness in the system. Inconsistency. The victims are the forestry sector which derive no benefits from the just signed deal. There needs to be a thorough investigation into why this has happened. Put simply, New Zealand allowed language to be put into the accession agreement that China entered into when joining the WTO which would force China to grant any concessions granted in the forest products area in any bilateral deal to the whole WTO membership. China has argued to New Zealand that its hands were tied from that point on, and that to give free trade to New Zealand, China would be giving a free gift to the EU, US and Canada and other forest products exporters.
The Hive wants to know who was responsible for the China accession negotiations during its final stages - in Geneva and Wellington? And why did they not object to this language (the WTO works on a consensus basis)? And why did MAF not do its job and force MFAT to do something about this language? This is the biggest stuff up exposed since that on the consequences of joining the Kyoto Protocol (this was also negotiated by MFAT [and also involving MAF] - remember how we were all told that the deal would be worth hundreds of millions to New Zealand because of our forests, when the reality is that it will cost us at least a billion - probably more).
Declaration of interest: The Hive team doesn't own any forests, but we would have preferred the forst products sector to be celebrating this FTA along with the rest of the country.
