English berates Labour for its position on South Korea deal

Prime Minister Bill English has accused Labour of acting irresponsibly in saying it wanted to renegotiate the free-trade agreement between New Zealand and South Korea — despite having voted for it at the time.

And he has scoffed at Jacinda Ardern’s most recent ring-fencing statement on Labour’s tax working group, which was to take inheritance tax off the table.

English said every region in New Zealand had benefited from the Korea free-trade agreement which took five years to negotiate and was signed in March 2015.

Labour was now effectively tearing it up.

“New Zealand will lose credibility going back to the South Korean Government and saying ‘you know that agreement we spent five years negotiating, we now want to re-open it’,” English said.

Ardern said yesterday she wanted to renegotiate the deal to allow the New Zealand Government to stop offshore foreigners from buying homes in New Zealand

“We don’t anticipate it will be a major problem because it already exists on the Korean side of the ledger. We think it should be extended to New Zealand.”

She did not believe it would put the deal at risk and she thought South Korea would be “very understanding”. She has already said Labour would try to renegotiate the TPP-11 trade deal and would withdraw if it was not able to get in a provision allowing a ban on offshore foreigners from buying houses in New Zealand.

National did not seek specific provision for that but got a provision for stamp duty to be applied to any class of investment, which could have the same effect.

However, in an interview in the Australian Financial Review Ardern has been equivocal on whether failure to renegotiate the TPP would be a deal-breaker. “If I were to reveal that to you, I think I would lose my ability to negotiate on this one,” she told the AFR.