Engineers union secretary
Andrew Little
is right to complain about conversion work on NIWA’s ship Tangaroa going to Singapore, rather than being done in the Devonport dockyard.
However, the Government is hamstrung by the NZ/Singapore free trade and
investment agreement
which prevents them from giving New Zealand bidders any preference over Singaporean ones.
When Andrew puts on his other hat,
Labour Party president
, I hope he will try to shift his party’s uncritical support for such free trade and investment agreements. They are not all about Fonterra getting more opportunities to export dairy products.
Unfortunately, Labour trumpeted the
NZ/China free trade
and investment agreement, under which nothing can be done to prevent Chinese government backed companies from buying up our dairy farms – unless it can be shown that the individuals involved are not of ‘good character’.