Peters slams India FTA, claims restrictive immigration policy 'targets India'

Peters slams India FTA, claims restrictive immigration policy 'targets India'

Winston Peters has criticised the India Free Trade agreement at its first reading, saying National has "covertly" changed course on migration settings for Indians.

National's Trade Minister says Peters is "wrong".

The bill passed its first reading 93 votes to 29, with National, Labour and ACT's support, and all others opposed.

Speaking in Parliament, the New Zealand First leader said officials had discussed the importance of "not announcing these changes for fear of the Indian reaction - this is bad faith".

"We've recently received the evidence in the form of a briefing from officials and consequent decisions made by the Minister of Immigration (National's Erica Stanford) that immigration policy settings are being made more restrictive in a way which targets India and India alone."

He quoted from that briefing, saying officials warned Stanford more restrictive settings would "have impacts on our bilateral and trade relations with India and potentially on New Zealand's reputation as a place to to business".

The officials, he said, pointed to such changes being open to legal challenge.

Peters - who is also the Foreign Minister - also repeated these claims in a separate NZ First-branded media release shortly after his speech.

He said Stanford had "approved" the "discriminatory treatment" including:

Peters said NZ First had opposed including any migration concessions in the FTA, and if additional restrictions were being brought in "the only consistent and principled step would be to apply these restrictions to citizens of all FTA partners".

In a written statement, Trade Minister Todd McClay said New Zealand First was "wrong about this".

"They've consistently failed to support important trade agreements that are in the best interests of NZ. Whilst they are free to differentiate themselves in respect of the FTA, they should stop promoting misinformation for the sake of gaining votes."

Previously, McClay had talked up the deal, saying it would reduce tariffs on 95 percent of current exports to India, with 57 percent duty free from day one.

"This once in a generation agreement gives our exporters unprecedented access to 1.4 billion people, it will help diversify our export markets and will support the goal of doubling the value of our exports over 10 years."

He said the FTA reflected the strength of the relationship with India and was the start of a "new and exciting chapter" in that, and acknowledged Labour's support for the bill.

Labour's Vanushi Walters similarly commended McClay for completion of the deal, "no doubt building on the work that was done by my colleague the Honourable Damien O'Connor in the last term".

RNZ has sought comment from Stanford.