I am not a member of the Trade Committee. I have listened to the technicalities with considerable interest, but having looked at the volumes that have been referred to, I shut them down and turned away. My interest in this, which I must declare, is—as my accent gives away—the fact that I am of dual nationality. I have a New Zealand passport and a United Kingdom passport. When I am in New Zealand, they all think I am a pom, and when I am over here most people think I am an Australian, which is an insult if ever there was one. My interest in this is not quite emotional, but it goes back to where I came from and where we are going, which I hope will be a vast improvement.
This new trade deal puts all three nations more or less back to where we were before the United Kingdom entered the common market. When we entered the common market, the people of the antipodes—Australia and New Zealand, for those who do not know the word—lost many of the trading advantages that they had at the time. To put it mildly, they were very upset. Many Australian and New Zealand professionals, especially in the medical and paramedical services, were effectively discouraged from emigrating to this country. It was very sad, because the net effect was that some of the brightest professional people from those countries—I can add lawyers and accountants to that list—left not for this country but for the United States. When I was chairman of my old university alumni, I ran a big dinner in the House of Commons to which we invited anybody and everybody from the university. Thirty high-class New Zealand professors came over from the United States. They would have come here, except for the restrictions. So this is going to be a really interesting side effect.
When I go back to Australia or New Zealand—I have not been back to Australia for quite some time, but I have been to New Zealand—I am shocked to see the streets and shops full of Asian vehicles and goods. The British cars that filled the streets in my youth are not there, because of the tariffs that were put on them. We have to change that. I look forward to their return, and not just on the streets, because I come from a farming background. When I go to the farms there, there are no Land Rovers; they have Mitsubishis and other vehicles like that.