Have your say
Submissions have closed — here's what happens next
Public submissions on the India Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill closed at 11.59pm on 19 July 2026. If you got one in — well done; it's now part of the permanent public record. This page tracks what the committee does with them, and where the process goes from here.
What happens now
- Processing. The committee secretariat processes and publishes written submissions on the Parliament website (submitters could request confidentiality for personal details). We'll mirror a collection on our documents page as they appear.
- Oral hearings — held 27 and 30 July. Selected submitters spoke to the committee in five-minute slots, mostly by video link; recordings are archived via the committee's page on the Parliament website and its Vimeo archive.
- Committee report — underway now. The committee is weighing the evidence; it may recommend amendments to the bill (not the treaty) and reports back with its conclusions, including any minority views. No date is public: the Standing Orders default gives it until late December (six months from referral), but the Government's ratification-this-year aim implies a report within weeks.
- Remaining stages. Second reading, committee of the whole House, third reading. With National, ACT and Labour supporting, passage is expected; the Government then ratifies, and the FTA enters into force once India completes its own procedures.
What submissions could — and couldn't — do
A submission could —
- Propose changes to the bill itself: quota administration for apples, kiwifruit and honey, levy design, information-sharing safeguards, the Overseas Investment Act threshold.
- Ask the committee to recommend things: supplementary economic modelling, IRD analysis of the foreign-payroll tax question, implementation safeguards, or even delaying ratification.
- Put your evidence and perspective on the permanent public record — submissions are read, summarised in the committee's report, and cited for years.
A submission couldn't —
- Amend the treaty. The FTA text was fixed at signature; only the two governments can renegotiate it.
- Force a select committee recommendation — the government majority on the committee, and ultimately the House, decides.
- Stop ratification by itself: National, ACT and Labour support the bill, so the votes are there. But committee-stage pressure has changed implementation details of past agreements.
Missed the deadline?
Your voice isn't spent. The committee's report will be debated in the House — contacting your local MP or a party spokesperson remains open at every stage. And if the process itself frustrated you (text released after support was locked in, submissions after signature), that's a live reform debate covered on the debate page — one that will outlast this bill. In the meantime, the Ask a question page and FAQ are here for making sense of what was agreed.
Reading others' submissions
The committee publishes submissions on the Parliament website as it processes them. The earlier treaty examination attracted 1,780 written submissions (52 heard orally) — browsable via the examination page. Once submissions on the bill are published, we'll mirror a collection on this site's documents page for easy reading.
Corrections
Balance is the whole point of this site. If we've got a fact wrong, quoted the treaty inaccurately, or under-sold either side's best argument, we want to know. The quickest way to flag it is through the Ask a question page — start your message with "CORRECTION:" and say which page and claim you're challenging. Every question is logged and reviewed, and verified corrections get made.