TPPA can do no good for New Zealand
Information is power. But, like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.
The secrecy surrounding Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is just that, power.
It is also a dead giveaway that the people will not be pleased with the content.
Power to make decisions that affect everyone, in this case, potentially adversely, done in secret, is a direct removal of democratic process.
Why is it reasonable that TPPA should have provisions that solely protect corporate profits, while ordinary citizens have their protection stripped away by a legal system we did not vote for?
Why is TPPA hidden from view, when all of the leaked information (and we know we can rely on this as being factual) proves the partnership to be a mandate for corporate and world banking rule?
Internationally, free trade agreements to date have caused workers’ rights to be threatened and abused, and the TPPA guarantees a rush to the bottom for these rights. We have already seen the National Government work assiduously to undermine unions, and to limit pay raises for the workers trapped in the poverty cycle.
The Zero-Hours Contracts debacle was fully supported by this Government, which has only now realised the sheeple would not stand for it. At this point the public has no guarantees of anything except loss of sovereignty, as the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions are an issue that goes to the heart of democracy.
The way ISDS is currently framed can only excessively curtail New Zealand’s autonomy to regulate its own affairs, especially in the areas of human rights, public health and environmental protection.
Concerns with investor state protection mechanisms relate, among others things, to a lack of legitimacy, transparency, and contradictions between arbitral awards, questions about the independence and impartiality of arbitrators, and the costs of arbitral procedures which appear to favour the litigant completely.
In New Zealand, The Lancet has published an open letter signed by our top physicians, who are alarmed at the implications for New Zealand medicine.
ISDS undermines the legal systems in all of the signatory countries and fundamentally shifts the balance of power between investors, states and other affected parties in a manner that undermines fair resolution of legal disputes, including second chances to resue if at first they fail.
Phillip Morris versus Australia is a case in point.
Not only have they shifted their HQ to Hong Kong to take advantage of an old free-trade agreement, they have the Ukrainian government involved, and the next hearing is in the Hague where, win or lose, Australia pays the bills.
Though the investor state tribunal has no power to nullify New Zealand laws, in practice, when a country loses to an investor, it will change the offending law, or pay damages, or both.
New Zealand needs not even lose a case for the actions to malignantly impact its future policy-making deliberations to avoid the high cost of litigation.
Any trade agreement New Zealand signs must not force us to accept the binding rights of ISDS, nor accept that this court can over-ride our own laws.
Nor should any agreement we sign into be all binding and have no escape clauses, as is the case with the current TPPA.
Minister of Trade Tim Groser’s talk of what we can and will do has no status because of New Zealand’s scale, and as far as I can see this perspective is pure hopeful naivete.
The corporations have their legal teams all over the agreement, while New Zealand has its small team consisting of Tim – and who else? We have not been informed, so how can we trust?
My local MP, Sarah Dowie does not hold a personal view,
The public has no guarantees of anything except loss of sovereignty.
just parroting what Groser has already released.
Furthermore, Groser, who has been deeply involved in facilitating international climate change negotiations since 2010, is a member of a government that has seen a 20 per cent rise in New Zealand’s CO emissions.
Until all of TPPA’s content has been released and reviewed by the best minds in the country, will we even understand the full ramifications?
This is not happening. Why? The nonsense about secrecy and rights holds no water, as corporations do not have the rights of citizenship and we, the people, do.
Europe is able to release the information publicly, and the ire is seen already, with Holland dismissing Monsanto as a possible player in its country, and Germany’s response to Vattenfall Energy.
The corporations have shown in their dealings with the US that their only interest is their shareholders. Americans have been promised 900,000 jobs by their last past two free trade agreements, but they delivered 742,000 job losses and have seen an exodus of corporations from the US, their jobs and profits flown to tax-free, and low wage, havens.
Understand the scale of these corporations, and you realise that New Zealand cannot afford the potential bills, and the legal costs of going to the ISDS, even if we win, will be crippling.
Also understand that our bargaining power against the likes of the combined pharmaceutical industries will disappear, along with Pharmac and access to ‘‘reasonably priced’’ medicines.
Signing the TPPA would be an act of treason.
David Russell is an Invercargillbased commentator.