Media Release

Friday 4 May 2012

Transpacific Partnership Agreement Negotiations Hypocritical

"Various leaked texts of drafts for the Transpacific Partnership Agreement use such terms as 'openness' and 'transparency' to describe the way they want countries to formulate laws and regulations, but the agreement itself is being negotiated in ways that violate those principles," said John Ring, Foreign Affairs Spokesman for Democrats for Social Credit.

The next round of discussions between NZ, the USA, Australia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia, Peru, and Chile about this agreement takes place in Dallas, Texas from the eighth of May to the eighteenth.

"Countries participating in the discussions have signed an agreement that the details of negotiations will be confidential until four years after either the treaty is signed or negotiations cease, which is neither an open nor a transparent way of doing things. This is quite hypocritical.

"Furthermore, governments which break the terms of the agreement could be sued by companies in international tribunals which are secret unless both parties agree that the existence of the case should not be confidential. As a result, about two-thirds of these cases are secret.

"Since any expenditure relating to the any court case should appear somewhere in the government's accounts, and it would be quite possible for court costs alone to exceed $20 million, this requires governments to be secretive about their expenditure, which is a sinister practice that would leave the government's finances open to corrupt uses.

"There is also talk in the treaty about how governments would have to consult stakeholders before passing laws or regulations. New Zealand already has ways of doing this, such as by the use of select committees, and the ultimate method by which a government can consult stakeholders is by having a referendum, which in turn would require that the public be properly informed. If there has been a secret court case on an issue the public will be denied the necessary information.

“These international tribunals also have a built in bias towards unrestricted economic activity, and since the financial sector is a very large part of the US economy (an absurd 42% of US GDP in 2007) and the Australian banks want to expand into Asia the agreement itself is also likely to prevent restrictions on capital movements. Such a policy would conflict with current directions of mainstream economic thought and shouldn't be adopted without wider public consultation.

“Furthermore, some tribunals have, in the past, ruled that bans are import quotas set at a level of zero, and therefore should be dealt with under rules relating to import quotas. There is therefore the possibility of challenges to a wide range of things, such as New Zealand's ban on nuclear energy, or New Zealand's restrictions on genetic engineering.

"For these, and for other reasons, the proposed treaty should be rejected," said Mr Ring.

ENDS

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