National government betrays NZers in TPPA deal 

‘This deal is a trav­esty of demo­cracy’, said Pro­fess­or Jane Kel­sey about the con­clu­sion of the Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship Agree­ment (TPPA) in Atlanta, USA.

‘The gov­ern­ment has ignored, insul­ted and lied to its cit­izens.’

‘Min­is­ter Groser has misled New Zeal­anders. He always knew he was on a hid­ing to noth­ing on dairy. I have pre­dicted many times that he would not do as he said and walk away from a lousy deal, but would make claim that there were some intan­gible future gains from being in the club.  That’s exactly what’s happened’.

Pro­fess­or Kel­sey urged New Zeal­anders to ask a simple ques­tion: “who gave the Prime Min­is­ter and Trade Min­is­ter the right to sac­ri­fice our rights to afford­able medi­cine, to reg­u­late for­eign invest­ment, to decide our own copy­right laws, to set up new SOEs, and whatever else they have agreed to in this secret deal and present it to us as a fait accom­pli?’’.

She points out the last major stick­ing point was mono­poly rights for Big Pharma over life sav­ing medi­cines, show­ing the TPPA is any­thing but a ‘free  trade’ deal.

‘The com­prom­ise lan­guage on bio­lo­gic medi­cines agreed between the US and Aus­tralia is appar­ently so vague the US can and will insist that its inte­pret­a­tion pre­vails. Giv­ing Big Pharma anoth­er three years mono­poly over the data, on top of oth­er changes to pat­ents and more lever­age over decisions, will under­mine the “fun­da­ment­als” of Phar­mac and blow out the medi­cines bill.’

‘While Aus­tralia was fight­ing US demands on medi­cines, our gov­ern­ment seemed to be lost in action and obsessed with selling more dairy,’ remarked Pro­fess­or Kel­sey.

‘Not only is a “dairy for medi­cines” deal uncon­scion­able – it is a total sel­lout. That’s even before we factor in the hand­cuffs on future gov­ern­ments in invest­ment, SOEs, fin­an­cial ser­vices, gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment, and so much more.’

‘I sus­pect any new dairy access is largely smoke and mir­rors, with quotas on care­fully selec­ted products and sub­ject to safe­guards should increased New Zea­l­and imports impact on America’s domest­ic agri­cul­ture. The prob­lem is we can’t see the details to assess that’.

Under the US Fast Track law, Pres­id­ent Obama needs to give 90 days notice to Con­gress before he can sign, and release the text 30 days into that peri­od.

‘The gov­ern­ment is bound to spin the bene­fits like crazy, know­ing that we won’t get to see the real deal for anoth­er month. The Min­is­ter needs to release the full details imme­di­ately.’

Mean­while, mem­bers of the US Con­gress and the cor­por­ate lob­by­ists who are ‘cleared advisers’ will get to see the deal. Pro­fess­or Kel­sey pre­dicts ‘they will be all over it, and seek­ing to remove what they still don’t like and add their demands. That will be the first of many oppor­tun­it­ies to rewrite the deal as the US moves into an elec­tion year. The imme­di­ate responses from the US show it will be a dog fight in Con­gress with almost all the Demo­crat mem­bers oppos­ing the  deal and Repub­lic­ans abandon­ing Obama in droves.’

‘This is far from over yet. There are three months before the TPPA can be signed. The government’s “trust us” prom­ises were a sham and New Zeal­anders have been sold down the river. It is time for Oppos­i­tion parties and ordin­ary New Zea­l­aanders to force the gov­ern­ment to step away, and make it clear to Nation­al that fail­ing to do so will carry the ulti­mate elect­or­al pen­alty.’