Tuesdays’ announcement that the Trans-Pacific Partnership
had been not only successfully (sic) concluded, but was considerably less than
the much heralded and promised ‘gold standard’ bodes ill for those of us opposed
to asset stripping.
The devil is, as is often said, in the detail and none more
so than in this instance. It will be a month before we will discover the impact
of the TPPA on Christchurch City but it’s reasonable to assume that the notion
of cherry picking ‘strategic partners’ to sell assets to has advanced
from naive to impossible. Ditto any suggestion of council’s
requiring ‘local supply’ of goods and services.
While waiting for the devil to make an appearance we’d
recommend that you check out Jane Kelsey’s latest blog post “Sober reflections on the TPPA deal – and why we need to keep fighting”.
“New Zealanders therefore need to ask a simple question: who gave the Prime Minister and Trade Minister the right to sacrifice our rights 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?”
