This weekend thousands of New Zealanders will join rallies, marches, picnics and protests at fourteen actions nationwide to call on the government to reject the TPPA.
“After six years of secrecy and government spin, we can now see what’s in the TPPA. Buried in over 6000 pages of legal text are obligations that no government should sign up to,” said It’s Our Future spokesperson Barry Coates.
“The TPPA would mean that we give away sovereign powers from democratically elected governments to unaccountable foreign corporations. We say: don’t sign.”
Analysis of the final agreement is being undertaken by academics and researchers, through a rigorous peer reviewed process. A series of papers analysing the most crucial issues will be released over the forthcoming weeks.
“It is already apparent that the government has used spin, exaggeration and misleading information to try to sell the TPPA. The benefits are far less than we have been led to believe, the costs have largely been ignored and the restrictions on the rights of future governments to act in the public interest are utterly unacceptable,” Barry Coates commented.
The struggle to stop the TPPA ain’t over. TPPA negotiators have concluded an agreement but it won’t be signed until February next year at the earliest. Presidential candidates and senior legislators, Democrats and Republicans, are already questioning whether the TPPA should be signed before the Presidential election or whether it will be signed at all. This week, the Chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, Orrin Hatch, called for the TPPA to be re-negotiated.
“The government has claimed that the TPPA is a 21st Century agreement. This could not be further from reality,” said Coates.
“Instead, it is a desperate attempt to lock in the failed policies of the past. The TPPA will undermine our ability to meet the challenges of climate change, social equity, technological change, decent work and innovation in the years ahead.”
