Tuesday, December 7, 2010

TPPA is dangerous

This Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is very dangerous for us. Framed in the language of trade, it is a not so stealthy method of taking everything that they haven't taken so far.
Press Release Te Wharepora Hou
Te Wharepora Hou, a group of Maori women based in Auckland, supports civil society groups from Australia and New Zealand that are opposing the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).
Similar free trade agreements have had a devastating impact on the rights & lives of Indigenous peoples around the world. Indigenous peoples have been criminalised and rights to their lands and resource have been ignored.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is colonisation by corporation. Maori and Pacific Island communities have already borne the brunt of neo-liberal economic restructuring in the 80’s and 1990’s.
The TPPA will intensify and increase these negative economic impacts In our communities and as a result are hugely over-represented in all negative indices. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is part of the neo liberal structural adjustment programme to diminish and extinguish Indigenous rights forever.
The TPP represents a significant and; disruptive challenge to Maori.
As wahine Maori, our long and deeply-held traditional values and understandings of collectivity, of manakitanga , of kaitiakitanga (Caring for Earth Mother), for Tangaroa (god of the sea) and for their children, is in direct opposition to what is being proposed in the TPPA. The New Zealand government does no have the right to negotiate away our Treaty rights and our rights as Indigenous peoples.
The selling off of our mokopuna and their future must stop.
I agree with those statements.

From TPPA Watch
Why should we be concerned about the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
If these negotiations succeed they will create a mega-treaty across nine countries that will put a straightjacket around what policies and laws our governments can adopt for the next century.
Which countries are involved in these negotiations?
As of November 2010 there are nine: in addition to the US and New Zealand, there are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.
What could the TPPA affect?
Everything from foreign ownership of land and resources, including mining licenses, media laws and support for local NZ content, Treaty settlements, control of financial speculation, the price of medicines, to compulsory labelling of food, plain packaging of cigarettes, privatisation contracts for water, prison, schools and hospitals under public private partnerships (PPPs) …
How come it is described as a ‘trade’ agreement?
That’s a clever branding exercise. It is really an agreement that guarantees rights to foreign investors that operate out from any of the TPP countries – think entertainment (Warners and Sony), pharmaceuticals (Merck and Pfizer), mining (RTZ and BP), tobacco (Philip Morris), retailers (Wal-Mart and Woolworths), finance sector (Merrill Lynch, Westpac, AIG, Macquarie, JP Morgan), agro-business (Cargill, Monsanto), private water operators (Bechtel, Veolia) and much more.
They want what we have - so they can make money.

Hat tip - Whenua Fenua Enua Vanua

2 comments:

baruk said...

went in for the tppa watch meeting today. it definitely looks terribly dangerous. thanks for the heads up on this, marty. it was your post that alerted me to this whole thing in the first place!

Marty Mars said...

Kia ora baruk

I am pleased that you went to the meeting and that this post alerted you to this shocker.

With so many dangers around I put this agreement right up there in terms of the threats we face.

When brownlee and key said that this country was open for business not even I suspected what they actually meant by that.