The TPPA

Pretty bland coverage of media coverage from Radio New Zealand

Behind the veil of trade talks secrecy

Radio NZ,

2 August, 2015

Originally aired on Mediawatch, Sunday 2 August 2015

Image from a Sydney Morning Herald video.

It’s tough reporting on something only a few people know about - especially if they won’t say much about it.

New Zealand’s special agriculture envoy Mike Petersen told Morning Report last Thursday even he didn’t know the specifics of the deal for dairy products, but the secrecy surrounding the Trans Pacific Partnership has been in place for several years.

That’s fuelled suspicion about what our government - and others - might be signing up to, and what rights they might end up signing way.

In an editorial headlined “Into the Home Stretch” The Economist magazine said: 

“For all its flaws, the biggest trade deal in years is good news for the world. Critics have bemoaned the lack of disclosure but conducting negotiations in the open would have been a sure way to undermine them”

In one of just a few newspaper editorials on the issue this past week, 

Christchurch daily ‘The Press’ said:

“The problem with the criticisms is that because the talks have necessarily been in private, they have been based on leaks from what has been a work in progress. But the final deal is the only one that matters”.

All the more reason, surely, for the media to tell the public as much as they can as the negotiations reached the pointy end.  

But not everyone in the media thought so.

Broadcaster Mike Hosking’s opinions have an extraordinary reach. He editorialises each weekday morning onNewstalk ZB and on TVNZ show Seven Sharp each evening. He also writes weekly in the New Zealand Herald, and back in June, he said that TPP suspicion was misplaced.

If you believe the darkest of dark stories, we are going to get overtaken by corporate America, our government will be able to be taken to court, no-one will be able to afford medicine.

The people who peddle this bollocks are anti-free trade and are simply out to scare us. Their main argument seems to have been that all of this has been negotiated in secret.

Just a small question - can anyone name any trade deal ever that's been negotiated in the open?

Two days later, law professor and vocal TPP critic Jane Kelsey answered his question in a letter to the paper:

Let's start with the EU’s refusal to sign an equivalent secrecy memorandum in its parallel negotiations with the US. Then there is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) where Tim Groser welcomed the decision to revoke secrecy in 2010.

The pair clashed on this again this week on TVNZ prime time news show Seven Sharp.

Assuming this stuff makes most peoples’ eyes glaze over, the hosts apologised to viewers last Tuesday for even raising the issue, and a report headed “How does the TPP affect little old me at home” concluded by saying:

Depending on who you talk to its either a really good deal for a trading nation like ourselves, or a the big corporates getting bigger at our expense. We’ll know in due time when the deal is done. That’s when we will find out.

Seven Sharp host Mike Hosking also told viewers everyone should wait a year before deciding who’s right. But not everyone covering the TPP was prepared to simply wait for a fait accompli from Hawaii. 

When the Prime Minister admitted on Tuesday that the cost of pharmaceuticals could rise it contradicted previous assurances that Pharmac’s finances would be unaffected. and journalist Gordon Campbell pointed out that TPP critics had been warning about that for ages.

In his own online magazine Werewolf back in 2011, Gordon Campbell looked at how drug patent registration changes cropped up in trade negotiations between Canada and Europe – and threatened to inflate Canada’s national health budget.

Throughout the long TPP process, there also have been revealing leaks of parts of some key texts to the media.

In Melbourne paper The Age this week the paper’s economics editor Peter Martin said (includes video) leaks have shown TPP provisions could clash with existing international agreements, potentially creating more red tape rather than bringing down barriers.

He said other leaks suggested big changes for Australia would relate not to trade, but to intellectual property and the controversial investor-state dispute settlement process, something previous PM John Howard successfully resisted in the Australia-US agreement in 2004.

TPP Secrecy didn’t stop commentators like Robert Reich - with the help of a flipchart and a marker pen - setting out why he felt it was is “the worst trade deal you've never heard of” in this two-minute video.

Robert Reich – often described as one of the architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement  - is clearly not anti-free trade.

Closer to home, neither is economist Gareth Morgan, who outlined concerns on his website Gareth's World.

Trade is good – great really – and the more the better. But we know most of the tariff barriers have already been dismantled over the last 30 years, what really remains are the hidden non-tariff type barriers that often travel under the guise of something else. Think Australia and its attempts to prohibit imports from New Zealand of our apples on the grounds they pose a biosecurity risk. As we all know that went on for years.

But although his views were raised in Parliament Gareth Morgan only appeared in the New Zealand media this past week to talk about his new flag.

New Zealanders have been urged to participate in picking a new flag, but they have no direct say in any TPP agreement.

But while some took exception to trade minister Tim Groser telling reporters in Hawaii: “We need adults to do this, not breathless children to run off at the mouth when the deal is not actually finished” parts of the media lately did seem content to simply wait and see what emerged from Hawaii.

Can't afford meds? Don't get sick

Paul Little at large

NZ Herald,

2 August, 2015

So now you're interested in the Trans Pacific Partnership. After years of warnings about the free trade agreement's potentially disastrous effects on lapdog countries such as ours, which have been straining at the leash in our enthusiasm to see the deal signed off, the public has been given a hip-pocket reason to give a toss.

Hitherto, objections have centred on far-fetched scenarios involving large corporations gaining control of nations' intellectual property, suing foreign Governments for not doing their bidding and other nightmares.

Then John Key, in an uncharacteristically gauche move, admitted the cost of some medicines would go up under the TPP. This is hardly surprising. When the aim of a deal is to end protection, things tend to be left unprotected.

The PM has been such an enthusiastic supporter of the TPP that when he has no choice but to admit it has a tiny downside, you know it's serious and almost certainly not the worst of it. He might have thought no one would notice - after all, health is almost proverbially something we take for granted.

But meddling doctors' groups, not yet discredited in the way teachers, beneficiaries and unionists have been after decades of neoliberal governments, led the charge in deploring this possibility.

Our tough love Government must find this galling. Medicine, in its mind, is probably an extravagance indulged in by people who don't have the mental fortitude to deal with illness and chronic conditions with positive thinking and a can-do attitude. Can't afford medicine? Don't get sick, losers.

However, so many people have got so used to having access to medicine for so long that the notion has become embedded in the culture.

So the Government has said that when - not if - costs go up, it will find the money to cover the difference. Governments, you'll remember, usually get their money in one of two ways - from fabulously wealthy benefactors who dip into their own pockets to keep the country running; or from taxpayers. My hunch is that in this case, it's probably the taxpayer who will be ponying up.

And as we have long known the tax burden falls disproportionately on those of limited means, who are also likelier to be poor, as the gap between richest and poorest widens, partly due to measures such as the TPP.

The final TPP talks are taking place at the Westin Maui Resort & Spa Ka'anapali in Hawaii, where every guest room has a Heavenly Bed, equipped with "a custom-designed Simmons Beautyrest pillow-top mattress set, cozy down blanket, three crisp sheets, a comforter, duvet and five fluffy pillows". Heavenly Dog Beds are available on request.

It's a good choice of location when it comes to selling the TPP. It shows us the standard of living we can all expect when the agreement goes through. And for those of us worried about paying for medicine, just imagining what it's like to sleep on a Heavenly Bed, or in some cases, just under a roof, will take our minds off our woes and stop us feeling sorry for ourselves.

Some readers may have been lured into viewing a Seven Sharp item, widely re-posted online, in which Professor Jane Kelsey demolished some of the propaganda being used to sell the TPP and explained what it will really do. Unfortunately, she did not do it in terms simple enough to be understood by Mike Hosking, who continued to frame his encounter with Kelsey in terms of winning, losing and point-scoring.

Please do not adjust your set - I am reliably informed this was an aberration and not an indication that Seven Sharp has taken to giving air space to intelligent commentary.

Food for thought. From the comments

Is it just coincidental timing that Police were given front line Tazer approval a week before TPPA scheduled Protests?

TPPA's corporate narcissistic superiority perception is that its monolithe is "The Elect" fountainhead of all value and virtue, its primary objective being to divide the world into two mutually exclusive zones: "ours" and "the theirs".

Its "fabulously wealthy benefactors" strategy is to facilitate economic fuehrerism by exploiting weaker nations because "after all, we know whats best for them".

Again, these ultimate wealthy benefactors "higher" right to rule reflecting sentiments of intrinsic greater excellence of one's own group in a natural or divine hierachy and superiority of its certain classes - aristocrats - burghers - rich over poor, incorporating their chauvinism and other forms of ultra national ideology.

And whilst Mike Hosking's attempts to justify Key's treachery like Keys snake oil Hosking's Ferrari, whilst maybe superficially, geometrically pleasing and aesthetically titilating, is just a dumb lump of travel.

Trade talks fail to clinch TPP - for now

Another TPP meeting, another failure to reach agreement.

Yet the words used to describe the negotiations did not, once again, talk of defeat.

Radio NZ,

2 August, 2015

Instead, the joint statement by the TPP Ministers said: "We have made significant progress and will continue work on resolving a limited number of remaining issues, paving the way for the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations."

Yet the hurdles highlighted as sticking points going into the talks proved to be same issues holding up an agreement.

And as Trade Minister Tim Groser said, one of those is the main prize for New Zealand in these talks.

"You can see clearly that there are one or two really hard issues, and one of them is dairy."

But Mr Groser is nothing if not an optimist, expressing confidence there is a solution that will benefit New Zealand's dairy farmers and those in countries resistant to opening up their markets, like Canada and Japan.

It could be a tall order, particularly as time is running out for US President Barack Obama to seal a deal before the US is immersed in the 2016 presidential election.

Canada is about to go to the polls, and its dairy sector is influential politically. Its Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, may be in no mood to upset them too much.

Mr Groser admits total tariff removal is off the agenda, and he was no mood to give in in Hawaii.

The chairman of Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand, Malcolm Bailey, praised Mr Groser and his team for holding tough on ensuring a good outcome for New Zealand.

Yet Mr Groser's language continues to change.

He talks now about "commercially meaningful access". He refuses to define what that means, saying that's a matter to be discussed in the TPP talks.

And he and Prime Minister John Key insist the deal must be of net benefit to New Zealand.

Mr Groser points out that the failure, so far, to secure a decent deal for dairy should not obscure gains made for other agricultural goods.

Does that mean gains elsewhere will make up for higher drug prices and a less-than-favourable dairy deal?

That's unknown, as the TPP talks are, of course, secret.

Mr Groser says New Zealanders will be pleased when he can reveal how much better off they'll be once the TPP talks are concluded.

TPP opponent Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey says it'll be too late by then.

She predicts New Zealand's dairy sector will not get meaningful access due to the political sensitivity in opening up these markets.

And she warns that any deal will come at a high cost to terms of national sovereignty, including a weakened Pharmac and higher drug prices, as well as foreign companies suing the Government over the right to legislate in the public interest.

Another TPP meeting is expected soon, perhaps by the end of August.

Once again, politicians, trade officials, industry groups, the media, unions, and other consumer and environmental organisations will be counting down to another deadline.

Every one has been missed since 2013.

Will the next one be any different?

Spotted in New Lynn this morning

When Key isn’t pulling ponytails, he’s making students cry

We have a NZ Music month, so why not a NZ Maori Language Month?

Martyn Bradbury

the Daily Blog,

2 August, 2015

This is the leader that a majority of NZers voted for, a bullying multimillionaire with a penchant for repeatedly pulling a woman’s ponytail in her workplace and making students who ask questions about the Maori Language burst into tears…

John Key leaves girl in tears after calling Maori language month ‘boring’ 

A teenage girl was “upset and embarrassed” when the Prime Minister said her suggestion of a Maori language month would be boring.

The 16-year-old asked John Key whether he would extend Maori language week, when he visited a school assembly at Waiuku College, on Friday.

Key said he preferred keeping it to a week of Maori language celebrations and that people would get “bored” by a month…Classmate Trent Brown Marsh, 16, said the girl was in tears after assembly and was considering taking time off school because she felt embarrassed.

He said his friend was “basically laughed at”.

“She’s still upset. She doesn’t want to go back to school,” Brown Marsh said. “John Key made the whole school laugh in a rude way.”

Brown Marsh said he was angry that the year 12 girl was invited to talk to Key about Maori language week but then her question was “dismissed”.

“His reply was haha no. He kind of explained (his answer) but it was insensitive.

…we have a NZ Music month, so why not a NZ Maori Language Month? It’s the insensitivity that Key displays however that goes beyond the actual issue. Humiliating a student in front of her peers, pulling on a waitresses ponytail 10 times, and telling Pike River families their dead will be brought home and then smacking them in face by watering down the very health and safety legislation their tragedy produced.

Our PM is an arsehole and NZers love that. He’s a casual version of Donal Trump minus the wig.

Why middle NZ loves John Key

Martyn Bradbury

the Daily Blog,

2 August, 2015

Middle NZ loves John Key more than a shark loves blood.

There are 3 mains reasons NZers love John Key with such adoration.

1 – A never ending mainstream media honeymoon

The role the mainstream media played in empowering Cameron Slater’s Dirty Politics is never acknowledged. The killing off of public broadcasting is never mentioned. The manner in which right wing mouthpieces like Paul Henry, Patrick Gower and  Mike Hosking dominate the discourse is never discussed. The strangulation of Campbell Live for political reasons is never mentioned.  The role in which the never ending honeymoon the mainstream media has for Key is never critically examined and yet it is a large chunk of the reason middle Nu Zilind loves Key.

Get told often enough that a $200million dollar money trader with a Hawaiian mansion is God’s gift to NZ, and people believe it.

2 – The Key is ‘moderate’ myth

Any time any pundit rolls up to a panel discussion (Dr Raymond Miller is a great example of this) and they will inevitably claim Key’s success is due to him bing a ‘moderate’. This is only half true. The pretence that Key is moderate is the secret to his success. For the middle classes, Key IS moderate. Property speculation earns the middle classes more than their actual jobs and middle class tax breaks like Working for Families and  interest free student loans sit alongside a never ending pension and Gold Card subsidies so for the middle, Key is seen as moderate. However if you are working class, on the minimum wage or facing the blunt realities of welfare reforms which are structured to disqualify rather than help, then this Government are brutal. This viewpoint never gets articulated on panel shows in NZ because in most cases the interviewer is rich, the interviewees are rich and the news producer who is allowing the voices on is rich. Hence the myth that Key is ‘moderate’ becomes a perceived fact.

3 – Key’s appeal to our anti-intellectualism and negative egalitarianism 

The biggest part of Key’s appeal however is that he manages to arouse the anti-intellectualism and negative egalitarianism that lies just beneath the surface of NZ culture. His laid back manner and dislike of thinking connects with middle NZ in a way that only rugby, alcoholism and domestic violence does.

He’s so laid back he burns books on his BBQ. This empty aspiration appeals to a user pays youth generation who have no idealogical compass, and is best expressed through the naked narcism of Key’s son.

Key’s vacant optimism is the piece of cheese forever out of the reach of the middle class hobbit relentlessly running on their over valued hamster wheel.

NZers love John Key because he represents all that is shallow and easy in our society. We are a juvenile country with the maturity of a can of coke. This spell only breaks when the property speculation bubble bursts and people can no longer afford to be consumers.