New Zealand to sign away its sovereignty AGAIN

New Zealand will support United Nations Global Migration Compact

Newshub,

26 November, 2014

New Zealand will support the United Nations Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration after receiving legal advice saying it won't affect national sovereignty.

If adopted, the Compact would be the first "inter-governmentally negotiated agreement prepared under the auspices of the United Nations" that deals with all aspects of international migration.

• Government won't commit to pulling out of controversial UN migration agreement
• Explainer: What is the UN Global Migration Compact that New Zealand could join?
• National wants out of controversial UN migration pact

The agreement, which has been consistently supported by the Green Party, creates non-legally binding conditions for countries to "enable all migrants to enrich our societies through their human, economic and social capacities," according to the UN.

While the Compact was officially adopted in Marrakesh, Morocco last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has been waiting on legal advice before declaring New Zealand's support.

"The Government would not support the UN compact if it compromised New Zealand’s sovereignty or could in any way take precedence over our immigration or domestic laws. But the compact does not do that," said Mr Peters.

"The Crown Law Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have provided legal advice which confirms this UN cooperation framework is neither legally binding nor constraining on this country setting its own migration policies."

The legal advice said it does not create "customary international law", "any new human rights law" and "in no way restricts or curtails established human rights, including the right to freedom of speech".

Mr Peters said the advice was not surprising but did debunk falsehoods and misguided perceptions about the Compact.

Several countries, like Australia and the United States, had earlier pulled out citing concerns about the effect the agreement may have on national sovereignty and nations' ability to set their own migration and foreign policy.

The National Party has vehemently opposed the agreement and responded to the announcment by saying it would overturn the Government's support if it gains power.

"Mr Peters has sprung the signing of the Compact on New Zealanders on the last day of Parliament, even though both he and the Prime Minister were this week still claiming no decision had been made. The Compact has been under consideration since February," said Foreign Affairs spokesperson Todd McClay.

Earlier this month, National leader Simon Bridges said: "There is no automatic right to migrate to another country without that country's full agreement, a view which the United Nation's Global Compact on Migration, set to be signed next week, seeks to counter".

"While not binding, the Compact could restrict the ability of future governments to set immigration and foreign policy, and to decide on which migrants are welcome and which aren't."

The decision to develop a compact was first made by UN Member States, including New Zealand, in September 2016. The process towards it began in April 2017, stewarded by representatives from Mexico and Switzerland.

After months of negotiations, the final draft of the agreement was decided upon in July.

“In the end, New Zealand will be voting for a cooperation framework that was clearly set out at the start of the compact’s negotiations process in 2016 when the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants was unanimously adopted by all UN member states, including New Zealand under the previous government,” said Mr Peters.

However, in November, Mr McClay told Newshub that while in government, "We decided against joining the UN Declaration on Refugees and Migration, and declined to attend a forum at the UN on migration."

Similarly to Mr Peters, the United Nations says that the Declaration received unanimous support. In November, Newshub attempted to clarify National's supposed opposition to it in 2016, but received no response.

Green Party Foreign Affairs spokesperson Golriz Ghahramn told Newshub signing up to the Compact was extremely important.

"It is paramount that New Zealand, a responsible international citizen, be part of the cooperative solutions initiated by the Compact."

Trans-Pacific Partnership

The TPPA’s Dirty Little Secret: How US could write NZ’s Laws

OpenYUeyes,

13 August, 2014

Press Release: Professor Jane Kelsey: A new website launched today http://tppnocertification.org/ has exposed what University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey calls ‘the dirty little secret of the TPPA’.

‘Behind the seemingly benign term “certification” hides an extraordinary power that the US is expected to assert if the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is concluded’.

‘Effectively, the US claims the right to decide what a country’s obligations are under a trade and investment agreement and refuses to bring the agreement into force in relation to that country until it has changed its laws, regulations and administrative processes to fit the US interpretation’, Professor Kelsey explained.

Statements from members of US Congress and the US Trade Representative (USTR) suggest prime targets for New Zealand would be our copyright and patent laws, the foreign investment vetting regime, the procedures by which Pharmac operates, and Fonterra’s ‘anti-competitive monopoly’.

‘The other eleven governments are aware of the certification process and many are concerned. But no one has told the public how the US can effectively redraft our laws.’

Professor Kelsey has co-authored a memorandum that draws on the experience of countries that have been subjected to the US certification process in recent years.

It reveals how US officials have been directly involved in drafting other countries’ relevant laws and regulations to ensure they satisfy US demands. This includes reviewing, amending and approving proposed laws before they are presented to the other country’s legislature. The USTR even demanded that Guatemala implement new pharmaceutical laws that were not in the formal text, and which the government had strenuously resisted during the negotiations.

Communications within the Office of the USTR on the Peru US Free Trade Agreement were secured under the US Freedom of Information Act and show how brutal the US can be: ‘We [USTR] have to redraft the regs and the law – Peru needs to accept them without changes’.

Similar communications might never be released under New Zealand’s Official Information Act, because they involveinformation entrusted to the government in confidence from another government.

‘In other words New Zealanders, including MPs, might never know that the US was involved in writing our laws and demanding the right to sign them off even before Parliament gets to see them’, Professor Kelsey warned.

‘Everyone knows the US is driving the TPPA. But agreeing to a final text, in the knowledge that the US will then play the certification card, would mean conceding the right of US officials to oversee the making of New Zealand’s laws and regulations.

’
READ ABOUT THE POLITICIANS PUSHING THIS AGENDA: http://dirtypoliticsnz.com

Bryan Gould: Right to be troubled about secret partnership

Bryan Gould

Trade-offs made by the Government won't be seen for four years. Photo / AP

NZ Herald,

29 September, 2014

Getting lawyers to agree on anything is notoriously difficult. So when 100 retired judges, prominent legal academics, lawmakers and leading practitioners from New Zealand and overseas put their names to something, it's time to sit up and take notice.

What is it that raises the concern of so many eminent lawyers? It is the prospect that our Government is about to trade away - in secret - an important part of our powers of self-government.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being negotiated is presented as a straightforward free trade agreement. But it is clear that the Americans will insist (as they have done with other similar agreements) that the agreement should allow foreign corporations to stop our Government (or any future government) from changing New Zealand law in a way they think might undermine their value.

Private companies from the other eight countries, even though not themselves parties to the agreement, would be able to sue our government, not in our own courts, but in private tribunals set up specifically for the purpose (and existing practice shows that the arbitrators in such tribunals can be judges one day and lawyers for litigants the next).

Under these arrangements, an American corporation, for example, would be given far more extensive rights against our government than any New Zealand company would ever have. It would mean that a future government, perhaps elected to change policy in an area like environmental protection or health and safety (smoking comes to mind), could be threatened with a crippling lawsuit unless it backed off.

The rights protected by these provisions go far beyond real property rights and include financial instruments, mining concessions, intellectual property, public-private partnership contracts and even market share.

Nor is it just the Government that would be hog-tied. A particular worry for lawyers is that our courts, too, could be overruled. The foreign investment tribunals have decided that courts are part of a country's government (riding roughshod over any doctrine of the separation of powers) and that they, too, must comply. Even if our courts had upheld the validity of a law properly passed by Parliament, that decision could be challenged by a foreign corporation alleging it breached their rights under the TPP. Even a jury decision in private litigation could be challenged and lead to the Government paying millions in compensation.

In a recent case brought by Chevron, for example, a tribunal ordered the Ecuador Government, in defiance of its constitution, not to enforce a ruling by Ecuador's Appeal Court that Chevron must pay $18 billion to clean up toxic waste in the Amazon Basin.

The concerns expressed by the 100 signatories to the lawyers' open letter released today do not arise from mere speculation. Provisions like those causing concern have a well-established track record. When there were only a few cases, no one took much notice. But as American and European companies investing and trading overseas have increasingly enforced the rights arising from these treaty provisions, concerns have grown.

And with good reason. There has been an exponential increase in the numbers of such cases brought by (largely American) foreign corporations against governments which are parties to agreements similar to the proposed TPP. More than $675 million has been paid out in awards made by the special tribunals in cases involving US companies alone.

What adds to the concern is that the negotiations on these arrangements are being conducted by our Government in secret. We are not allowed to know what is being discussed, and by the time the TPP is presented to Parliament, the deal will have been done. There will be no meaningful debate or select committee scrutiny. We won't even be allowed to see what trade-offs the Government has made until four years after the text has been signed.

Yet the concessions made in secret by today's Government would permanently lock New Zealand into a marketplace controlled and dominated by foreign corporations. Voters would be left without any possibility of redress.

When the Prime Minister was asked about these issues when the negotiations began some months ago, he described fears of special legal rights for foreign investors as "far-fetched" and pooh-poohed any concerns. Yet the Australian Government has been quite open in declaring that it will oppose any such provision, basing itself on the Australian Productivity Commission's warning that it would have no economic justification and carry policy and fiscal costs.

Our own Government, by contrast, has demonstrated in its dealings with overseas corporations like Warner Bros, Sky City and Shanghai Pengxin how far it is prepared to go to accommodate overseas business interests. We have good reason to fear that the TPP will continue that process.

We have already sold off into foreign ownership a higher proportion of our national assets than any other developed country. The TPP could mean that control over what remains, now and into the future, would in effect be handed over to international corporations.

This is a heavy price to pay for a trade deal in which our partners, at most, commit to buy what they want to buy anyway.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

First, the “official version” and then a press release from Dr. Jane Kelsey

Japanese bid for TPP important - Joyce

The acting Trade Minister, Steven Joyce, says Japan's bid to be part of the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations is important, as countries move towards completing an agreement by the end of the year.

Radio NZ,

16 March, 2013

The agreement, known as TPP, is a free trade deal being negotiated by eleven countries including New Zealand, the United States and Australia.

Japan wants to be the 12th country.

Mr Joyce says Japan is New Zealand's fourth largest trading partner, and any removal of trade barriers as part of the agreement could be hugely beneficial to New Zealand.

Mr Joyce says TPP ministers will want to discuss the next steps regarding Japan when they meet next month as part of the APEC Trade Ministers meeting in Indonesia.

Terms of Japan's entry to TPPA talks bad news for NZ Friday, 15 March 2013, 2:41 pm Press Release: Professor Jane Kelsey

Scoop,

15 March 2013

For immediate release:

Terms of Japan's entry to TPPA talks bad news for NZ, ‘surrender of sovereignty’ for Japan

‘Japan’s Prime Minister Abe will announce this afternoon that Japan will seek to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPPA) negotiations. He already has US endorsement to do so’, says Professor Jane Kelsey who has just returned from observing the Singapore round of the talks.

Several days ago Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party cleared the way for the announcement. However, the Party’s resolution also called for Japan to maintain tariffs on key farm products, especially rice, wheat, beef, dairy products and sugar, and defend the public health insurance system.

Yesterday, current and recent members of the Diet (Parliament) who have been campaigning against the agreement for several years released an open letter to Abe that said Japan would have to accept any text that was agreed by the time they joined the negotiations, sight unseen.

The letter objected that the denial of 'any right or opportunity to set the terms or to alter terms that undermine the national interests of Japan’ was ‘a fundamental surrender of sovereignty’.

They also revealed that the US Trade Representative had told other chief negotiators they needed to complete their bilateral pre-entry discussions with Japan and approve its entry by July. [An English translation of the complete text is below]

Once a 90-day notification period to the US Congress expired Japan would be able to join the talks in September, one month before the political leaders of the existing eleven countries hope to sign the completed deal.

‘If this is true, the US has effected a double play on New Zealand’, said Professor Kelsey.

Trade Minister Groser said New Zealand would welcome Japan’s participation ‘once we have established procedures for their entry that are acceptable to their governments and to ours’. That was widely taken to mean Japan’s agreement to comprehensive agricultural liberalisation in line with the statement of the TPPA leaders in Honolulu in November 2011.

Australia has been trying unsuccessfully to achieve that goal in a free trade negotiation with Japan since 2007.

New Zealand would have just over three months to get Japan to agree or give way to a timeframe that appears to have been imposed unilaterally by the US.

'Even if Japan agrees in principle to consider opening dairy market access, that is just the first step in the process', according to Professor Kelsey.

‘Assuming the US continues to delay any substantial discussion of dairy market access to its own markets until September, the US and Japan could then join forces in demanding flexibility and stymie the one gain that New Zealand government has said is a bottom line and without which it will walk away from the TPPA’.

--

Dear PM Abe,

It has been widely reported that this week you will announce a formal decision to join negotiations to establish a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement.

We recognized the terms under which other countries, namely Mexico and Canada, have joined TPP negotiations were grossly unfair. Effectively, terms were dictated to these nations, which were told either they could comply or not join the talks.

In particular, these entrants were required to agree that they would not seek to reopen any matters that had already been agreed to during the previous three years of negotiations. Further, they were forbidden from offering new proposals with respect to the numerous subjects that had already been decided.

In sum, they were told that if they wanted to join TPP talks, they would be required to simply agree to all of the expansive terms negotiated by the other countries in any of the agreement’s 29 chapters of binding rules.

All of Japan’s current and future domestic laws, regulations and administrative procedures would be required to conform with these rules established by other countries. In addition to trade in goods, including agriculture, these rules would severely limit Japan’s regulation of a wide range of sensitive matters such as foreign investors, postal, banking, insurance, energy, telecommunications, medicine approvals and prices, food and product safety, and more.

In addition, the newly entering parties were denied access to the confidential negotiating texts that they were being required to accept. That means that they were required to agree to accept texts that they could not review in advance to assess the implications for their countries. Instead, they were required to rely solely on whatever informal assurances they had received from other TPP parties with respect to what the texts would require.

We understand that at the March Singapore Round of TPP negotiations, U.S. trade officials informed other countries’ TPP negotiators of a process by which Japan would be allowed to join the agreement. U.S. officials have indicated that Japan has agreed to the same disrespectful, unfair process imposed on Mexico and Canada for accession to the TPP. The U.S. instructed the other TPP countries to complete their bilateral consultations with Japan by July.

Japan would be allowed to join an agreement that has been negotiated by other countries, without any right or opportunity to set the terms or to alter terms that undermine the national interests of Japan. This is a fundamental surrender of sovereignty.

If Japan is about to announce its desire to enter these negotiations, we are seeking your assurance that Japan will not be required to comply with the unacceptable process imposed on Canada and Mexico. We ask you state publicly the process that Japan will follow and the terms that have been agreed with the other TPP negotiating parties and to table a written assurance to this effect in the Diet.

March 13, 2013

National Coalition for Commenting on TPP

Concern about the TPPA

It is surprising to find coverage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement in the mainstream press, even at this late juncture

US firms to control NZ legislation?

Fears that American companies could gain control over New Zealand's lawmaking process have provoked a strong response from dozens of the country's legal minds.

Stuff,

9 May, 2012

More than 60 New Zealanders, including retired judges, practising lawyers, sitting members of Parliament and university academics, have issued an open letter to the lead negotiators of each country attending the latest round of Trans-Pacific Partnership talks beginning in Dallas, Texas, today.

The letter, signed by more than 100 international law experts, calls upon all governments engaged in TPP talks to reject the "investor-state dispute settlement" mechanism, which essentially gives private companies the ability to take civil action against foreign governments.

The Australian Government has taken the lead on excluding these provisions from any agreement that it signs, including its current free-trade agreement with the United States and South Korea also has concerns about its free-trade agreement with the US.

TPP proponents have said it will boost trade between the nine signatory countries by $1.1 trillion, although critics have said that that is an overestimation.

In return for access to lucrative American markets, US business interests are pushing for the inclusion of provisions which go further than the traditional tariff and subsidy scope of trade agreements, such as the "investor-state" provisions.

The New Zealand Government's plan to force tobacco companies to use plain, unmarked packaging for selling cigarettes here could be subject to such a foreign legal challenge, as it has been in the US.

Tobacco companies' arguments that the US Government's proposal to display graphic health warnings on cigarette packets abridges their freedom of speech are being fought in the US courts and are likely to reach the Supreme Court soon.

A principal signatory to the letter, Professor Bryan Gould – a former vice-chancellor of Waikato University and a former British Labour MP – said he was not hostile to free trade itself but believed the TPP had many more far-reaching implications.

"This agreement, although it's presented as a free-trade agreement, is much more than that: it's allowing major foreign corporations to have a disproportionate influence over our power to make our own decisions," Gould said.

"There's little point in going through the whole democratic process and electing governments and all the rest of it if, in the end, those governments are subject to the power exercised by people well beyond our shores."

Stephen Jacobi, executive director of the New Zealand-United States Council, said trade provisions generally respected a sovereign government's right to regulate on public health and environmental issues, and in New Zealand's case, took the Treaty of Waitangi into account.