Sunday 4 October 2015

The TPP negotiations


Key talks big at UN, walks backwards in NZ

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3 October, 2015


John Key’s big moment at the UN to lecture the world on Syria and Climate Change is all very good, but when you actually look at what he is doing in NZ, it is pitiful.

Key only moved on letting in more Syrian refugees when he was forced to by public opinion backlash. He lied to NZ about re-invading Iraq before the election, and as soon as he won it he was sending in SAS to help target ISIS for US airstrikes under the prettiness of ‘training’ the Iraqi Army. We are siding with a butcher like Assad to help kill a bunch of religious fanatics who are funded by Saudi Arabia, the same Saudi Arabia John Key is so desperate to sign a free trade deal with.

Key is so conflicted on Syria he may as well be a third front of war all on his own.
As for climate change, his policy is slashing research into climate change…

The logic of sacking scientists researching greenhouse gases is being questioned, in light of the government’s insistence the solution to rising emissions will be found through scientific innovation.

and this at a time when Scientists are witnessing g real time shut down of vital biosphere functions because of climate change…

and why should that worry us?

As the planet super heats because of the CO2 we pump into the atmosphere, more and more heat is trapped. That heat pushes temperatures up, those temperatures melt ice at the polar caps. This melting ice does two things. Firstly it reduces the amount of white space on the planet that simply bounces heat back into space so it ends up quickening the heating process and more importantly it puts more fresh water into the oceans. As heat build, frozen methane trapped on the ocean floor and in Siberia is released in massive amounts, this rapidly melts remaining glaciers desalinating ocean conveyor pumps, particularly in the Labrador and Irminger Seas around southern Greenland which shut down the flow of heat from the tropics north which in turn plunges the Northern hemisphere into a new ice age.

Key talks big at the UN about Syria and Climate Change yet his walk at home is taking giant steps backwards.


Reports are that talks have bogged down AGAIN, this time over pharmaceuticals, but the NZ Herald toes the government line on a deal 96% of the population don't want

Breakthrough on TPP deal
TPP deal could be announced today after Atlanta talks extended a day

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. Photo / AP

3 October, 2015


A Trans Pacific Partnership deal could be announced as soon as today if negotiators clear the final hurdles, including the biggest remaining one involving dairy import limits.

Prime Minister John Key left New York yesterday but Trade Minister Tim Groser remains in Atlanta at the talks, which were pushed back a day - a sign the agreement is verging on a breakthrough.

"I'm pretty optimistic it will come together [this weekend] - 80-20," said Alan Wolff, a former US negotiator who now leads the American National Foreign Trade Council, a commercial association.

Trade ministers from 12 countries are negotiating the controversial pact, which would cut trade barriers and set common standards for 40 per cent of the world's economy and be the biggest free-trade deal in a generation.

Talks began in 2010 but strong public opposition to the deal here centre on concerns about its impact, such as making pharmaceuticals more expensive.

Thousands of people demonstrated in August, many angry that detail of the deal has been kept secret.

The last round of talks in Hawaii in July ended with three issues outstanding: vehicles, dairy and patents on pharmaceuticals.

Key acknowledged this week the deal fell short on dairy but said yesterday it was still likely to be "bigger" than the China Free Trade Agreement, worth $20 billion a year.

It is understood that Key's team are ready to launch a charm offensive on the agreement, in response to outspoken TPP critics such as University of Auckland's Professor Jane Kelsey.

Kelsey and seven other applicants, are seeking a declaration that Groser acted unlawfully when he issued a blanket refusal of an Official Information Act request for information relating to TPP negotiations. The hearing is taking place in the High Court in Wellington.

Kelsey is wary of skyrocketing health costs should the TPP go ahead.

"The stark reality is that any such deal would cost New Zealanders' lives," Kelsey said yesterday.

Media reports in the US yesterday said the deal was close and US President Barack Obama had called Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to discuss it.

Once signed, the leaders of the countries involved will have to turn their attentions to selling the deal domestically after the controversy over the secrecy of the talks. It will also have to be ratified by each country's Parliament.

The Labour Party has said it will not support the TPP unless it meets key considerations, including allowing future governments to restrict land sales to foreigners and a meaningful deal for farmers.

If the deal is not done today, there will be one last chance, at Apec in the Philippines next month.


This is what minister, Tim Groser was saying in 2011




Trade Minister Tim Groser says the Government drug buying agency Pharmac is not up for negotiation in Asia-Pacific free trade talks.

Groser and the Finance Minister Bill English have just returned from the Apec annual summit in Hawaii where progress towards the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade talks was discussed with world leaders including United States President Barack Obama

Nine countries - the US, Australia, Singapore, Peru, Brunei, Chile, Vietnam, Malaysia and New Zealand - are negotiating the bloc which Japan, Mexico and Canada are now hoping to join.

The US regards Pharmac's monopoly as a barrier to free trade and there have been concerns the trade deal could weaken the agency's ability to buy cheap generic drugs.

However, Groser said today New Zealand had laid down a position which said: "Our public health system is not up for negotiation or part of any trade negotiation".



Now he's up for making any compromise to sign up

Groser: TPP means 'ugly compromises'

Tim Groser says the  negotiations are going round  the clock. Photo / NZME

3 October, 2015


Trade Minister Tim Groser says countries deeply immersed in TPP negotiations understand that dairy has to be resolved to New Zealand's satisfaction before a deal can be done.

"At least people understand that this has got to be done and they can't just ignore our small country because we are small," he told the Weekend Herald.
He also extended a goodwill gesture to Labour, saying he respected the fact it had not taken a position on TPP and that was "perfectly rational".
Mr Groser was speaking from Atlanta where ministers of the 12 countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership have extended their meeting for another 24 hours.
He said he had spoken to Prime Minister John Key in New York several times over the past few hours.
And I've got highly confidential but very clear political guidelines from the Prime Minister about what I should be doing.

He had a team of about 15 with him "working their proverbials off" around the clock and some of the key stakeholders such as the chairman of Fonterra, John Wilson and the chairman of Dairy Companies of New Zealand. He said it was an achievement to get dairy on the list of the final three issues that had to be dealt with because it was not there at the Maui ministerial meeting at the end of July.
"I felt under as intense pressure as I have ever felt in the last 30 years as a New Zealand negotiator because I felt completely and totally isolated," he said. "Now everyone understands that New Zealand is not going to be pushed out of this negotiation and the issues that would push New Zealand out of this negotiation, which is dairy ... this has got be solved in a way that New Zealand can live with."
He said the negotiations were going around the clock and he was just about to try and get a couple of hours' sleep until he was called for another session.
He said it was clear there was a "massive push" to do the deal.
"It's got the smell of a situation we occasionally see which is that on the hardest core issues, there are some ugly compromises out there.
"And when we say ugly, we mean ugly from each perspective - it doesn't mean 'I've got to swallow a dead rat and you're swallowing foie gras.' It means both of us are swallowing dead rats on three or four issues to get this deal across the line."
The outstanding issues are dairy, autos, and IP on pharmaceuticals, especially biologics - medicines made from organisms.
On the issue of Helen Clark's comments about the TPP - she said it was unthinkable New Zealand wouldn't be part of the deal - he said she had added a crucial rider - "provided the deal was good".
And that was the same position the Government had.
"I think it has been extremely helpful in terms of uniting New Zealand that our former Prime Minister has said what she said."
Mr Groser said he did not take Labour or its leadership for granted on TPP.
"They haven't got a position on TPP and I fully respect that and if I were in their shoes, I wouldn't have a position either because I would say 'I don't know what the deal is.' That is a perfectly rational position to take."
But as a point of general principle, what Helen Clark had said was the essential truth: "Provided we can deliver what makes sense from an overall New Zealand Inc perspective, it would be a nightmare for New Zealand to be excluded from it."
If the deal is not done tomorrow, there will be one last chance, at Apec in the Philippines in November.

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