CONGRATULATIONS ARE DUE to the organisers of last night’s “Table Talk” at Laila Harré’s Ika Seafood Bar & Grill. The fifth such event, “TPPA or Not TPPA?”, was emceed by the irrepressible Wallace Chapman, and featured a panel which, for the first time, was evenly split between protagonists and antagonists.
And, it was a wee ripper!
In support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership were Dr Wayne Mapp (former Defence Minister under John Key and currently a member of the Law Commission) and Michael Barnett (CEO of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce). Opposing the TPPA were Professor Jane Kelsey (Professor of Law at the University of Auckland and author of the just published deconstruction of neoliberalism in New Zealand, The Fire Economy) and Dr Joshua Freeman (Clinical Microbiologist at Auckland City Hospital and an honorary academic at the University of Auckland School of Molecular Medicine and Pathology).
The huge benefit of having Wayne and Michael debating with Jane and Josh was that the audience (which, let’s be fair here, was overwhelmingly anti-TPPA) got the chance to compare and contrast, weigh and evaluate, the arguments of both sides of the issue. This is not always possible in those panel discussions where every participant pretty much agrees with every other. These might make people feel better (having one’s preconceptions confirmed is always gratifying) but it does not test them. To do that a genuine debate is required.
There’s no disputing that, over the course of an hour or so of lively discussion, the arguments, both for and against the TPPA, were tested. Equally indisputable, in my opinion, was the identity of the winners. Neither Wayne nor Michael were even close to being a match for Jane and Josh. Indeed, beyond a meagre collection of conventional “free trade” tropes, the TPPA protagonists had virtually nothing to offer.
In this they were, ironically, the victims of their own side’s obsession with secrecy. Operating almost exclusively on the tiny amount of information the Key Government has seen fit to release to the public, and utterly reliant on the solemn undertakings and promises enunciated by Messrs Key and Groser, Wayne and Michael could do little but point to the “success” of the NZ-China Free Trade Agreement and raise fears about what would happen to “poor little New Zealand” if it allowed itself to be “locked out” of an agreement as important as the TPPA.
Jane and Josh demolished these stock “free trade” arguments without breaking a sweat. Though I wouldn’t have said so before the debate, by the time it was over, it was painfully clear that the protagonists were out of their depth. As a clinical microbiologist, and the TPP spokesman for Ora Taiao, the New Zealand Climate and Health Council, Josh was absolutely on top of the likely consequences for Pharmac, and by extension, the future health of New Zealanders, should the transnational pharmaceutical corporations succeed in having the life of their patents extended. On more than one occasion during the hour, the facts and figures at Josh’s fingertips left Wayne and Michael floundering helplessly in their own ignorance.
But it was Professor Jane Kelsey who truly stole the show. Astonished by her encyclopaedic knowledge of just about every item of leaked information concerning the TPPA (as well as the details of all the other FTAs New Zealand has signed) Wallace could not restrain himself from demanding to know “How do you manage to read all this stuff?!” It was an entirely forgivable outburst.
The answer, of course, is that Jane takes her role as an academic and public intellectual seriously. For her, the universities’ statutory obligation to be the “critic and conscience” of New Zealand society is keenly felt and courageously expressed. For much of her adult life she has criss-crossed the globe, from one set of trade negotiations to the next, making contacts, developing information networks, and struggling ceaselessly to bring the dark and dirty secrets of global capitalism kicking and screaming into the sunlight of public scrutiny. It is easy for the Right to dismiss her arguments when she isn’t there to defend them, but put her on the same stage as people like Wayne and Michael, or pit her against Mike Hosking, live, on Seven Sharp, and her critics’ arguments are swept away like so much summer gossamer.
By the end of the hour, it was clear to everyone that the TPPA – like War in the old 60s poster – “is harmful to flowers, children and other living things”, and that only a truly mendacious government would commit its citizens to what is, in effect, an empowering charter for transnational capital.
In conclusion, the answer to the question: “TPPA, or Not TPPA?” is “Not TPPA!”
Be sure to join the Anti-TPPA protest march in your town on Saturday, 15 August.
Was this the last good investigative Journalism John Armstrong did?
John Armstrong: Rock-star economy loiters at rocky road to recession on quest for surplus
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11434497
Amuch-anticipated return to surplus somehow metamorphoses into yet another unwelcome deficit; dairy prices slump ever lower; the New Zealand dollar keeps rising ever higher; the overheated Auckland property market makes the South Sea Bubble of the 1700s look like an exercise in financial probity.
Is this the so-called rock-star economy? Or the rocky road to recession?
It is not raining on John Key and his colleagues. It is pouring.
Still smarting at the mass defection of erstwhile supporters which the party took for granted in the Northland byelection, National is currently exhibiting the self-absorbed demeanour of someone who cannot quite work out what is happening to himself or herself and is not sure what to do about it.
Not that National can do much anyway to halt the rise in the currency or stimulate the international milk market.
In the past week the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister have also appeared to accept they will fail to meet their long-established target date this year for a resumption of Budget surpluses.
As for Auckland house prices, well, the warning from the Reserve Bank on Wednesday of a potential downward, disruptive correction in prices could not have been blunter.
The Reserve Bank’s worry is that the trading banks, which have 60 per cent of their lending in residential mortgages, could find themselves in dire straits such that credit dries up with the result that the economy goes into a severe downturn.
Key’s response was literally “crisis, what crisis?” But that hellish scenario ought to chill Key and Bill English to the bone.
But the Reserve Bank has not stopped there. It is strongly urging the Government to give “fresh consideration” to ways and means of shutting property speculators attracted by untaxed capital gains out of the Auckland market.
Key’s difficulty is that he has long ruled out a capital gains tax. His one consolation is that Labour leader Andrew Little has effectively done likewise.
But Little is not in Government. Key is. The latter’s political pragmatism which sees him take the path of least resistance has finally caught him out.
In failing to institute some kind of tax or other disincentive to curb speculative sales, Key now has the unenviable choice of having to take tougher and less popular action to force a correction, but not one which sends prices plummeting through the floor.
The alternative is to leave intervention to the Reserve Bank. The latter argues that its tools would have only a limited impact in cooling such a pressure-cooker market.
The onus is on Key and English to come up with something. While Key is employing the “no crisis” line, it is a safe bet that a lot of midnight oil is being burned to tackle what is now the No1 issue confronting the Government.
For make no mistake, the laws of economics dictate that a correction will happen. House prices must stop rising at some point.
The very real danger is that those who have bought at the market high then panic that values may tumble and put their houses back on the market to cut their losses. The net result will be the opposite of what they intended. There will be a glut of houses on the market as sellers who bought in at lower price levels likewise try to offload their properties while they still retain their value.
Demand will dry up. Would-be buyers will either opt out of the market for fear of it collapsing, leaving them paying off a mortgage far higher than the equity left in their new home.
Or they will wait until prices stop falling in the expectation that they can count on purchasing a house at far less expense than they had expected. Those who stay put in their homes will suffer a drop in wealth.
Hindsight will be in abundance. But National will be alone in getting all the blame.
Suddenly, National is finding the business of governing far more vexed. That is not saying that the Key Administration has reached some kind of tipping point from whence it irreversibly slides to defeat in 2017.
There have been other (brief) periods when National has endured a bumpy ride during its six-plus years of occupying the ministerial suites in the Beehive only to subsequently regain its poise.
But the political atmosphere has markedly changed.
Labour’s recovery under Little has shifted the spotlight back where it should be – illuminating the actions of a Government that has an increasing tendency to cut constitutional corners, be loose with the facts and rewrite history where it suits.
Some ministers are handling this scrutiny better than others.
Sticking a microphone in front of Gerry Brownlee these days is to invite a salvo of sarcasm from the Defence Minister to any persistent line of questioning, especially on matters relating to New Zealand’s Iraq deployment.
Key on the other hand seems to spend half of every day stuck behind microphones as he seeks to both soothe voters and smooth over the cracks opened up by the likes of Brownlee.
As Prime Minister, it falls on Key to be the principal salesman for the Government’s actions. But there is no back up.
Some senior ministers are alert to the need to provide background information to the media explaining why the Government has undertaken some course of action on something.
But the notion that there is some huge spin machine operating out of the Beehive which relentlessly force feeds journalists with National’s take on events is a myth.
That did not matter during National’s first two terms.
It sure matters now. And never more so when Key is out of the country and cannot mictro-manage every domestic issue.
The third-term blues are also prompting the Prime Minister to dig into his reserves of political capital.
That was the case on Monday as he suddenly downplayed National’s surplus target as being an “artificial” one rather than a real one, saying achieving it was like “landing a 747 on a pinhead”.
There would be more sympathy for Key’s shifting of the goalposts in extra time had he and English not milked in advance what looked like being one of National’s major success stories.
The search for the lost surplus has been National’s Holy Grail. It has also become a measure of whether National can justifiably lay claim to being a better manager of the economy than Labour.
The final size of what English and Key say will be a deficit will not be known until October.
The public will not be too fussed if that figure is only a few million dollars off surplus. They may even give credit to National for a narrow miss. Even a figure of around $200 million to $300 million may be acceptable.
Key and English will have seen the Treasury’s finalised Budget forecasts. Presumably they are not crash hot for this year – the target year.
The last thing National wants is for Budget Day next month to be overshadowed by having failed to make surplus.
Moreover, a large(ish) deficit has other implications – namely the credibility and scale of National’s plan to cut taxes ahead of the 2017 election.
Debate on this article is now closed.
– NZ Herald
great to see the “critic and conscience” quote. What that amounts to is open, but there should be no question that the “role” is a public one and that we the public should know that we are paying for it. Take note University Artists, Designers.. propagandists.
The whole quote is “the Minister shall take into account (a) that universities have all the following characteristics, (v) they accept a role as critic and conscience of society”
– New Zealand Legislation, Education Act 1989 No 80 (as at 01 January 2012), Public Act, Part 14 Establishment and disestablishment of tertiary institutions, 162,(4)a(5).
Thanks awfully for the wrap Chris I have been sitting on my seat waiting to hear how the talk fest went and could not get onto the live feed yet so you filled a void there.
JFK was on CNBC today all day clips saying he is confident we will recover and he is confident TPPA will be signed, so we need to get organised now to make as much noise against TPPA as we can because we only get one chance to stop it.
Watching him makes me sick, every lie comes with every breath he takes.
What is it with John Key that these international channels seem to continually want him on? Is there no other person qualified to speak on the real situation in NZ?
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