National Government loses $5 billion-plus fig leaf for TPPA

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Source: Professor Jane Kelsey – Release/Statement:

Headline: National Government loses $5 billion-plus fig leaf for TPPA

‘The fig leaf of over $5 billion in gains to the New Zealand economy from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has been stripped away’, said Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey, a long-term critic of the proposed TPPA.

The Sustainability Council of New Zealand has just released an evaluation of the study by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics that [New Zealand] Prime Minister John Key and National Party ministers have relied on.

The review, led by Wellington economist Dr Geoff Bertram, concludes that the Peterson Institute’s study has greatly exaggerated the projected gains and ignored the financial and intangible costs. Only about one quarter of the projected gains are backed by a credible economic methodology and the Peterson Institute ignores the many fiscal and regulatory downsides.

On the information available, they doubt there is a net benefit to New Zealand from the TPPA.

Their analysis is consistent with the criticisms that Australian Productivity Commission made in 2010 about similar studies on the Australia US free trade agreement and other bilateral deals.

‘Several years ago trade minister Tim Groser dismissed the value of such modelling, and predicted “wearily” that a study would emerge to claim mega-gains for the TPPA’, Jane Kelsey observed.

‘Despite Groser’s scepticism, his own government has used the Peterson Institute report to rally support for a deal that many New Zealanders see as toxic.’

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‘When the Prime Minister started producing ever-higher projections, I speculated some fancy footwork was going on,’ Kelsey said.

‘We are indebted to Geoff Bertram and the Sustainability Council for explaining the technical reasons why these figures have no credibility.

‘Politicians know that ballpark figures that promise enormous gains make headlines, even if they lack substance. That now has to stop’.

Professor Kelsey reiterated the call for a full and independent cost benefit analysis of the monetary costs and benefits, and the constraints on New Zealand’s sovereignty, before any deal is signed.

1 COMMENT

  1. $5 billion of gains by 2025 is only 500m a year. National have spent almost that much selling off Assets. Assets that would have returned more than that to the country in combined dividends every year. Well that money is gone now and the politicians will soon be reminding us we need to plug the gap left behind.

    So if we believe the politicians . . .
    500 million a year is meant to be fair compensation for losing Pharmac?
    500 million a year is fair compensation for losing our intellectual Property rights?
    500 million a year is fair compensation for allowing Corporate theft of our future self-determination and independance?

    All that before the inevitable law suits from the long line of multi-nationals who will sue us for not buying their crap products.

    Oh yeah, and then there is that niggly little detail that the TPPA is not in any way shape or form able to be called a Free Trade Agreement.

    But best of all is that final annoying fact, which is no member of any delegation that is negotiating this document, has been allowed to read the entire text of the document and the document is not being written by the negotiating governments but by corporate lobby groups and associated think tanks.

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