BREAKING: TPPA Don’t Sign campaign January 26th Auckland Town Hall

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Despite its ‘neither confirm nor deny’ the government will host the signing of the TPPA on 4 Feb. The Herald this morning ran the absurd banner for its editorial: ‘TPP signing an honour, let’s respect it’. 
 
Well, let’s not!!!! 
If you live near or in Auckland – or are pissed off enough to travel a bit – the TPPA Don’t Sign campaign will kick off with a public meeting at the Auckland Town Hall on Tuesday 26 January at 7pm.
The star of the show will be Lori Wallach, the Director of Public Citizen Global Trade Watch, who knows more about what’s happening in Washington on the TPPA than Obama does!  Professor Jane Kelsey will also talk about implications for New Zealand, drawing on the expert papers progressively being posted here.
Then we have a political panel of parties who have been critical of the agreement, albeit to varying degrees. So far Andrew Little (Labour) and Metiria Turie (Greens) have said yes, and New Zealand First and Maori Party are working on schedules. Offers will also be made to the Government. The meeting will be live streamed on TDB.
Finally, there will be some suggestions of what YOU can do.
Please bring your cash and eftpos cards too – this is not a cheap exercise!
The Auckland meeting is followed by meetings in Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin 
27 January, Wellington, St Andrews on the Terrace, 7pm
28 January, Christchurch, Cardboard Cathedral, 7pm
29 January, Dunedin, Burns Hall (Moray Place), 7pm
There’s also a Don’t Sign petition launched by ActionStation, Itsourfuture and ShoutOut – go here   and pass it around.
A givealittle page has also been set up to help fund the next part of the campaign.
Barry Coates, who has taken over from Ed Miller at the national spokesperson for the itsourfuture coalition will post more shortly.

27 COMMENTS

  2. This article by Brian Gould is a worth a post in its own right.

    Highlights…

    ‘Yet it is clear that the TPP is not just a run-of-the-mill trade agreement but a major concession of the powers of self-government to large, international (mainly US) corporations. The treaty provides those corporations with the power to over-ride elected governments and to re-write the laws of this country in their own interests.
    There can be no set of issues that should more importantly require the consent of parliament and people.’

    ‘As Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, pointed out in these pages, the TPP is just about the worst “trade agreement” that can be imagined.’

    ‘Not content with conducting negotiations in secret, and with excluding any consideration of public opinion, the attempt has been made to close down even a scintilla of publicity that might indicate a degree of public concern. Even the public signing of the TPP in New Zealand on February 4 is being so carefully managed that we know about it only because the news was leaked in Chile.

    Democracy is necessarily at times a messy and discomfiting business. But when such care is taken to deny it, we should be truly worried.’

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11573810

    • Gould made a powerful argument, as usual. But I’ve just read Chapter 19 of TPPA, which concerns “Labour Standards”. After being told by Green party members that TPPA contained nothing, whatsoever, about labour rights, I discovered an entire chapter, committing the parties to respecting and protecting core ILO conventions and setting up a monitoring body to ensure compliance. It’s a similar story regarding environmental standards (Chapter 20), which I haven’t yet read (but will get around to). I feel misled by people I (still) like and admire. I still oppose TPPA, for a host of other reasons, but my confidence in the anti-TPPA arguments I’ve been hearing is diminished.

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