Last week Trade Minister David Parker said “it’s not fair that we subjugate ourselves to the interests of the one per cent” and promised to tame the “excesses of globalised capital”.
‘Today, we learned the new government has added New Zealand’s name to a proposal designed to lead to foreign investment rules in the WTO at this week’s ministerial meeting in Argentina,’ said Auckland University Professor Jane Kelsey, who is in Buenos Aires to speak at an academic conference associated with the WTO ministerial.
The Proposed Ministerial Statement on Investment Facilitation for Development was released this morning on behalf of 37 countries, including China, Japan, Russia and the EU. It endorses a draft Ministerial Decision that would establish a Working Group on Investment Facilitation with a mandate to begin building an investment framework in the WTO.
Professor Kelsey calls it ‘deeply ironic that the draft statement calls on governments “to create a more transparent, efficient, and predictable environment for facilitating cross-border investment”. “Transparent, efficient, and predictable” rules to facilitate foreign investment are code for the kind of constraints on investment regimes that the Labour-led government criticised in the TPPA, as it called for greater flexibility.’
‘Appeals in the draft statement to seemingly benign notions of “investment facilitation” to promote “development” are a Trojan Horse for breaking the blockage on investment negotiations in the WTO’.
Moves in 1996, 2001 and 2003 to get negotiations on foreign investment rules in the WTO failed, with opponents insisting that the WTO remains within its mandate on trade.
The current proposal eschews the inclusion of market access, investor protection and ISDS, found in agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. But Professor Kelsey warns that they are bound to re-appear once investment is on the WTO agenda, as a number of proponents are deeply wedded to the existing model.
‘The new government has promised consultation on a progressive new agenda for trade and investment. Here we have another example of it pre-empting decisions on how New Zealand should approach these issues in the international arena’.
Noting that New Zealand First and the Greens have voiced stronger opposition than Labour to such investment rules, Professor Kelsey called on them to pressure their coalition partner to withdraw New Zealand’s name from this proposal.
Agreed Jane,
I see it as another way of the Government being “boxed in ” and forced by the elite global gang to “conform” with their rules and not our own.
Back NZ please – NZF/Greens/Labour.
For the same reasons that it endorsed the Chinese dictatorship’s admission to the very same WTO. The Wage Slave Labour Party is no less compromised or hand-tied than the Transnational Capital Party.
It will be signed sealed and delivered with Prime Minister Jacinda Adern’s name as co-signatory…live with it guys!
You can all bemoan its because of the ‘right wing’ part of Labour…but the past president of the Socialist Youth signing it off kinda blows that argument out of the water and shows clearly that shouting from the sidelines is a helluva lot easier than actually running the country.
All it shows is that Labour are nothing more than another centrist bunch of neo liberal ass wipes who think globalisation is the way forward. And people voted for this shit. Unbelievable. Bring on the eventual revolution. Seriously. I am so over these chardonnay socialists.
For which Labour may be punished at the next election Im right.
Because Labour are still essentially an internally controlled, neo-liberal , National lite party. People don’t want to heat that but it is the truth. They are globalists.
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