“TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE.” That’s what I would say to David Parker on the day he released the text of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). With the signing ceremony due to take place in the Chilean capital, Santiago, on 8 March – a mere fortnight from the document’s release – the time available for thorough public scrutiny and debate is simply too short.
I would also say “Too little, too late” to Oliver Hailes, the new spokesperson for the anti-TPP pressure-group, It’s Our Future (IOF). He has announced a “Day of Action” against the CPTPP on Sunday, 4 March. But, at just four days out from the signing ceremony, what is IOF’s “action” supposed to achieve?
It’s hard to tell. In the bulletin released by Hailes, the Day of Action is described as:
“[A] Nationwide Day of Action across New Zealand in opposition to the Government’s plans. The Government intends to sign the treaty in Chile on Thursday 8 March and there will be an organised presence at Parliament on that day – watch this space, details are to come!”
Reading on, it becomes clear that IOF’s strategy in relation to the CPTPP is fundamentally unchanged from the strategy it adopted against its predecessor, the plain old Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).
In Hailes’ own words:
“Signing is not the end of the process! [The CPTPP] must be presented to Parliament for debate, and then it will be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee for examination. These are opportunities for all of you to have your say through written or oral submissions. Eventually the Select Committee will make a recommendation to the Government as to whether or not it should ratify the text and adopt implementing legislation to bring New Zealand law into line with its international commitments. And then, if the Government gets its way, New Zealand will undertake binding action. Each one of these steps provides an opportunity for you to intervene and let the Government know why it should turn back. Remember, the whole plan fell to pieces last time.”
Well, yes, it did, but only because President Donald Trump yanked the United States out of the Agreement at the last minute. Submissions to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee made absolutely no difference to the National Government’s plans to bring the TPPA into effect. It is fanciful to suggest that submitting to the same select committee on the CPTPP will produce anything other than exactly the same outcome.
Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”? The IOF should turn that quotation into a poster and pin it up on the wall above Oliver Hailes’ desk.
So, what would work? The answer, sadly, is that, right now, a fortnight out from the signing ceremony, it’s hard to see anything working.
Jacinda Ardern, Winston Peters and David Parker were vulnerable to the critics and opponents of what was then being called TPP-11 for only a very brief moment: the period immediately preceding, and immediately after, the Apec Meeting in Danang, Vietnam, on 6-11 November 2017.
That was the period during which it became clear to all those who had trusted in Labour’s, NZ First’s and the Greens’ declared opposition to the TPPA, that the new coalition government was preparing to renege on its promises. If the IOF movement had called its 20,000-plus supporters onto the streets in early-November 2017, under the slogan “Hold Them To Their Word!”, then there might have been a chance of spooking Jacinda, Winston and David into resisting the pressure from MFAT, MBIE, MPI, Federated Farmers and Business NZ to treat their pre-election promise to defend New Zealand’s sovereignty as “just one of those things you say in Opposition and then forget about it Government”.
Sadly, the IOF did not activate its data-base of followers and lead them into the streets, with the result that, in the weeks and months that followed, the Government has been able to sell its message that the CPTPP represents a genuine improvement on the TPPA. So much so, that the street-based protest option has quietly dropped-off the anti-TPP agenda. That’s why Oliver Hailes is promoting a “Day of Action”, rather than an honest-to-goodness protest march like the one that stunned New Zealand on 4 February 2016.
Getting a handful of worthy souls to gather in city-centres and parks on 4 March 2018 and hold up a tired display of re-cycled placards and banners, is something IOF can manage. Putting 50,000 angry Kiwis on Queen Street is no longer within its power.
The impact will be negligible. A Government riding-high on 48 percent in the latest Colmar Brunton opinion poll has nothing to fear from a single day of [in]action.
Chris, I note that your post on CPTTP has been up for over 24 hours. No one has responded to date; excluding my post now. I would have thought that at the least the activists who post on your blog to comment – but they haven’t.
This lack of response seems to support your main point; that any protest action about the imminent signing of this trade agreement is too little to late and will be irrelevant.
Your article could have been seen as a call to arms – but no one, including the activists, indicate that they’re willing to take it up.
I suspect that the vast majority of Nzder’s find the arguments against signing the CPTTP to be far to esoteric and remote from their own experiences that they will roll off them like water off a ducks back.
Parker’s speech about the economic benefits that may flow to freezing workers and to farmers and to everyone in between resonates so much more convincingly with the general public.
As you say the deal will be done; the agreement will be signed. And the projected negative impacts on New Zealand either won’t happen or will have such limited impact that no one will notice.
Chris, I note that your post on CPTTP has been up for over 24 hours. No one has responded to date; excluding my post now. I would have thought that at the least the activists who post on your blog to comment – but they haven’t.
This lack of response seems to support your main point; that any protest action about the imminent signing of this trade agreement is too little to late and will be irrelevant.
Your article could have been seen as a call to arms – but no one, including the activists, indicate that they’re willing to take it up.
I suspect that the vast majority of Nzder’s find the arguments against signing the CPTTP to be far to esoteric and remote from their own experiences that they will roll off them like water off a ducks back.
Parker’s speech about the economic benefits that may flow to freezing workers and to farmers and to everyone in between resonates so much more convincingly with the general public.
As you say the deal will be done; the agreement will be signed. And the projected negative impacts on New Zealand either won’t happen or will have such limited impact that no one will notice.
John key already signed it back in 2016. This is another bump in a long of line of bumps on a long. long road. Another review in 3 years.
The only way to stop all this kind of stuff from happening is to form a grass roots opposition movement, that acts outside of Parliament, and that reaches out and signs up as many individuals and groups as they can.
IOF and others tried hard, but it was not enough support, to put pressure on Labour and NZ First, hence we get what we get now.
If there are not the numbers to stand up and take action, then there will be nothing stopping this deal come reality. We need a more radical approach to confront and engage people all over the streets, at public places, meetings and at transport nodes.
Active cells need to spread opposition, based on some simple ideas and principles, that may convince ordinary people, who are too much living into their own spaces, also constantly inundated by consumerist propaganda and so forth, they have no idea what is really going on and going to come upon us one day.
If this does not happen, i.e. activate people, prepare your own local groups to survive at least, until times my be better and people more receptive to the messages they need to hear. This may only happen once an economic meltdown or other catastrophe strikes us. That will come, but may take a while yet, certainly in NZ Inc, where there is still much land and other resource to plunder, after many parts of the world have already been before.
So in summary, I fear Chris is right on this topic and conclusion.
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