The call for real alternatives to controversial trade and investment treaties like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is being heard around the world.
A number of prominent New Zealand groups have decided it is time to convene a hui to set out what an alternative and progressive trade strategy for Aotearoa New Zealand should look like.
The two-day hui at the Fale Pasifika at Auckland University from 19-20 October has a forward looking focus. The programme features ten impressive panels in conversation on the pressing issues of the future, from the international economy, geopolitics and livelihoods to Treaty-based relationships, sustainable worlds, health, knowledge and how to reinvigorate the local.
Speakers include journalists Rod Oram and Bernard Hickey, law professor Jane Kelsey, former diplomat Terence O’Brien, Médecins Sans Frontières, Maori lawyer Annette Sykes and iwi chair Margaret Mutu, NZCTU’s Sam Huggard and Bill Rosenberg, Greenpeace Director Russel Norman, and many more.
Hui organiser Professor Kelsey explains: ‘The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) was a wake-up call for many New Zealanders about the far-reaching implications such “trade” treaties for the government’s right to regulate in the national interest, including the Treaty of Waitangi, health, environment, workers, and local businesses.’
‘Now we need to shift the focus from critique of the status quo to creating a new paradigm.’
Co-sponsors include The NZ Council of Trade Unions, It’s Our Future, Doctors for Healthy Trade, Oxfam, Greenpeace, the NZ Nurses Organisation, First Union, PPTA, NZEI, TEU, among others,
More information and the programme can be accessed at https://itsourfuture.org.nz/hui-2018/. Attendance is free, but space at the venue is limited. The event will also be livestreamed on itsourfuture and on Daily Blog.
I hope the participants recognise that present living arrangements are predicated on the continuous burning of fossil fuels and are predicated on the continuous degradation of the environment.
I hope the participants recognise that present living arrangements are a very short-term aberration in the grand scheme of things (less than 100 years in the 200,000-year-history of our species).
I hope the participants recognise that every day that present living arrangements continue makes the our overall predicament worse.
I hope the participants recognise that present living arrangements are already in terminal decline and that they will collapse in the not-too-distant future.
I hope so too, but I’m not holding my breath.
History shows that people can be amazingly block headed when confronted by facts they don’t like; even as those facts are occurring in front of their faces…
Professor Kelsey is always a voice of academic reason in this type of debate. I wish the hui success.
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