Why is Key so secret on American Free Trade deal?

End secrecy on TTP trade talks - petition
A petition seeking to reduce the secrecy surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations was presented at Parliament yesterday.

Welcomed by Labour and the Greens, it was signed on behalf of several unions and non-governmental organisations, the Society of Authors and IT industry group NZRise.

It seeks as a matter of urgency a select committee hearing on the TPP talks, even if it is constrained by a lack of hard information. It also asks Parliament to resolve that New Zealand should take the lead in seeking agreement from the other eight countries in the negotiations to the release of draft texts and other documents.

This free trade deal John Key is secretly negotiating before the election minus any scrutiny beyond the corporate and political elite will have a much more negative impact on our future economic sovereignty than anything China is attempting, yet any real public perception of the threat this deal will actually cause is almost non-existent. The bellows of 'National Sovereignty' attached to anything China does compared to the dead silence at the vast swindle America are about to commit certainly opens us up to charges of xenophobia.

This oxymoronically named 'free trade' deal secretly being cut with America will do the following...

More expensive medicines

No local content in broadcasting

Weaker controls on overseas investment in NZ

Foreign investors suing the Government for millions in offshore tribunals

Weaker regulation of the financial services

Undermining action on climate change

Delays and restrictions on agricultural market access to the US

John Key breathlessly told a complaint mainstream media that we would make "billions and billions" from this free trade deal with America and the complaint mainstream media breathlessly repeated those claims with no critical analysis of his claims whatsoever.

How humiliating for our compliant mainstream uncritical media then when wikileaks reveals the "billions and billions" claims is utter nonsense and an out right lie...

US free-trade deal suspect
A FREE-TRADE deal with the United States may not be the economic miracle it's been painted as.

New Zealand's chief trade negotiator Mark Sinclair privately told a visiting US State Department official that New Zealand had little to gain from a free-trade agreement. This view – recorded in a confidential US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks – differs from the one the public has been given.

When the US joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks in November last year, Prime Minister John Key said it could be worth "billions and billions" to New Zealand, and that a deal would "position New Zealand brilliantly for growth".

But in a meeting in February, Sinclair told US Deputy Assistant Frankie Reed "there is a public perception that getting into the US will be an `El Dorado' for New Zealand's commercial sector. However, the reality is different".

He said New Zealand would need to "manage" public expectations about the benefits of a US free-trade agreement.

John Key is lying to us about this 'free trade' deal making us "billions and billions" in the exact same way Gerry Brownlee lied to us about billions and billions to be made from mining on conservation land.

It is utterly extraordinary to me how far NZers are prepared to stretch John Key's smile and wave political capital to justify policy so contrary to our national interests as this.

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