Opponents united against secret deal

Jane Kelsey.
Jane Kelsey.
Parties opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement were united in their condemnation of the agreement which was signed early yesterday morning.

However, most of the opposition is coming from hearsay as details of the controversial deal have not yet been released and are unlikely to be made public for at least three months.

The most ardent critic yesterday was Jane Kelsey, who has fought long and hard to stop the TPP being signed.

The deal was a travesty of democracy and the Government had ignored, insulted and lied to its citizens, she said in a statement.

She said Trade Minister Tim Groser had misled New Zealanders.

''He always knew he was on a hiding to nothing on dairy. I have predicted many times he would not do as he said and walk away from a lousy deal but claim there were some intangible future gains from being in the club.

''That's exactly what happened.''

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the Government's promise of a ''gold standard TPP'' had not come through.

''The fact is we have failed on the crucial exports we rely on - dairy into the American, Canadian and Japanese markets and beef into Japan,'' Mr Peters said.

Further negotiations would continue in a vacuum of secrecy and the final result was likely to be far less than what had been served up so far, he said.

Labour finance spokesman Grant Robertson said the deal failed to meet the test set by the Government and failed the dairy and foreign buyers test.

When reports from Canada said its protected dairy sector remained mostly intact, it was not a good sign.

The Government needed to answer whether state-owned enterprises would be allowed to operate as New Zealand chose them to in the future and the extent of the powers of foreign corporations to sue the Government if it acted for the public good, he said.

Labour health spokeswoman Annette King said Mr Groser had been silent on the compromise he accepted for the five years of data exclusivity - extending patent lengths on medicines if there was any delay in them entering the New Zealand market.

Pharmac's job was to get the best value it could for the taxpayer, regardless of where it found it.

Forcing Pharmac to be more transparent would undermine its ability on how it negotiated to deliver low-cost life-saving drugs.

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