The Government is being urged to ensure negotiations on a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) have greater transparency.
The negotiations were expected to dominate the agenda of the US-New Zealand Council meeting that begins in Christchurch tomorrow.
Auckland University law lecturer Jane Kelsey has supported the call by Labour to open the talks up to greater transparency.
"Ironically, Labour's call comes at a time when the US seems to want less transparency and 'stakeholder" participation in the TPP process, not more," Professor Kelsey said.
"Labour's call for the government to broaden its consultation to a much wider range of public interest groups is an important first step," she said.
"The terms of any 'consultation' are crucially important. Inevitably, where certain groups are given special access there are many interests that remain unrepresented and selective consultation can rarely marshall all the expertise that is needed. For transparency to be meaningful the relevant documents must be publicly disclosed."
According to the Chilean hosts, delegations to the TPP talks did discuss the request for greater public disclosure in letters signed by prominent public interest groups in Australia, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand and the US, but they had not agreed.
Prof Kelsey said it was "perverse" to reject of even the minimalist public disclosure practices of the World Trade Organisation (to which all the TPP countries belong) on the grounds that negotiations were more intense and involved deeper and more sensitive issues.
"The deeper the intrusion on sovereignty, democracy and indigenous self-determination, the greater the need is for openness and accountability, not for more secrecy.
"An end to secrecy should be top of the US NZ Council's discussion of a TPP, because shutting the public out of the TPP process strips it of any pretence of legitimacy."
The Government should take the lead by unilaterally making public the documents that it has tabled in the negotiations so far and actively lobbying for genuine openness among other parties, Prof Kelsey said.
Meanwhile, Council of Trade Unions president Helen Kelly will boycott the meeting because of concerns about the direction it was taking over the TPP negotiations.
"There is growing concern in New Zealand at the implications of this agreement. The council should not continue to act as cheerleader for the TPP and begin to reflect the genuine concerns of unions and many other New Zealanders."
Ms Kelly said there were growing calls for the negotiations to be opened up, supported by the Labour Party and the Greens.
"Openness should include regular releases of draft chapters of the agreement for public scrutiny well before it is signed and sealed."
Labour's foreign affairs spokeswoman, Maryan Street, said it was time to broaden the dialogue.
"We are embarking on a new era of trade negotiations where civil society demands more input and more accountability from those who are responsible for our international trade deals," she said.
The original and still existing free trade agreement, known as the P4, was between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore and came into force in 2006.
Five additional countries -- Australia, Malaysia, Peru, the United States and Vietnam -- are negotiating to join it.
If the TPP succeeds, New Zealand will achieve within it the free trade agreement with the US which it has been seeking for more than a decade.
