Jane Kelsey: Out with old and let's be transparent with new

Opinion

COMMENT: Last Monday the Prime Minister rolled out the Government's long-promised Trade for All agenda. She observed we are a trade-dependent nation. Her Government inherited a range of concerns around trade. Many have lost confidence in the current trade agenda, encapsulated in opposition to the Trans-Pacific partnership Agreement (TPPA).

Trade for All aims to rebuild that confidence, while achieving improvements in productivity, employment and incomes and ensuring benefits of trade are spread evenly.

I welcome steps to rethink the current model of trade and investment agreements that many here and internationally believe has benefited the few, mainly transnational corporations. It is time to move beyond critiquing the old, and to generate positive, progressive alternatives that put jobs, economic justice, the Treaty of Waitangi, human rights, the environment and climate change at the core.

We need to replace the preoccupation with market access for primary products with trade agreements that promote economic development based on quality jobs, high value exports, strong small businesses and productive investment.

We also need to reverse the over-reach of trade agreements into non-trade areas that intrude on the Government's regulatory sovereignty, and bring transparency and accountability to the negotiating process.

The Trade for All project is a unique opportunity to engage with the range of issues and impacts that have generated the crisis of confidence and to build trust in our trade agreements. But it will have to show courage and imagination.

I have described the Trade for All agenda as "too little, too late". "Too little" because the underlying concerns that have eroded that confidence are not on the table. Many of today's agreements constrain the Government's policy and regulatory choices in areas that have nothing to do with real trade.

"Too late" because any shift in trade thinking will not affect negotiations for the Pacific Alliance, involving eight countries, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with 16 parties, or renegotiation of agreements with China and Singapore.

I have just returned from three weeks in Washington DC. Trump's tariffs and the Nafta renegotiation aim to deliver on issues that Congressional Democrats have traditionally campaigned on, promising more locally made content, minimum wage requirements if foreign products are to benefit, and no investor-state dispute settlement. But instead of developing a creative and innovative new trade strategy to re-engage their constituency, many Democrats back the status quo.

Trump's trade anarchy and the status quo are not the only options! Sadly, the Trade for All consultations suggest they are. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) "Have-your-say" website is supported by seven background papers that justify the status quo. The lack of critical self-reflection discredits the reform agenda.

The Maori consultation is explicitly based on a 2001 Mfat engagement process that the Waitangi Tribunal sharply criticised in the Wai-262 claim on traditional knowledge and again in the Wai-2522 report on the TPPA.

That leaves the Trade for All Advisory Board, which has six months to deliver recommendations for a progressive, sustainable and inclusive trade policy that can instil confidence in the population. To be credible, the board needs to do five things.

First, treat economic objectives and the walking back of behind-the-border constraints on domestic policy as equally important. Second, engage with Maori as a Treaty partner, not a stakeholder. Third, be truly independent of Mfat. Fourth, have transparency that allows people to see, analyse and challenge what is being done in the name of trade. Lastly, take the critics seriously and be prepared to replace the status quo with a new, inclusive trade agenda.

• Jane Kelsey is a professor of law at the University of Auckland.