TPP misses Labour's key tests

Labour leader Andrew Little says the Trans-Pacific Partnership appears to fail four out of the party's five bottom lines for supporting the deal.

The Labour Party will meet Trade Minister Tim Groser today to get its first briefing on the 12-nation trade deal.

Mr Little said Labour's position would not be clear until the full text was released after 30 days.

But he said from the details released so far, it did not appear that his party could back the TPP.

Only one of Labour's bottom lines, the upholding of the Treaty of Waitangi, had been met.

Mr Little said the TPP deal appeared to fail the other bottom lines - the protection of Pharmac, the ability to regulate in the public interest and to restrict sales of residential property and farmland, and meaningful gains for dairy farming.

He said a Labour Government would flout the trade deal by banning non-resident purchases of residential property or farmland.

He was confident discussions would not divide his party, which includes several MPs who favour free trade.

Mr Little said if his party ends up having a scrap with other TPP parties, on issues such as restricting foreign ownership of New Zealand land, then it will do so.

"It would go to the TPP commission first, the interesting thing there of course is what would Australia say, or Malaysia, or Vietnam or countries that have the very sort of restriction that we intended to enact here in New Zealand?

"So we will have that argument because we know that not every TPP country would support challenging us about it."

Asked if that includes pulling out of the TPP, Mr Little said his party would always reserve the right to do so.

"In the end you know every government's duty is to act in the best interests of its people, of its citizens and we will do that, and if it means that we would have to do things that would be in breach of the TPP, because we wouldn't walk out of it, we would do those things. If we have opportunities to renegotiate things that are less favourable to us, we will."

- Additional reporting: Newstalk ZB