Democracy takes hard work

'WHAT you don't know won't hurt you." Not true. What you don't know may well hurt you. That notion may go far to explain the reception of booing Mr Key received at Ratana when he tried to claim that Maori rights under the Treaty of Waitangi would be respected under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Key's threat of loss of trade to the competition of Australia didn't persuade Maori leaders like Rahui Papa, who asked for the agreement to be delayed until there could be public understanding and discussion among all New Zealanders.

From what we now know, with the TPP text released on November 5, 2015, all New Zealanders are potentially at risk. Analysis by a New Zealand organisation and a US one with serious reservations about the alleged benefits may be found here: http://itsourfuture.org.nz/tppa-text. The actual text is 6000-plus pages and hardly a page-turner. While I've given consideration to several of the provisions, I, like many - including Mr Key, I suspect - will rely on analyses by others of more dogged determination. After all, Proust it is not.

Mr Key's government has given bland assurances, including a guesstimate of a 3per cent increase to GDP by 2020. That's $6 billion and nothing to sneeze at but evidence for it is thin. Most of the tariff reductions National extols will have already been done by prior agreement.

The corporations who wrote the TPP are not as interested in fostering trade - that would go on anyway - as they are in weakening regulations that may hamper their activities in considerations of safety, health or the environment. One threat, according to a Canadian analysis (http://thinkpol.ca/2015/11/07/tpp-chapter-by-chapter-analysis/) could be to border controls on agricultural products. Weakening of MAF regulations may prove damaging to New Zealand farmers.

Multinational corporations are interested in protectionism. The protectionism of the TPP is seen in its provisions on copyright extensions on intellectual property. Discouragement of generic medications will imperil our health and our wallets. Criminalisation of even unintentional use of copyright materials is enforceable under the treaty. Minister Stephen Joyce should take notice.

The Canadian analysis shows how the TPP "trade secrets" provision can be used to stifle dissent, punish whistleblowers and even criminalise newspapers or other media for publishing such material.

The enforcement provisions include the use of the ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement) which allows corporations to sue countries in special arbitration courts but not the other way round. To believe that New Zealand would not be disadvantaged in such courts against the deep pockets of multinational corporations beggars belief.

The TPP makes no mention of climate change in its 6147 pages. Unsurprisingly, fossil fuel corporations stand to benefit through regulatory override allowing fracking and other environmentally hazardous activity.

One thing heartening about the issue of the TPP is that it's brought a lot of people - people with busy lives - into meetings and marches and petitions to government. In short, the facts of the TPP, it's secret creation, and the revelations as to the threat it embodies, both to our general welfare and to our sovereignty, have become a stimulus to participatory democracy.

Everyone who has participated in protest, whether in marching, speaking, listening or taking the time to learn what this corporatist treaty is about, has a reason to take pride. Democracy takes hard work. At our own local level, that work and persistence and organisation came from many quarters and especially from the efforts of Raewyn Roberts, Denise Lockett and Chris Cooper, and the volunteers manning the stand at the weekly market.

The campaign by citizens across the country includes those of all political persuasions and of ethnic adherence demanding the right to be included in a treaty that could have long-lasting consequences for their prosperity, health, safety and lives. In the immortal words of American philosopher Yogi Berra: "It ain't over till it's over."