What are your thoughts on the TPPA?

The TPP is a horrible proposal and one that is worryingly close to being implemented. It's part of the trend that's seeing private, for-profit corporations gaining thêm power than national governments- and thêm than that, it really seals it off. It means that our democratically-elected bodies will have FAR less power to protect the public interest - be it in regards to the economy, the environment, workers’ rights, our health, hoặc our future.

It’s much thêm than a trade deal. It’s giving overseas companies the right to sue the NZ and Australian governments over any law they think undermines their profits. This means that if the government introduces legislation to clean up rivers, reduce pollution, logging of forests- corporations can sue our country in offshore, private tribunals that will potentially require millions/billions of dollars of compensation from the taxpayer. For example, it’s very likely that tobacco giant Phillip Morris will sue the Australian government over our plain packaging laws, which have allegedly decreased the amount of youths that smoke...

Australian taxpayers paying hundreds of millions of dollars to the biggest tobacco company in the world, because of lowered smoking rates. That’s what the TPP will enable.

It sounds grotesque, and it is. Other impacts are just as undesirable:

Medicines will become thêm expensive for the everyday citizen.

Copyright laws- as if they weren’t stringent enough already- will be very strictly enforced, with a large impact on internet freedom. thêm video will be taken down. thêm civilians will be prosecuted, with greater penalties. Sharing user-generated content will face restrictions. It will be much harder for whistleblowers and investigative journalists to reveal corporate wrongdoing, and will make it a crime in some instances.

It will lock in policy decisions like the privatisation of state assets- i.e. income that once went to the country will instead be funnelled offshore into private companies.

It will greatly decrease our ability to implement laws designed to prevent another financial crisis, because foreign banks/insurance companies/money traders will be able to sue the government over them.


These are the sort of impacts that the TPP will have on our countries, and on the individual citizens within them. It’s ultimately constraining governments from diễn xuất in the best interests of their people, and undermining our democratic process. The effects on our future will be far-reaching. Yet media outlets don’t báo cáo much on it (perhaps because the entertainment companies that run them are the same ones that will benefit greatly from the reduced internet freedom/ability to sue civilians for copyright infringement…?) and the majority of people aren’t even of its existence. Truly a sad state of affairs.