Author: Edward Miller

It’s Time For the Greens To Play Hardball on TPPA

It’s Time For the Greens To Play Hardball on TPPA

Posted by | Feb 5, 2018 | , , , |

A guest post by left-wing activist and Green Party member Elliot Crossan. 4 February 2016 was the day I learnt what the power of ordinary people felt like.  I marched with 30,000 others in the streets of Auckland against the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and I could feel the raw anger of a mass movement, whose years of resistance towards the National government and towards the signing away of Aotearoa’s democracy was coming to a furious head.  The mood was different to the two previous demonstrations I had attended—this time the atmosphere was alive with a pure,...

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What are the economic benefits for NZ of the CPTPP?

What are the economic benefits for NZ of the CPTPP?

Posted by | Feb 2, 2018 | , , |

The basic premise of opposition to the TPPA and its descendant agreements is that the risks outweighed the benefits. With the CPTPP Agreement apparently now concluded but no available text, we’re left in a familiar limbo. Will the benefits of this new agreement be enough to offset the risks? One of the main reasons TPPA proponents struggled to demonstrate the agreement’s was because most of the countries involved in the negotiation already had some form of preferential trade access with one another. For NZ the only TPPA countries which we didn’t have FTAs with were Mexico, Canada, Japan, Peru...

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Workers call on Governments to Defend the Public Interest and Reject RCEP

Workers call on Governments to Defend the Public Interest and Reject RCEP

Posted by | Sep 11, 2017 | , , |

We are trade union and civil society representatives from seven Asian countries who came together to discuss the impacts on labour rights and quality public services of the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) between 16 Asian nations. RCEP proposes to open markets and deregulate substantial sectors of the economies involved, including trade in goods and services, foreign investment, electronic commerce as well as strengthen intellectual property rights. After two days of deliberations, we concluded that several proposals on the table have the potential to negatively impact decent work, labour rights, access to essential services such as water, electricity...

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Evergreening clause dropped after stiff opposition from India

Evergreening clause dropped after stiff opposition from India

Posted by | Aug 9, 2016 | |

The Daily Excelsior reports that provisions relating to the evergreening of patents have been dropped from RCEP negotiations after stiff opposition from India. ‘Evergreening’ involves making extremely minor changes to a patented product as a product expires, triggering a new period of patent protection: “It may be noted that some RCEP countries had tried to introduce a clause in favour of evergreening of patents, which was dropped after stiff opposition from India,” Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a written reply to the Lok...

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New animated short on El Salvador v Oceanagold ISDS claim

New animated short on El Salvador v Oceanagold ISDS claim

Posted by | Aug 5, 2016 | , , , |

A new animated short film telling the story of the El Salvador v Oceanagold ISDS claim has just premiered at the New Zealand International Film Festival. The film, called ‘Water for Gold‘, was directed by Rose Archer and produced by Sandani Wijetunge, who together have been working on the upcoming Beautiful Democracy film, which covers the NZ TPPA resistance...

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