1) 澳洲的反馈
澳洲31个机构就TPP问题给其总理杰拉德致公开信，并建议：公开全部谈判过程及内容供公民机构和专家分析审评。
OPEN LETTER ‘RELEASE THE TPPA TEXT’
The Hon. Julia Gillard
Prime Minister
The Hon. Dr Craig Emerson
Minister for Trade
Your Government has pledged that the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) currently being negotiated will be a new model of trade agreement for the 21st century. For us, that means it must not limit the ability of governments to address the challenges that will shape our livelihoods, our communities and our planet over the next ninety years: climate change, financial instability, energy scarcity, food security, inequality and poverty, and constraints on corporate greed.
Instead, business is lobbying for the proposed TPPA to intrude far behind our national borders in ways that could restrict financial, social, health and environmental regulation. Business also wants special rights for foreign investors to sue governments on the grounds that regulation would harm their investments. Pharmaceutical companies are demanding changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme so they can charge higher prices for medicines, agribusiness companies want to abolish GE food labeling, and media and services companies want to weaken Australian content rules in audiovisual media, and in government purchasing. Such changes would weaken and limit the laws that will govern us for the entire 21st century.
And all these changes are being debated in secret behind closed doors. The essence of a democracy is the right of the people to scrutinize what governments are doing in their name and debate the direction of policies and laws through democratic parliamentary processes. Instead, these negotiations are conducted in secret, shielded from scrutiny by and accountability to both the public and Parliament. Citizens and legislators would never tolerate the text of domestic legislation being kept secret until it was passed.
Our concerns are compounded by the fact that signatory countries would be bound by the rules of the TPPA in perpetuity, even when an elected government has a different mandate or new realities demand different policies, because its terms can only be changed by consent of all parties.
With respect we reject the argument that draft texts are works in progress and that greater transparency would undermine negotiations. That presumes that negotiators are discussing policies that would not survive the sunshine of scrutiny by the full diversity of interests that they have a duty to serve. If the politicians who set the negotiating mandate and the negotiators who draft the text cannot convince the populace through robust, open and informed debate, they should not proceed.
Enhanced transparency in the TPPA process has many benefits. A more diverse array of informed observers with access to text can safeguard against errors and the risks posed by limited understanding of the possible consequences of proposals. An open process could also dispel current suspicions and build confidence among the public and parliamentarians that TPPA talks will indeed replace the past trade pact models through which benefits and privileges were bestowed on various special interests and large multinational firms to the detriment of the many in signatory countries.
Even the practicability argument for secrecy has been dispelled by recent practice. TPPA countries were involved in negotiations of the recently completed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) for which draft text was widely circulated. An even more compelling precedent is the practice of the 153-member World Trade Organization (WTO), which now posts country documents and negotiating texts on websites for scrutiny. All the countries involved in the TPPA negotiations are WTO members.
If TPPA talks are truly intended to produce a new model, then we need a negotiating process that can evaluate the costs and benefits of various positions that are being proposed. We are therefore making the following demands of the TPPA negotiators collectively:
1) The TPPA parties collectively establish a public website on which government and civil society organizations can post information and participate as equals in a dialogue and debate;
2) Post the composite draft text of each chapter as it is completed to open them to expert and public scrutiny;
3) Post countries’ position papers on specific subjects that are tabled in each phase of the negotiations;
4) Guarantee that all civil society has equal access to information and engagement with the process.
We fear that failure to agree to such transparency will discredit the TPPA negotiating process and deprive it of the goodwill needed from people and parliamentarians to make it work for the 21st century.
Sincereley
Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET)
Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)
Australian Catholic Social Justice Council (ACSJC)
Australian Pensioners and Supperannuants Federation Inc (APSF)
Australian Education Union (AEU)
Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU)
Australian Nursing Federation (ANF)
Australian Services Union (ASU)
Australian Writers Guild
Community and Public Sector Union State Public Services Federations (CPSU-SPSF)
Finance Sector Union (FSU)
Friends of the Earth (FOE)
Greenpeace Australia
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (The Alliance)
Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA)
Peoples Health Movement OZ (PHM OZ)
Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFU)
Aid/Watch
Combined Pensioners and Supperannuants Associatin of NSW (CPSA NSW)
Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutions in News South Wales (CLRI-NSW)
Edmund Rice Centre (ERC)
Economic Refom Australia (ERA)
Fairwear Campaign NSW
Franciscan Missionaries of Mary
SEARCH Foundation
The Alliance ot Expose GATS (Qld)
The Grail (Australia)
Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC)
Republic Now Association
West Australian Regional Meeting of the Reuigious Society of Friends
WTO Watch Queensland
2）马来西亚的反馈
8个机构联名给马来西亚国际贸工部长的公开信，建议：公开信息供公众讨论评审。
YB Dato’ Sri Mustapa Mohamed
Minister
Ministry of International Trade and Industry
Kuala Lumpur
13 February 2011
Dear YB Dato’ Sri,
You are currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a free trade agreement that includes the USA. These negotiations are happening behind closed doors and the texts being discussed are not shown to the public, so we cannot know what you are agreeing to on our behalf.
Your government, our elected representatives, say the TPPA you are negotiating will be a 21st century trade agreement.
For us, a 21st century agreement must address the challenges that will shape our livelihoods, communities and our planet over the next ninety years - climate change, financial instability, food sovereignty, energy scarcity, pandemics, insecurity, inequality and poverty, and constraints on corporate greed.
Instead, we understand that the proposed TPPA would intrude far behind our national borders to not only restrict our financial regulation and grant new rights for foreign investors, but also limit how things like healthcare, energy, natural resources and culture will be regulated; how our tax dollars may be spent; what sort of food safety and labelling will be allowed; whether medicines will remain affordable; and more.
What you are proposing and the way it is being negotiated are undemocratic and hypocritical.
First, a TPPA would bind our domestic policies and laws for decades ahead; even when the government changes its policy in future or faces new realities, its hands will be tied.
Second, Malaysia’s obligations under the agreement would be enforced in international, not domestic courts: as a minimum, the government could face trade sanctions if it failed to comply; and, at worst, foreign investors could sue the government in a secret international court to enforce their special new rights.
Third, you are conducting these negotiations in secret. A more transparent TPPA process would provide some basic safeguards against errors and identify risks that may not be apparent to negotiators and the government. It could also help convince people that a TPPA really will replace the past trade pact models that benefitted and privileged special interests and multinational firms.
The reason commonly given for needing to keep the negotiating texts secret is that greater transparency would undermine negotiations. But this presumes that your proposals would not survive the sunshine of scrutiny. Even the World Trade Organization (WTO), hardly renowned as a bastion of transparency, now posts country documents and negotiating texts on its website for scrutiny. If politicians and negotiators cannot convince the public through robust, open and informed debate about what you are proposing in our name, the talks should not proceed.
We are demanding, at a minimum, that the Malaysian Government proposes to all the other the TPPA negotiating parties at the forthcoming negotiations in Chile in February 2011 that they agree collectively to:
1) Create and maintain a public website which governments and civil society can post information and participate as equals in a dialogue and debate;
2) Post the draft text of each chapter as it is completed to open them to expert and public scrutiny. Given the global financial crisis, the perfect starting point is the texts on investment and financial services, completed in the December 2010 Auckland round;
3) Post countries’ position papers on specific subjects that are tabled during negotiations;
4) Guarantee that all civil society has equal access to information and engagement with the process, regardless of whether they are supportive or critical of the proposed agreement.
Failure to agree to such transparency and allow for open debate will further discredit the TPPA negotiating process and strip any negotiated text of legitimacy.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Yours sincerely,
Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP)
Dewan Muslimat PAS Pusat (DMPP)
Lajnah Pengguna & Alam Sekitar PAS Pusat
Monitoring Sustainbility of Globalisation (MSN)
Positive Malaysian Treatment Access & Advocacy Group (MTAAG+)
Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM)
Solidariti Wanita Muda Malaysia (SWiMM)
Third World Network (TWN)
3)新西兰的反馈
——为什么我们要过问TPP？
——那些国家在谈TPP？
——谈判何时开始？
——TPP有那些影响？
——新西兰的那些政策将成为美国的靶标？
——为何称其为“贸易”协定？
——这与于1990年代被击败的投资多变协议（MAI）相似
——TPP怎么可以给外国投资者以特权？
——这是“华纳”与“霍比特”争执的放大版
——受限实例有那些？
——新西兰政府如何评断TPP？
——我们能做什么？
BEWARE THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT!
Why should we be concerned about the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
If these negotiations succeed they will create a mega-treaty across nine countries that will put a straightjacket around what policies and laws our governments can adopt for the next century.
Which countries are involved in these negotiations?
There are currently nine: in addition to the US and New Zealand, they are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.
When do the negotiations begin?
There have already been seven rounds of negotiations. The fourth round was in Auckland on the week of 6 December 2010 – at the Sky City casino! The next is in US.
What could the TPPA affect?
Everything from foreign ownership of land and resources, including mining licenses, media laws and support for local NZ content, Treaty settlements, control of financial speculation, the price of medicines, to compulsory labelling of food, plain packaging of cigarettes, privatisation contracts for water, prison, schools and hospitals under public private partnerships (PPPs) …
Which NZ policies will be key targets for the US?
The US trade office publishes an annual hit list of ‘trade barriers’ in each country. NZ’s current sins include:
- restrictions on sale and manufacture of GMOs and labeling of GM foods
- NZ’s strict quarantine and labeling (sanitary and phytosanitary) rules
- Parallel importing, especially for music and computer programmes
- Intellectual property protection in the digital media and pharmaceuticals.
- the Pharmac scheme for buying drugs and subsidies
- voluntary local content quotas for broadcasting
- dominance of Telecom over competitors and new entrants
- increased restrictions on foreign investments.
How come it is described as a ‘trade’ agreement?
That’s a clever branding exercise. It is really an agreement that guarantees rights to foreign investors that operate out from any of the TPP countries - think entertainment (Warners and Sony), pharmaceuticals (Merck and Pfizer), mining (RTZ and BP), tobacco (Philip Morris, BAT), retailers (Wal-Mart and Woolworths), finance sector (Merrill Lynch, Westpac, AIG, Macquarie, JP Morgan), agro-business (Cargill, Monsanto), private water operators (Bechtel, Veolia) and much more.
That sounds like the MAI that we defeated in the 1990s!
It is the Multilateral Agreement on Investment on steroids. The TPP is effectively a bill of rights for big corporations that is designed in secret and shackles future governments and our democratic right to decide future policy and laws.
How would a TPPA give foreign investors special rights?
That works at several levels.
1. laws that allow foreign investment would be locked so they could only be weakened, unless the government reserves the right to strengthen them before it signs the agreement. Previous NZ governments have already done that for everything but sensitive land, privatisation of existing SOEs, and a small number of assets.
2. it would guarantee foreign firms are consulted over proposed new laws and the government would have to show how it had responded to their views. NZers have no such guarantee of input into our own laws!
3. if the government does go ahead with a new policy or law that the investors say affects the value of their investment they could sue the government for millions of dollars for breaching their rights under the TPPA (trumping our domestic laws). The case would be heard in a secret international court run by the UN or World Bank, not in our domestic courts.
Sounds like Warners and the Hobbits on a massive scale!
That’s a really important lesson – we saw how one company could pressure the government to change labour laws overnight and get massive tax subsidies from a government that says there’s no money for health, early childcare, public transport, … Imagine the ‘chilling effect’ of a threat from these foreign companies to take a law suit against the government if it goes ahead with a law they don’t like.
What are some examples of restrictions?
Current examples of laws currently being considered include plain packaging of cigarettes, tighter regulations onshore and offshore mining exploration, stopping foreign sales of taonga that are under Treaty claims, banning the sale of the kind of toxic financial products that fuelled the financial crisis, restrictions on sale of strategic assets to foreign firms, a tax on ‘hot’ money flowing into and out of the country …
How does the NZ government justify the TPPA?
The familiar line about better access for Fonterra’s milk powder into the huge US market. As US economist Joseph Stiglitz said “Most of these ‘free trade’ agreements are … managed trade agreements and they’re mostly managed for the advantage of the United States, which has the bulk of the negotiating power.” There is no real negotiation and “one can’t think that New Zealand would ever get anything that it cares about.” They also think a TPPA can morph into an Asia-Pacific wide FTA – yeah, right!
What can we do about it?
Get the word around all your networks, facebook pages, websites and media
Ask your MPs, local government and iwi leaders if they know what’s going on
Demand the government holds an inquiry to bring the negotiations into the daylight
Organise meetings and action around the TPPA
For information and campaigning websites on the TPPA in Aotearoa and internationally see www.tppwatch.org, www.tppdigest.org, www.nznotforsale.org, and follow the links.
Get No Ordinary Deal, ed. Jane Kelsey from www.bwb.co.nz, bookseller or local library.