Today Labour tried to put forward a Parliamentary motion calling on the government to release the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement before signing it, on the simple democratic grounds that the public deserved to know what agreements were being made in our name.
The upshot: National hates transparency. It also hates democracy. Rather than negotiating openly and transparently with a clear and ongoing mandate from the public about what it is allowed to give away, it wants to do so in secret, so as to present us with a fait accompli, in the manner of a king.
Fuck that. A deal made in secret, on which we have no input, let alone opportunity to consent, is simply not legitimate. Its time we tore down this entire rotten way of doing foreign policy, and replaced it with a democratic one: open, transparent, and with ratification by the people, not Parliament. If the government can’t convince us to endorse the deals its been making, then it has no business making them. It’s that simple.
lprent: Contrary to myth, the current treaty system has the cabinet being the only political body that may make any effective decision on treaties.
Parliament gets 15 sitting days to *look* at the public parts of a treaty and the analysis in select committee. They make *recommendations* that cabinet may ignore and usually does. Cabinet may then start presenting whatever legislative changes are required to parliament.
Frequently no substantive legislative changes are required as much of the business of government may be done by regulation by the executive council or ministers. Or any changes required are so minor that their passage does not substantially affect the treaty implementation. Often some of those legislative changes will only need to be done when specific parts of a treaty have to take effect years later. In particular many trade treaties are staged over years.
In other words, there is usually no effective public input on any treaty regardless how abhorrent it is. Currently cabinet and only cabinet makes the decision often binding subsequent cabinets especially where international legal procedures are involved. This is what Idiot Savant is referring to.
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