The TPP was never going to have an impact on the government legislating to ban foreign individuals from buying houses in New Zealand. Some people have said the proposed change to legislation includes companies, but I haven’t seen any compelling evidence to that effect. And David Parker has been very specific in referring to individuals and the “1%”.
The reason legislation affecting individuals can be passed, is simply because individuals do not have recourse to the ISDS process. That being the case, individuals only have recourse to NZ domestic law.
The ISDS process is a dog. We know that. But even if it’s junked, things go down-hill for New Zealand.
In passing – the “General Equilibrium Models” used to gauge the likely economic effects of the TPP are laughable. Eg the idea that 3000 redundant workers in Auckland will instantly and miraculously begin work in Hamilton or Invercargill is built into the assumptions such models use.
In short, some very bad and obvious dynamics are unleashed by agreements like the TPP.
In an open market situation, the country with the lowest wages and least expensive compliance regime around such things as food handling, processing and manufacturing, gains an obvious market advantage. A NZ Labour led government might be quite happy to consider more lax regulatory frameworks for domestic industry when faced with the prospect of industrial sectors going “down the tubes”…or happy to juggle, in an attempt to hold up wage rates by allowing industry to off-set wage costs with lower compliance costs.
But for you and me, there’s nothing to be gained bar a host of undesirable consequences in the great “TPP race to the bottom” – like lower wages and/or less stringent food safety and so on.
So why does NZs political class seem so keen on the idea of signing us up to this nonsense? Well, apart from ideological capture, something that no-one seems to be mentioning is that NZ is the designated suppository Depository for the TPP – making NZ a kind of bureaucratic nexus. And it does cross my mind to ask how many public servants and politicians (past and present) might be eyeing up a secure wee number for themselves and turning a willful blind eye to what the TPP will mean for the ordinary people of this country?
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