Last night, we were amongst the first to report on the leak of an entire chapter of the secretive TPP agreement that is still being negotiated amongst several countries. We’ve been watching to see what kind of political fallout there would be and, interestingly enough, the biggest outcry over the chapter contents comes from New Zealand with accusations flying fast and furious.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been known to us for some time as an agreement with numerous provisions that could easily be considered a world-wide version of SOPA. We have been following this agreement closely for some time because any problem the agreement could run into could have ramifications on the provisions that are of primary concern for us.

when we looked at the recent TPP, a vast majority of it seemed to be related to multinational corporations and business in general. There was, however, the odd provision here and there related to intellectual property. The good news, most of the intellectual property provisions seem to indicate that the corporate court system being set up wouldn’t apply to anything related to intellectual property.

We looked at what the fallout has been so far in the recent TPP leak and noticed that the controversy was particularly pronounced in New Zealand. In an opinion piece on Scoop.co.nz, writer Gordon Campbell has said that this leak confirmed the worst fears about the agreement:

That’s what makes the leaked document significant, because it shows Groser’s assurances to be virtually worthless. New Zealand has apparently been willing to concede to terms that Australia has refused to accept. At the very least, Groser needs to explain how that situation has come about. As the Public Citizen analysis shows, the leaked text “reveals a two-track legal system, with foreign firms empowered to skirt domestic courts and laws to directly sue TPP governments in foreign tribunals. There they can demand compensation for domestic financial, health, environmental, land use laws and other laws they claim undermine their new TPP privileges.”

Nor, as Public Citizen goes on to point out, do these international trade dispute tribunals meet the normal standards of transparency, consistency or due process that we would expect to find in a New Zealand court of law. As mentioned, they do not provide fair, independent or balanced venues for resolving disputes between nations and private investors

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In sum, the public has very good reason to feel concerned about (a) the adequacy of the TPP investor state dispute panels (b) the secrecy in which the TPP discussions are being pursued and (c) the emptiness of the Trade Minister’s assurances that everything will be hunky dory. If there is nothing to fear, why the secrecy? Can Groser at least give an assurance that before a document that will bind present and future New Zealand governments is signed, it is submitted to Parliament for scrutiny – and if not, why not?

In numerous situations, it’s extremely difficult to assure citizens that the government has the best of intentions for its citizens when it is negotiating laws in secrecy. It’s even worse when leaked documents reveal the worst of fears because not only is the government being seen as hiding something from its own citizens, but also appearing to be lying to the public when it says that there is nothing to fear about what it’s doing. I’d argue that this is a no-win situation for the government and the only way to really recover from it is to distract citizens with other issues in the hopes that citizens will forget what happened. Either way, this is certainly something worth watching because as time goes on, there are more and more reasons for people to not like the TPP.