Media Release

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Mr Reti questioned on TPPA

Whangarei’s Democrats for Social Credit candidate Chris Leitch, has called on National candidate Shane Reti to attend the rally against the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement being held in the town basin this weekend.

“This will be a great opportunity for Mr Reti to make his position clear on issues surrounding the agreement”, Mr Leitch said.

“Does he realise that the agreement will be signed in secret without any details ever having been presented to Parliament, and does he agree with that secrecy?”

“Does he know that under the agreement big overseas corporations will be able to sue New Zealand for millions in loss of profits, or even future potential loss of profits, as has happened recently in Italy, Greece, Canada and El Salvador?”

“Does he support those legal actions being heard by a secretive overseas tribunal with no right of appeal?”

“Does he accept that kiwi taxpayers should be at risk of having to pay millions of dollars - a type of corporate welfare – when we desperately need money going into better health care, and more police on the streets.”

“Does he think it is okay that we will lose the right to decide for ourselves how we protect our people and the environment from the use of harmful industrial chemicals, or genetically modified organisms?”

“Does he think big overseas companies should be able to secure patents on “diagnostic, therapeutic, and surgical methods for the treatment of humans or animals” meaning we would have to pay fees every time such techniques were used.”

Mr Leitch called on Mr Reti to write an open letter to the Prime Minister to drop the secrecy and publish the text of the TPPA agreement so that New Zealanders could see exactly what we were being signed up for.

The protest rally is at the Town Basin on Saturday at 1pm.

ENDS

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