So it I had it more or less confirmed that both National & Labour forced NZ into the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA, or stupidly renamed 'CPTPPA') because both parties have influential MPs affiliated with the Atlas Network (the same awful folks who founded the ACT party, the TPU, FSU, NZ Initiative, & Curia Polls), whose agents/lawyers in the US wrote the agreement. In doing so, NZ gave up most of our sovereignty to US Corporations.
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I think most MPs, sadly, had no idea what they were signing or through what completely broken, top-secret process - recall we only heard about the contents of the TPPA agreement because of *Wikileaks*. Our Gov't was AOk with keeping the text from NZers, including MPs. Only negotiators saw it (I'm pretty sure at least one or two of them are up to their armpits in Atlas Network). I think the MPs were naive bumpkins who took Groser & Parker's word. Dodgy as.
Prof Jane Kelsey (who's on the Fedi but I won't dox her) was the leading light in the discussion - the only sane one in the room - the others were surely captured (or just really dumb, with misplaced loyalties), especially Steve Jacobi.
Not sure Prof Kelsey identified Atlas Network involvement in orchestrating the *writing* of the 5000 page TPPA agreement but I'd be interested to hear from her (discretion guaranteed)
I suspect that the (CP)TPPA is one of the main reasons that nearly every major IT-related gov't procurement I'm aware of in the past 20 years (I think NZ gov't was practicing before we signed up) was let to a overseas megacorp. Vanishingly seldom have domestic suppliers even had a look in. The NZ gov't doesn't want to get secretly sued in an extra-jurisdictional court by US Big Tech (who have way nastier lawyers than we do) under the ISDS terms we agree to.
@lightweight IMHO since the US is throwing out the rules and tariffing us and the penguin island anyway we may as well respond by throwing out some stuff we don’t like. Like that.
@Salty I'd be all for it, but of course ole Winston might have a thing or two to say about that - they're his cigar buddies, right?
Saw this coming in 2014. If you want more info I made 2 Select Committee presentations: https://davelane.nz/tppa-submission and https://davelane.nz/tppa-select-committee-presentation to Nat'l and Labour-led Gov'ts respectively (but not respectfully - oh no! Even got a rise out of Nat'ls David Bennett during mine when he looked up from playing games on his phone when I said 'I will consider MPs supporting this legislation traitor to NZ'. He didn't like that. I was right, though.)