LETTER TO MPS

 

Dear xxxx

 

I am writing as one of your constituents to ask your position on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), currently being renegotiated at the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

 

You will by now have received a copy of Serving Whose Interests?, a detailed analysis of the current and potential implications of the GATS for domestic legislation, policy and regulation of our services prepared by Professor Jane Kelsey for ARENA.

 

I would like to know your response, as a Member of Parliament, to the following questions:

 

  1. Have you read the report Serving Whose Interests?

 

  1. How do you view that fact that the GATS currently imposes constraints on the ability of this and future parliaments and local governments to determine what are appropriate policies and regulations in a range of our services, including education and culture?

 

  1. Have you been briefed by the Government on the implications of the existing agreement ?

 

  1. How do you view that fact that current negotiations seek to extend the coverage of these rules to a wide range of additional services?

 

  1. Have you been briefed by the Government on the requests it has received from other WTO member governments to commit further of our services to the GATS rules?

 

  1. Are you aware that current GATS negotiations also seek to impose new ‘disciplines’ on the kind of domestic regulation of our services that New Zealand and other WTO member governments can adopt and on the kind of subsidies we can apply to services, and what is your view of such moves?

 

  1. Have you been briefed by the Government on the position it is taking in these negotiations?

 

  1. Are you concerned that these rules effectively remove the authority of a government to implement policies that formed part of its electoral platform and which it has a democratic mandate to introduce?

 

  1. Have you asked the leader of your party and the spokespeople for portfolios affected by this agreement (such as education, health, culture, transport, local government, among others) how the GATS might affect current and future policy options?

 

  1. Are you concerned that the secretive negotiation of the GATS at the WTO amounts to executive law making that denies the right and responsibility of Parliament to scrutinize, analyze and vote on what amounts to entrenched legislation before negotiations have been concluded?

 

  1. Do you agree that the publication on 28 January 2003 of a ‘consultation’ document that claims to summarize the current complex GATS negotiations, with a deadline for submissions of four weeks, and a requirement to table the Government’s position in Geneva four weeks after that, denies New Zealanders the right to have an effective say on a vitally important development that will affect our lives for decades ahead?

 

  1. Do you agree that it is unacceptable for the New Zealand Government to enter into international economic treaties that could effectively prohibit it from adopting measures to honour the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document of this nation?

 

Given the urgency of this matter, I ask that you reply to this letter as a matter of urgency.

 

Yours sincerely,