National hates transparency

Today Labour tried to put forward a Parliamentary motion calling on the government to release the draft text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement before signing it, on the simple democratic grounds that the public deserved to know what agreements were being made in our name.

National refused to.

The upshot: National hates transparency. It also hates democracy. Rather than negotiating openly and transparently with a clear and ongoing mandate from the public about what it is allowed to give away, it wants to do so in secret, so as to present us with a fait accompli, in the manner of a king.

Fuck that. A deal made in secret, on which we have no input, let alone opportunity to consent, is simply not legitimate. Its time we tore down this entire rotten way of doing foreign policy, and replaced it with a democratic one: open, transparent, and with ratification by the people, not Parliament. If the government can't convince us to endorce the deals its been making, then it has no business making them. It's that simple.