[asia-apec 691] NZ Employers Federation Target of Friday 25th MAI Protest

[Gatt Watchdog]

GATT Watchdog
PO Box 1905
Christchurch
AOTEAROA (NZ)

MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE

23 September 1998

NZ EMPLOYERS FEDERATION TARGET OF FRIDAY 25th MAI PROTEST

The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) and the New Zealand
Employers Federation are the targets of a protest outside the
Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce at 57 Kilmore Street,
Christchurch at 12pm, Friday 25th September as part of an
International Week of Action Against the MAI.  Other actions
opposing the MAI are planned for Wellington and Auckland the same
day.  The Week of Action, from 21 to 28 September, includes
anti-MAI activities in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada,
Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa,
Switzerland, the UK, and the USA.  The MAI is a controversial
agreement being negotiated among the 29 OECD nations and described
as a bill of rights and freedoms for big business by many
non-governmental organisations, unions, and people's organisations
worldwide.

Street theatre involving a giant "MAI maggot" will accompany the
protest.  A copy of the draft MAI will be burnt, and a letter
handed to the Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce.  GATT
Watchdog calls on the Employers Federation and the Canterbury
Employers' Chamber of Commerce "to join the great majority of
people, both in NZ and internationally, who see the MAI for the
dangerous nonsense that it is".

"Contrary to widespread media and popular belief, the MAI is not
dead,", said a GATT Watchdog spokesperson, Aziz Choudry.

"Big business, particularly the transnational corporations
dominating the global economy, is the driving force behind the MAI.
The OECD Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) has been
consulted throughout the negotiations for business and industry
input.  The Employers Federation is New Zealand's official
representative on BIAC.  We're calling on it to front up to and
rethink its role in promoting this fundamentally flawed agreement,
especially now it seems that negotiations will be back on track in
mid-October."

He says that any perceived coolness of the New Zealand government
towards the MAI is no cause for celebration for the treaty's
opponents.  "Its qualms are about the MAI not going far enough
in stripping away governments' abilities to regulate foreign
investment, and the numerous exceptions which continue to threaten
it being concluded.  They're not due to any concerns about the
social, political, economic and environmental costs that this
binding agreement would have."

He said that OECD ministers had agreed to a 6-month "pause" in
negotiations, but the resumption of MAI negotiations in October is
expected to lead to a further meeting in April 1999 with the aim
of concluding the MAI before the World Trade Organisation (WTO)
launches its next trade liberalisation round.

He said that at the April 28th OECD Ministerial Meeting Ministers
decided on a six-month "period of assessment and further
consultation between the negotiating parties and with interested
parts of their societies".  The Ministerial Statement also stated
that "[m]inisters are committed to a transparent negotiating
process and to active public discussion on the issues at stake in
the negotiations."

"The Shipley MAI-nority government has failed to honour such
commitments.  Pressure needs to be kept on them over the MAI, but
we're also looking to the Employers Federation to come clean about
its involvement in supporting this corporate greed treaty,"
commented Mr Choudry.

"In a recent letter to GATT Watchdog, Treasurer Bill Birch
confirmed information which we received last month from an
overseas contact that in July and August, officials from Ministry
of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Treasury met with senior
counterparts from Canada and Australia to discuss their
governments' views on the MAI.  The government would prefer to
continue to participate in MAI talks in secrecy, rather than risk
the same level of political embarrassment and outrage that it
faced when this agreement was exposed last year."

Mr Choudry warned that under the MAI, a foreign investor could sue
the government of any signatory country if it feels that it has
been disadvantaged in an actual or planned investment.

"The 'expropriation' and 'investor dispute settlement' provisions
of the MAI are based on provisions in NAFTA (North American Free
Trade Agreement) which allows for such cases to be conducted in
secret.  In July, Canadians were horrified to learn that the
federal government paid US petrochemical corporation Ethyl Corp US
$13 miillion for lost business over a briefly banned fuel additive
MMT, in exchange for dropping a legal case against Ottawa which
claimed that the federal government had broken its NAFTA
obligations in imposing the ban."

"Under the MAI such antidemocratic standover tactics by powerful
companies fixated on making a fast buck and little else will
snowball and spread throughout the 29 OECD countries.  Big
business will effectively use the MAI to bully governments into
only passing laws which favour them.  This is outrageous," he
concluded.  "We need to crush the MAI before it crushes us."

For further comment, contact Aziz Choudry, GATT Watchdog at (03)
3662803