Haydon Dennison Thats the crux of it, really - whatever governments do, it must be for the good of the people they are elected to serve. Its why they are given the powers they have, and its why people at least notionally have the right to hold them accountable for their actions both at elections and through review mechanisms such as the courts. This general structural notion has been stretched greatly already - dodgy election process for the Senate ruins that mechanism of accountability, and the difficulty in bringing a successful case against the government limits against that also - but most everything about the TPP shows up how completely divorced from such ideas of governmental structure and purpose we are currently. As Senator Di Natale points out, ISDS provisions represent an elevation of the corporate sphere (i.e., private interests with no direct control by the people) to permit it to challenge decisions by governments that are said to be made in the public interest - to allow the private to potentially trump the public. Such provisions would have a chilling effect on regulatory legislation and effectively make it so that taxpayers must subsidise private losses. The public subservient to private interests. Its disturbing how willing we seem to be as a nation to sell ourselves, our sovereignty and the principles underlying our governmental system out to multinational corporations for a fleeting financial fillip...
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 22:59:41 +0000
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