Featherston march to protest TPPA

A Featherston march protesting the TPPA starts at 11am Saturday outside the Royal Hotel on Fitzherbert St, at the southern end of the town. FILE PHOTO

New Zealanders opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) will be protesting on streets all over the country tomorrow, including a march in Featherston.

The Featherston rally starts at 11am outside the Royal Hotel on Fitzherbert St, at the southern end of the town.

Rally-goers are to make their own banners and the group will march to the War Memorial.

Activist Claire Bleakley, from Featherston, said the rallies were to express concerns over the proposed agreement and to pressure the Government to walk away from signing it.

"The TPPA will lose our sovereignty. It will make medicines more expensive and it's going to affect how environmental programmes are run, it will threaten any future environmental laws," she said.

"Our concerns are our loss of rights to medicines, agriculture and copyright laws and the fact that our Government, and possibly councils, can be sued in international courts if investor corporations decide that their profits are affected by the laws that are made."

The Government is negotiating an international treaty with 11 other Pacific Rim countries. The settlement of the treaty is a primary goal of the Obama administration.

Activists are concerned the text of the treaty has not been made public and Parliament will not be able to see the agreement until it has been signed. "The TPPA will threaten little and big communities throughout New Zealand," said Mrs Bleakley.