Medicine and land will be more expensive if a Pacific Rim trade deal passes, a protest organiser says. <\/p>\n
Temuka woman Abbeyrose Neho is organising a protest on Timaru's Piazza on November 8 against New Zealand joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. <\/p>\n
Neho, 20, said subsidised medicine would be threatened by the proposed 12-country trade deal. <\/p>\n
Diplomats have been negotiating the text of the agreement since 2010. <\/p>\n
Neho, a Presbyterian Support worker, social work student and Greenpeace activist, said leaked negotiating texts showed the New Zealand Government's single-buyer drug agency, Pharmac, was under threat from foreign business interests. <\/p>\n
She knew several diabetics and thought their medicine could become more expensive if the deal passed. <\/p>\n
She also believes the deal will limit government restrictions on oil drilling and foreigners buying land and fears environmental damage and higher property prices will result. <\/p>\n
Timaru Grey Power president Denise Fitzgerald said some local members had concerns about the effect a deal would have on Pharmac, as well as a general feeling of disquiet about it because it had been so hush-hush. <\/p>\n
She would be attending the protest, she said. <\/p>\n
Grey Power's national body has echoed Christchurch psychiatrist Dr Erik Monasterio's concerns the deal could remove much of Pharmac's power to control medicine costs. <\/p>\n
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