Now that the initial euphoria surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has faded, the MSM has begun to ask serious questions about whether the deal is truly in Australia’s national interest.
Yesterday, ABC’s Business Editor, Ian Verrender, contended that Australia has been “sold out by the TPP sham”, which is all about “entrenching the interests of major corporations at the expense of ordinary citizens”:
It’s been variously lauded as a foundation stone for our future prosperity, a triumph for free trade and something about which we can boast to our children and grandchildren.
It is none of those things.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is more about protectionism than trade…
Driven by the United States, what measures were devoted to trade overwhelmingly were focused on exactly the opposite; extending monopoly powers of American corporations and maintaining tariffs and quotas for US farmers unable to compete in a free trade world.
Only a politician could be so cynical.
But it is the inclusion of the dreaded Investor State Dispute Settlement clauses that is of most concern for they are a direct assault on national sovereignty and the democratic rights of those who make up a nation…
For while free trade negotiations are conducted in secret, business lobby groups – and a host of other vested interests – are consulted. Judging by the proliferation of these clauses in trade deals, clearly they are high on the business lobby agenda…
Then they happily sign away their rights in a so-called trade pact…
Australia has a robust and open legal system that is independent of government and second to none.
It is one of the major attractions for foreign investors. There is absolutely no need and certainly no justification for subverting and diminishing its power.
If the TPP finally is ratified by all 12 member states, Australia will forfeit rights on a number of fronts. And highly litigious US corporations are likely to challenge on any number of issues, particularly around tax…
It’s a theme that has also been picked-up by Fairfax’s Peter Martin, who argues that Australia is selling its sovereignty for little in return:
Our own Productivity Commission is itching to model the effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It’s the sort of task it was set up to do. But for some reason governments don’t ask it to, so in this case we have to rely on the work of the prestigious Peterson Institute for International Economics in the United States. It is a supporter of the TPP… Yet it finds the economic benefits are slight.
It says 10 years on, the United States economy will be 0.4 per cent bigger as a result of the TPP. That’s it. It isn’t a boost in economic growth of 0.4 per cent a year (which would be substantial), it’s a total boost of 0.4 per cent after a decade, brought about by a barely perceptible lift in economic growth.
The effect on employment is zilch…
Australia fares much the same as the US. Our economic boost after 10 years is 0.5 per cent. Our manufacturing and mining industries shrink as a result of the deal and our agricultural and service industries grow. The net effect isn’t big…
But it comes at a cost. The cost is standardisation. In almost every case the TPP nations will be locked into the US way of doing things and denied the freedom to move to anything else. Copyright is an example. Right now the Productivity Commission is examining whether Australia’s copyright term really needs to last until 70 years after the death of the author. Regardless of what it finds, we will be locked into 70 years by the TPP (as well as by the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement). When Robb says the agreements require no changes to our intellectual property laws, he is telling only half the story. They also prevent changes to our intellectual property laws. They lock us into American standards…
And we are locked into a US-style investor-state dispute settlement scheme that will allow foreign companies (other than tobacco companies) to sue our governments in extraterritorial tribunals…
Is it all a fair price to pay? On balance I’d say not.
Of course, there are other costs associated with the TPP. As noted yesterday, the final intellectual property chapter would ban the circumvention of Digital Rights Management (DRM), as well as permit disproportionate penalties on users that are deemed to have breached copyright rules. It also requires signatories to hand over details of people that are alleged to have breached copyright, thus raising privacy concerns.
If these concerns aren’t bad enough, Australia, Canada and the US have now attempted to block the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Less-Developed Country (LDC) drug patent waiver because the US pharmaceutical lobby is unhappy that the protections afforded in the TPP were not stringent enough:
Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) meet this week in Geneva (15 October 2015 – 16 October 2015) to decide if the poorest countries on earth are exempt from WTO rules for pharmaceutical patents. The WTO’s TRIPS Council is expected to make a decision in respect of the request of the LDC Group’s request for indefinite exemption from TRIPS obligations on pharmaceutical patents…
Australia, Canada, Switzerland and the United States of America currently oppose the LDC Group’s request for an indefinite exemption – (extension until graduation) – from trade rules on pharmaceuticals. Informed sources have indicated that Australia received instructions from Canberra that it could not agree to an indefinite exemption…
On Friday, 9 October 2015, [US] Ambassador Punke met with representatives from 15 countries (including 5 Ambassadors) from the LDC Group. Ambassador Punke clearly indicated that the US could not agree on an indefinite exemption because certain stakeholders in the United States were quite upset with concessions made by USTR during the final stages of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Informed sources noted that the US indicated that “the TPP did not deliver as expected on IP and so we are under a lot of pressure not to give in more on IP”…
It is bad enough that the TPP succeeded in cementing intellectual property standards that will stymie access to medicines for up to 800 million people in the short term, and more if additional countries sign up in future. Now the US is using the TPP as an excuse to block LDC access to affordable medicines through the WTO, leveraging Australia and Canada in the process.
Overall, it’s hard to support an agreement that has been negotiated in secret and shifts power away from users/consumers towards the owners of intellectual property, most of whom reside in the US. Nor one that opens Australia up to litigation from US corporations.
