New Greens spokesperson for trade, Sarah Hanson-Young, has insisted on more transperency and scrutiny of so-called free trade agreements (FTAs) and called for more protections for foreign workers brought into Australia under these deals. From The AFR:
Senator Hanson-Young has told The Australian Financial Review she wants to build support for a new Senate committee to look into the costs and benefits of trade deals…
“This issue of trade is where we can really tighten the screws. We want transparency and we want to get rid of the secrecy and we want a genuine discussion about the cost-benefit analysis, whether it’s the TPP [Trans Pacific Partnership] or other bilateral trade agreements.”
“I think there’ll be space there to work across party lines towards a situation where we can start to blow open the doors on what has been a really undemocratic and archaic system,” she said…
She insisted she was not against trade deals, but said they needed to be rid of investor-state dispute settlement clauses – included in seven free trade agreements – which allowed, for example, Philip Morris to challenge Australia’s tobacco plain-packaging laws…
Senator Hanson-Young suggested Australia also needed to consider conditions for foreign workers in trade negotiations, saying the nation has a “responsibility” not to let workers in other countries be exploited.
Good stuff. I have outlined many of the pitfalls in Australia’s FTA negotiations previously, so I won’t elaborate here.
The core problem relates to insufficient due process in relation to how agreements are negotiated. That is, there is no rigorous process in place to ensure that Australia maximises the benefits from FTAs and minimises their costs.
Rather than the current ad hoc, evidence free, approach towards FTAs, I would urge Ms Hanson-Young and her fellow Senate cross-benchers to insist that the Productivity Commission be engaged to analyse trade deals for their equity and efficiency impacts both before and after negotiations are completed.
