Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, has today announced that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement – the proposed regional trade deal between 12 Pacific Rim countries, including Australia – will likely be concluded by 2015:
Mr Robb said Australia’s work in securing bilateral free trade deals with Japan and Korea had provided a “pathway” to securing the TPP.
“I think we can get the TPP next year,” he told AAP.
“It’s a very complicated thing and I think we have probably negotiated 80 per cent.
“The last 20 per cent is largely market access and we’ve said all along unless there is a decent market access result, we are not interested.”
I remain of the view that the TPP would not be in Australia’s best interest and that we should pull-out of the negotiations.
If the TPP goes ahead, it would likely establish a US-style regional regulatory framework that meets the demands of its major export industries, including pharmaceutical and digital, but leaves other trade partners worse-off.
The draft chapter on intellectual property rights, revealed by WikiLeaks, included a “Christmas wishlist” for pharmaceutical companies, including the proposal to extend patent protection and strengthen monopolies on clinical data. As part of the deal, the US is reportedly seeking patents for “new forms” of known substances, as well as on new uses on old medicines – a proposal which would lead to “evergreening”, whereby patents can be renewed continuously.
It’s a huge risk to Australia’s world class public health system, which risks cost blowouts via reduced access to cheaper generic drugs and reduced rights for the government to regulate medicine prices. It also risks stifling innovation in the event that patent terms are extended too far.
The US is also seeking to insert an Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause into the agreement, which could give authority to major corporations to challenge laws made by governments in the national interest in international courts of arbitration. So effectively, US companies would be allowed to sue the Australian Government under international law – a move that is being pursued by Philip Morris against Australia on plain packaging and graphic warnings for cigarettes.
The draft agreement also sought to place more restrictions on internet users by forcing ISPs to cooperate with copyright holders and terminating the accounts of repeat infringers. This is despite the High Court of Australia ruling that an ISPs inaction could not be taken as authorisation of a copyright infringement.
Finally, the US is opposing a proposal that would allow the circumvention of technology that restricts products to certain regions, even though this was recommended by the Australian parliament’s Inquiry into IT Pricing, as well as opposing the parallel importation of goods made under authorisation in other countries, which acts to maintain higher prices.
For these reasons, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, has posted an open letter questioning negotiators’ secrecy and warning about “grave risks on all sorts of topics” posed by the TPP, as well as claiming that it contains “many of the worst features of the worst laws in the TPP countries, making needed reforms extremely difficult if not impossible”.
As noted previously, Australia risks being sold-out under the TPP for short-term politically gain, in the process placing at risk our world class health system and our ability to craft health policy, as well as raising the cost of digital imports.
