Last night, ABC’s Lateline dedicated an entire program to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – the US-led trade deal being negotiated between 12 Pacific Rim nations, including Australia.
The first segment showed how interests within the US political system – particularly the Democratic Party and unions – are opposed to the TPP, which threatens to scuttle the deal:
ELIZABETH WARREN, DEMOCRAT SENATOR (Dec. 2014): For big corporations, trade agreement time must feel like Christmas morning. Well think about it, they get special gifts that could never pass through Congress out in public.
PROTESTOR (Jan. 27): No TPP! No TPP! Democracy, not secrecy!
PROTESTOR II: It is an agreement that will dramatically restrict trade and exchange in a way that will crush generic production of pharmaceuticals and raise medical costs to the point that the world’s point will not be able to access life-saving medicines and people are likely to die…
MICHAEL VINCENT: Driven by anger at the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership, hundreds of union leaders have converged on Capitol Hill.
UNION LEADER: We travelled here together to ask one question: how dumb do you think we are?
MICHAEL VINCENT: Alongside union leaders, Democrat after Democrat took turns to denounce the President’s trade pact and stop any attempt to fast track it through Congress…
Union leaders have been going to the offices of every Democrat congressman and woman to deliver a blunt message: unions not only fill your election coffers, they provide the foot soldiers for your campaigns, now you need to help us, even if it means confronting the President…
DAVID NATHER, POLITICO: Well there’s certainly a stronger battle than the President has ever had with Democrats from his own party…
ROSA DELAURO: There are a lot of unanswered questions that we would have before anyone could begin to think about doing – providing a Trade Promotion Authority or fast track.
MICHAEL VINCENT: You’re quite prepared to keep this fight up then?
ROSA DELAURO: Oh, my gosh, yes, oh, yes, oh yes.
The second segment then highlighted the harm the TPP could do to Australia:
EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: In Australia, no-one outside the Government has seen the text of what’s being negotiated for the TPP…
GED KEARNEY, ACTU: There are community groups, there are church groups, there are a very wide range of people who have very serious concerns about the TPP.
TOM IGGULDEN [Reporter]: Those concerns escalated with the most recent WikiLeaks revelation of the confidential text of a controversial chapter of the draft deal. It includes what’s called an investor-state dispute resolution clause, giving multinational corporations a way to get compensation for government decisions that affect their bottom lines.
KYLA TIENHAARA, AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNI.: We can see that Australia is still holding out on not agreeing to have ISDS apply to Australia, but there’s a little – now there’s a little footnote there that basically shows that the Government is willing to negotiate on that point…
TOM IGGULDEN: The revelation confirmed the worst-held fears of those who oppose the deal. Investor clauses, it’s argued, give the biggest companies on the planet the power to trump governments’ ability to pass law and courts’ ability to enforce them.
GED KEARNEY: We are against trading away our sovereign rights, we are against trading away our health and our access to medicines, we’re against trading away environmental safeguards, our public services and absolutely 100 per cent we are against trading away Australian jobs.
TOM IGGULDEN: Last year the country’s top judge gave a speech about the potential impact of investor clauses, saying, “My concern is with the judicial system and its authority and finality of its decisions …”. In Chief Justice French’s words, investor clauses raise, “… potentially serious questions about the interaction of such an award with the domestic judicial system which may be called upon to enforce it”…
Investor clauses been increasingly common in free trade deals signed around the world over the last decade and so too have the number of legal cases against governments. About 550 are currently active by one estimate.
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s suing the Canadian Government for half a billion dollars over its drug patent rules.
Resources company Lone Pine is suing the Quebec Government for banning fracking in an environmentally-sensitive river valley.
Australia’s being sued too by cigarette maker Philip Morris, which is using an investor clause in old free trade agreement with Hong Kong to sue Canberra for damages over the Gillard Government’s plain-packaging legislation…
The final segment held a debate between trade agreement booster, Alan Oxley, who sees no potential downsides in the deal, and Greens senator, Peter Whish-Wilson, who is very concerned by the potential impacts of the TPP on pharmaceuticals and the government’s ability to regulate in the national interest:
EMMA ALBERICI: So why is there so much secrecy surrounding this deal, Alan Oxley?
ALAN OXLEY: The secrecy issue’s been way overblown. All trade agreements are negotiated in this way…
EMMA ALBERICI: Peter Whish-Wilson, does the secrecy raise any suspicions for you?
PETER WHISH WILSON: Absolutely and it’s the most common question I get, Emma, when people ask me about this trade deal: why is it secret? The logical conclusion you draw is that there’s something to hide here. In terms of this is the way trade deals have always been negotiated, the Senate now has an inquiry into the treaty process because these deals aren’t democratic. They’re dangerous and they need to be changed.
EMMA ALBERICI: Alan Oxley, who benefits from the deal?
ALAN OXLEY: The people whose markets are going to be opened…
EMMA ALBERICI: Senator.
PETER WHISH WILSON: Yeah, I think Alan raises probably the most important issue for me and that is: a lot of people don’t understand why this is even called a trade deal. It’s actually got very little to do with trade. This is all about changing laws and regulations and rules in different countries, synchronising the laws between countries to suit large US multinationals and other countries. There’s significant areas of public interest that are now going to be impacted by these so-called “new generation” trade deals. You gave a very good rundown earlier tonight around digital rights, around intellectual property, around environmental laws, around labour laws. There’s so many things that we could look at and pick out examples of where our sovereignty and our flexibility to govern this nation, both as parliamentarians and as an executive, are going to be limited by the scope of these deals. There is no evidence at all that any trade deal that we have negotiated in the past has delivered on the so-called benefits. They are overhyped, they are full of spin. The Government signs these deals and uses them as an opportunity to get a photo shoot. We can go back and look at, for example, the US free trade agreement, which you mentioned earlier. What’s that delivered for this country? There’s no evidence. We seem to have this ideological push to get these deals signed, but now, because they impact our laws of this country, they are dangerous…
And it’s – the first thing we need to do is actually make the text available. I’m fascinated that the US Congress have actually been able to see this and no-one in Australia, no elected parliamentarian has got to see any detail. The first thing we need to do is release that so that we can actually give it the scrutiny that it deserves…
EMMA ALBERICI: But on the issue of the investor state dispute settlement clause, isn’t there a very real risk that countries are going to lose that ability to properly regulate multinationals, that the biggest companies in the world will be able, through the TPP, to circumvent the powers of democratically-elected governments?
ALAN OXLEY: No, I don’t think so. I think this has also been severely misrepresented…
EMMA ALBERICI: Peter Whish-Wilson.
PETER WHISH WILSON: Emma, I think Alan’s probably been out of the game for a while and he probably should have done his homework before coming on national TV tonight. The Senate itself, which included the Labor Party, the Greens and all the crossbenchers, passed a motion for an order of production of documents demanding that the Federal Government, the Trade Minister Andrew Robb, actually release the details of the TPP text before it is signed. So, this was compelled by the Australian Senate. This is not just the Greens talking here. Secondly, on the issue of ISDS: we had a very comprehensive Senate inquiry looking at this. I put up a bill, the Greens put up a bill to ban ISDS. We don’t want to see them in trade deals. Like I said before, they’re not necessary, they add nothing at all. There’s no evidence to show they bring increased investment flows between countries. They’re dangerous, they’re risky. The Productivity Commission has raised this, a number of expert commentators have raised this. And the evidence we received right across the board from hundreds of experts, most of them legal experts from around the world, told us to scrap these and to get rid of them…
Well done ABC for shining a bright light on this dangerous and secretive agreement.
