Just as the 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal looks set to die a quiet death, Australia has headed into a new secretive 16-member mega trade pact called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). From Peter Martin:
The lesser known RCEP – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership – would have 16 members including China, accounting for half of the world’s population.
Leaked chapters of the draft agreement contain the same sort of investor-state dispute settlement procedures as the TPP. Although the Foreign Affairs website doesn’t say so, our assistant trade minister Keith Pitt slipped into the Philippines on Friday to advance the negotiations.
Whereas in the TPP, Australia’s delegations took community as well as business groups into its confidence, so far with the RCEP it’s only been business groups. Patricia Ranald of the Fair Trade and Investment Network says that might be because, at least to start with, the US is excluded. It’s a relatively open democracy. China, Indonesia, Malaysia and other RCEP members are not.
Just as with the TPP, our negotiators are releasing no texts and submitting none of what’s proposed to cost-benefit analysis. There’s every chance it will cut across rather than intermesh with the TPP and our other trade agreements. There’s every chance we won’t be told until it’s too late.
Here we go again: another secretive mega trade deal that will open Australian taxpayers up to legal challenges from multinationals, thus potentially endangering public health safeguards, environmental protections and workers’ rights, as well as risking ”regulatory chill” – a phenomenon whereby the government reverses or fails to pursue important regulations due to fear of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) lawsuits.
I will remind readers that the Productivity Commission (PC) has previously claimed that Australia’s trade negotiations have been “characterised by a lack of transparent and robust analysis, a vacuum consequently filled at times by misleading claims”, and has called on the “final text of an agreement to be rigorously analysed before signing”.
The PC has also explicitly requested that the government “seek to avoid the inclusion of Investors-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in bilateral and regional trade agreements that grant foreign investors in Australia substantive or procedural rights greater than those enjoyed by Australian investors”, as well as cautioned against agreeing to tighter intellectual property rules:
“The history of IP arrangements being addressed in preferential trade deals is not good. Indeed, to the extent that the return to IP holders awarded by more stringent IP laws outweighed the benefits to the broader economy, the provision would also impose a net cost on both partners, lowering trading and growth potential across the bloc”.
Of course, the last thing this government wants is “transparent and robust” processes. So watch on as the Australian public is kept completely in the dark on the RCEP, the agreement is signed, and the deal is rammed through parliament without a thorough assessment by the PC.
