The Turnbull Government is reportedly “actively working” to resurrect the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement minus the United States, according to the Australian Government Response to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade committee’s report on the proposed TPP agreement, released yesterday.
Below are the main items [apologies for the screen captures – cannot copy text]:
As you can see, the Turnbull Government has flatly rejected The Greens’ call to preclude Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses from being included in future FTAs, as well as allowing “greater transparency, including independent assessments of proposed agreements”.
This is pathetic from the Government. ISDS opens the door to multinational companies suing the Australian Government for implementing rules against their interests (e.g. on environmental, health and safety grounds). Put bluntly, there is no valid reason to include such clauses in trade agreements and diluting national sovereignty in the process.
Greater oversight and scrutiny of FTAs is also much needed.
The Productivity Commission (PC) has previously called on the texts of Australia’s trade deals to be publicly released for scrutiny before they are signed:
The emerging and growing potential for trade preferences to impose net costs on the community presents a compelling case for the final text of an agreement to be rigorously analysed before signing. Analysis undertaken for the Japan-Australia agreement reveals a wide and concerning gap compared to the Commission’s view of rigorous assessment.
Similarly, a Parliamentary committee also slammed the lack of adequate “oversight and scrutiny” pertaining to the TPP, and lamented that “parliament is faced with an all-or-nothing choice” on whether or not to approve trade agreements and can only officially review trade laws once they have officially passed.
While DFAT claimed that it consulted widely on the TPP, these consultations were largely a sham.
The original TPP was an incredibly complex agreement whose text numbered some 6,000 pages and 30 chapters. It was far too complex for the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) to comprehensively review and required expert scrutiny from the PC prior to any parliamentary vote to ratify the agreement.
With the US now out of the picture – who was the nation driving ghastly clauses like ISDS – there is at least the opportunity for a more friendly deal to be negotiated between the remaining member countries. But this requires transparency, not the opaque and secretive processes that have been used thus far in Australia’s FTA negotiations.
Now watch on as the Coalition tries to sell us down the river yet again.