Ed Gannon – publisher of The Weekly Times’ – came out hard yesterday demanding that federal Labor support the newly signed Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), dubbed by MB as TPP 2.0:
HERE we go again. Once more, we are on the cusp of securing a major trade deal that will bring enormous benefits to all Australians, particularly farmers.
And once again, we have the federal Opposition playing politics that could not only stymie the progress of the trade agreement but also send a pretty clear message to the world that Australia values politics over progress.
The recent surprise announcement that 11 Pacific Rim countries — Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Peru, Japan, Mexico, Chile, Singapore, Brunei and a wavering Canada — have agreed to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (a dreadful name that feels like it belongs in North Korea) was greeted with near-unanimous support from farmers, business and the general public.
But not so the federal Labor Party.
Instead, it dodged and weaved over whether it would support it…
We can expect better access for our beef, dairy, wheat and barley into Mexico and Canada, more cheese, wheat and sugar exports to Japan, and seafood into Vietnam and Peru…
Now that the deal has been agreed upon and is due to be signed in March — without the US — he looks like a dill.
Shorten has two options.
To oppose the new TPP would make him a wrecker and severely dent his hopes of becoming prime minister.
But to support the deal would be an admission he was wrong.
Bill, for the good of the nation, choose the latter and get out of the way.
Here’s a question for you Ed Gannon: given the precise chapters of TPP 2.0 have not yet been released, why should Labor agree to support it?
All we have received so far is some wafer thin details via a joint media release from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Trade Minister Steve Ciobo, which explicitly stated that “the text of the agreement is now undergoing a legal review and translation and will be made public on a date to be agreed by all parties”. So Ed Gannon, you are demanding that Labor support the deal sight unseen. Why should it do that?
We already know that the original TPP was incredibly complex and contained some 6000-pages and 30 chapters, including several worrying chapters around patent and copyright extensions, as well as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). Surely, then, prudence dictates that Parliament should spend considerable time analysing and scrutinising TPP 2.0 to ensure there aren’t any gremlins buried within the text before endorsing and ratifying the deal?
In any event, if the TPP 2.0 is going to be so awesome, as claimed by Gannon, then he shouldn’t have any problem with the Productivity Commission (PC) assessing the agreement for its economy-wide impacts, as demanded by Labor? This would confirm whether TPP 2.0 would deliver net benefits to all Australians, rather than only to certain narrow sectors (like agriculture).
Or is it that Gannon knows deep down that TPP 2.0, like many recent trade deals, is likely to be a dud for Australians as a whole, and is afraid the PC will expose it? After all, the PC has previously lamented 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”.
Whatever the case, forging ahead with trade deals like TPP 2.0 in an ad hoc evidence-free, manner for political rather than economic reasons, and without due regard for longer-term consequences, is a recipe for poor outcomes.
Labor is right to take a cautious approach and demand due process.
