Productivity Commission (PC) chairman, Peter Harris, has taken a swipe at Australia’s growing list of bilateral ‘free trade agreements’ (FTAs), describing them as “generally pretty poor public policy” in a speech delivered to the European Australian Business Council (EABC):
As most of you know well, the Commission strongly prefers that barriers to trade are reduced in the kind of comprehensive shift that involves either multilateral or unilateral elimination of what are after all significant burdens on industries and consumers alike.
