Abbott Government blocks trade deal transparency showing contempt for Senate and Australian people
09 Dec 2013 | Peter Whish-Wilson
Today Australian Greens spokesperson on trade, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, was fiercely critical of the Abbott Government's refusal to abide by the will of the Senate and publicly release the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) text.
"Last week the Greens were successful in moving a motion through the Senate which ordered the production and public release of the secret TPPA trade deal," said Senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
"This was a win for every Australian who demanded to know how their farm, small business, cost of medicines, labour rights, internet freedoms, and local environment could be effected by this Nation's biggest ever trade negotiation - a negotiation happening in secret under intense pressure from the United States Government, US corporations, and their interests.
"But the Minister for Finance, Mathias Cormann, has now written to the Senate on behalf of the Government and refused to release the text of the TPPA trade deal.
"What this letter says is that the Abbott Government will not abide by the will of the Senate to allow all Australians the right to know how the TPPA trade deal will affect their lives and businesses because the United States has not said it is OK to do so.
"The Abbott Government has shown contempt for the Senate and the Australian people.
"Our legitimate role in opposition is to scrutinise any trade deal to ensure it's more than just ‘free' but is also ‘fair' for our nation.
"There is no such thing as 'free trade' in the real world - to get something we have to give something up and there will be winners and there will be losers.
"The question is who gets to pick the winners and who becomes the losers in Australia?
"Do the Australian people have a say or will US corporations pick who wins and who loses?
"If we want honesty in politics in Australia we need transparency in Parliament, and today I'm asking Tony Abbott again - if he has nothing nasty to hide - to come clean and release the final draft for public scrutiny prior to it being stamped and sealed by Cabinet.
"The Greens will continue to use all measures available in the Senate to pursue the collation on this issue," Senator Whish-Wilson concluded.
7 years after starting talks, Japan and Australia agreed this week to set up an Economic Partnership Agreement. The deal will eventually halve Japanese tariffs on Australian beef. Meanwhile, tariffs remain a key obstacle blocking a deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). NHK Executive Commentator Hiroki Ose explains how the Japan-Australia pact could affect negotiations on the regional forum.
By Shinzo Abe Philippine Daily Inquirer 12:05 am | Friday, April 25th, 2014
TOKYO—US President Barack Obama is visiting Tokyo at a unique moment in my country’s history, with Japan’s economy moving onto a stable new growth path that will take full advantage of its geographic position. Japan no longer considers itself the “Far” East; rather, we are at the very center of the Pacific Rim, and a neighbor to the world’s growth center stretching from Southeast Asia to India.
There can be little doubt that this growth center will continue to propel Japan’s economy for the foreseeable future. Japanese direct investment is expanding in Vietnam and India, for example, which will boost demand for Japanese machine tools and capital goods.
But, to maximize its opportunities, Japan must open its economy further and become a country that actively incorporates capital, human resources, and wisdom from abroad. Japan must be a country capable of growing by channeling the vitality of a growing Asia.
To this end, we have sharply accelerated the pace of negotiation s on economic partnership agreements, or EPAs, with various partners around the world. Earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and I reached agreement in principle on a Japan-Australia EPA. Next in line is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which would unite 12 countries in the world’s largest trading area.
Both Japan and the United States attach great importance to rules, uphold the principles of freedom and democracy, and possess the most advanced technologies and industries. We intend to overcome our differences and together forge, in the form of the TPP, a 21st-century economic order for Asia and the Pacific that will serve as an unshakable foundation for growth.
My government is also pushing hard to realize an EPA with the European Union. Given that the United States and the European Union already are engaged in trade talks, an EPA between Japan and the European Union, coupled with the TPP, will give rise to a truly immense market—a single enormous growth engine that will benefit the entire global economy.
But Japan’s economic frontiers extend well beyond Asia and the Pacific, to Latin America and Africa—more reason to abandon our long-held inward-looking perspective. A large number of highly motivated and ambitious young people have already come to Japan from around the world, especially from neighboring Asian countries, to study or work. Japan must remain their hope. We must not be disrespectful of them, and our arms must always be wide open toward them. Japan, I believe, is that kind of country.
In the near future, we will designate six National Strategic Economic Growth Areas—Tokyo, Kansai, Okinawa Prefecture, and the cities of Niigata, Yabu, and Fukuoka—to serve as models for the rest of the country. In healthcare, education, agriculture, and employment practices, we are identifying policies and practices that have fallen out of step with today’s needs, and we will move quickly to reform them. The National Strategic Economic Growth Areas will insert the probe of reform down into our regulatory system, which has hardened into bedrock.
Another habit that the Japanese must change is our pervasive male-oriented thinking. We have already resolved to ensure that at least 30 percent of all personnel hired by the national government are women. I am also now urging publicly traded companies to add at least one woman as a board member. Once we reach the point at which it is no longer news to have a woman or a non-Japanese serving as a CEO, Japan will have reinvented itself and recovered its true spirit of risk-taking and innovation.
“Womenomics” tells us that a society in which women are dynamically engaged will also have a higher birth rate. My government intends to
address, urgently, the need to expand daycare facilities and other such infrastructure as the foundation for a society that benefits from all of its members’ skills and talents.
We are fully capable of change; indeed, we relish it, as the world will see in the months and years to come. But some things about Japan are unchanging, and some must not be changed.
One of these is our track record, which supports our ambition to be a “proactive contributor to peace.” Japan has made more than its fair share of financial contributions to the United Nations and its organizations, both historically and today. And our embrace of our global responsibilities extends to Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Members of the Self-Defense Forces displayed exemplary cooperation with the US and Australian armed forces in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, and they have earned deep appreciation and respect everywhere they have been deployed, including Haiti, Indonesia, and most recently, the Philippines.
To make a proactive contribution to peace means that Japan will bear its own share of responsibility for assuring the security that supports global prosperity and stability. Working alongside countries with which we share common values and interests, we will safeguard and cultivate international public goods, ranging from space and cyberspace to the skies and the seas.
As the world will see during Obama’s visit, Japan is back and thriving. And its return is indispensable for global stability and prosperity.
Under the secretive Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, Australia could be forced to pay foreign corporations not to dig up or destroy its coastline or native forests, writes Tom Warne-Smith.
What would you do if an international company decided to stick a toxic waste dump next to your house? Lodging an objection with your council is a good start - but what if the company could claim millions of dollars in damages if the council said no?
Get ready, because the laws that let this happen are coming to Australia too.
A range of experts have recently highlighted the alarming potential consequences of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). This 'free trade' agreement between countries will more than likely contain secretive Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses, allowing foreign companies to sue national governments when changes to domestic laws affect the company's investments, and so limiting governments in the regulations they can make to protect the public.
A lot has already been said about the disastrous effects of these clauses on public health initiatives, like plain packaging for cigarettes. While the thought of paying Philip Morris so Australia can have a law to protect the health of Australians is bad enough, the effects on our environment could also be devastating.
When Germany's Hamburg Environmental Authority issued a licence imposing water quality standards on a coal-fired power plant, energy giant Vattenfall commenced investor-state arbitration against the German government, seeking about €1.4 billion, plus arbitration costs and interest. Ultimately Germany and Vattenfall settled the dispute, with Germany agreeing to weaken environmental standards in favour of the corporation. Vattenfall has now started proceedings claiming a reported €3.7 billion in compensation as a result of the German government's decision to phase out nuclear power.
Under Australian federal environmental law there are a number of provisions which allow our environment minister to vary or revoke approvals for projects like mines in certain circumstances, such as when there is new evidence about the environmental effects. An Australian licence holder has to accept the minister's decision. But under the new rules, an international investor would be able to seek compensation for any loss of profits from the project.
This opens up a legal nightmare. Imagine that there's been a bushfire, and an endangered Australian species has suffered a huge loss of habitat. If any Australian government then wanted to change a permit to stop a foreign company from clearing habitat that had become vital to the survival of this species, we would have to pay the company 'compensation'. Similarly, if our government made a decision to protect a rural community from coal seam gas extraction, a foreign investor could potentially take Australia to court and be compensated for their loss of earnings.
Frighteningly, all of this is happening in secret. We don't know exactly what the TPP will contain. Around the world, no one knows the full extent of the impact that ISDS clauses have had, because when an investor-state case goes ahead, the arbitration decisions are often kept secret. What we do know is that simply having these clauses in place creates the significant risk of 'regulatory chill'; a reluctance by governments to act because of the risk of an investor-state dispute. Even in claims when the investor corporations are unsuccessful, governments often end up having to pay half the cost of the arbitration and their own legal expenses.
Worse still, the liability created by ISDS clauses continues even if we decide the treaty is a bad idea after all. While our government could subsequently withdraw from the treaty, as other governments have commenced doing after losing ISDS disputes, the companies that had already invested would continue to be protected by the ISDS for typically another 20 years.
The potential benefits from these clauses to Australians are very limited. Australian businesses have apparently never used the ISDS provisions in Australian treaties. The Productivity Commission, in a 2010 report into ISDS clauses .. http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/104203/trade-agreements-report.pdf , recommended that our government "avoid the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions in [international agreements] that grant foreign investors in Australia substantive or procedural rights greater than those enjoyed by Australian investors" - advice that the Abbott Government appears to be ignoring in the TPP negotiations.
Do we really want to create an Australia where we have to pay a foreign corporation not to dig up or destroy our coastline or native forests? Our laws should protect Australians and the places we love - not the profits of foreign multinationals.
Tom Warne-Smith is a Policy & Law Reform lawyer at the Environment Defenders Office (Victoria). View his full profile here.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed regional free trade agreement that is currently being negotiated by twelve countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
