It's been over ten years since I've seriously sat down and scrutinised /campaigned against free trade agreements, so preparing for this meeting revived some of the old passion. I was reminded of the importance of educating and mobilising the public and holding politicians to account on these extremely important issues. Hopefully this blog post explains a little of what I learned when I did a bit of research for the meeting.
Julie Owens, Labor member for Parramatta and my local member is a very approachable person, and someone who is less of a hack than many politicians.
As a former spokesperson for the independent record industry she also is familiar with the issues surrounding copyright laws and the impact that demands to extend copyright can have on creativity and innovation (such as those in the US Free Trade Agreement which allowed drug companies to extend patents to 25 years, increasing the cost of drugs shouldered by the Australian government pharmaceutical benefits scheme by delaying generics manufacturing).
Owens expressed considerable concern about the investor-state provisions in the TPP. She said that after the election Labor will be reviewing Australia's participation in all trade agreements that include investor-state provisions. [I find this surprising as the tone of Penny Wong's media statements on trade agreements tend to be upbeat in relation to trade agreements, endorsing their broad intention, giving an impression that she thinks they are generally good and only need minor tweaking around the edges. Also I wonder about the exit clauses of these agreements and whether there are penalties for exiting]
This is great to hear but it also reveals a weakness in Australian campaigns against the multilateral and bilateral trade agreements: they have been lopsided in focusing critical analysis on the danger of corporations suing governments (investor-state dispute provisions), to the detriment of broader analysis of the agenda of these trade agreements since the 1990s, which is about tying governments' hands fiscally and politically from initiating broad reaching policies that seek to limit, direct or restrict the activities of corporations, or to preference the local scale or to government-owned industries in procurement or similar government decisions.
While Australians rightly celebrate the successful defence of Australia's plain packaging tobacco laws after a challenge brought by Hong Kong via investor-state provisions from a bilateral 1993 Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, the win was obtained at great cost to the Australian citizen, engaging a small army of lawyers, and may still cause a "chilling effect" in which policy makers may think twice before implementing legislation which for example limits the power of the sugar industry over advertising or dietary guidelines. Furthermore, this victory - while an important symbol as Australia's first in investor-state disputes- appears to be a drop in the ocean in the broader scene of trade disputes.
The more common enforcement mechanism in trade agreements is a tribunal in which governments make a complaint about another government's laws.
There are four other countries that have similar complaints in the works against Australian plain packaging legislation via state-state disputes processes: As Croakey reports: "Currently Australia is facing disputes by Honduras, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Indonesia over tobacco plain packaging, using the state-to-state dispute settlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization." Australian citizens will again have to shoulder the legal cost for this defence.
The US Trade Department has a large section entirely devoted to initiating international disputes on behalf of their corporations.
In February the US won a dispute versus India on solar panel manufacturing, that will potentially cost the Indian solar industry US $100 billion, and will cost the Indian people jobs which are being generated on the back of a Domestic Content Requirement that requires the solar panels to be in part manufactured in India.
India currently has a similar installed amount of solar capacity to Australia: almost 5000 MW, and is rapidly expanding capacity as part of their "Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission" policy: Their ambitious 2022 target (decided in 2009) was previously 20000 MW, but now they have supercharged this target, aiming for 100 000 MW (or 20 times the current installed capacity) by 2022.
We can see in examples such as this ways in which the goal of addressing climate change in a way that prioritises generating local jobs can conflict fundamentally with international trade agreements. Thus movements seeking transformative change in solving climate change or other deep-rooted social issues must prioritise also analysis and mobilisation against international trade agreements in order to pursue their goals.
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[I also heard from a friend yesterday that recently leaked information about the TPP suggests that the disputes mechanism will apply retrospectively to any legislation- not just new laws- I haven't had the time to check up on this.]
** At the end of the meeting, Julie Owens agreed to come along to an election forum on June 14, 7pm at the Commercial Hotel in Parramatta.**
