Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is clear that Labor has a very proud track record in reducing the barriers to trade. Indeed it was the Whitlam and then the Hawke-Keating governments that transformed the Australian economy and removed much of the barrier to trade. We are proudly a trading nation. Exports and imports account for around 40 per cent of Australia's GDP. That means that trade is inextricably tied up with Australian jobs. Western Australians understand this even more, because our exports and imports account for around 60 per cent of the gross state product in Western Australia. So we know that trade benefits working people. It contributes to economic growth and it provides benefits by improving productivity. It opens our community up for better paid and more rewarding and secure jobs, and it benefits working people by delivering lower prices and greater choice for the community. It also improves interdependency in the world, which of course increases security for all.

But being pro-trade does not mean that we cannot have a sophisticated conversation about what we can afford to trade away. In the three free trade agreements that have been approved to date there are areas that do cause us concern. The approval of the investor-state dispute resolution provisions are of grave concern to us. We recognise that we are giving investors in other countries greater rights than companies in Australia have to sue government for changes in policy. We are particularly concerned about the asymmetrical labour market provisions that we find in agreements, particularly in the Korean and the Japanese free trade agreements, where there is absolutely no labour market testing for companies wanting to bring people into Australia but the reverse is not the case. Both Japan and Korea retain the right to control the introduction of Australian workers through restrictions on labour market testing.

Also, while the term 'contractual service provider' is used in both the Korean and the Japanese agreements, its definition varies significantly depending on the country where the workers are from. Generally speaking when we go through that agreement we see very different sets of rights applying. We are very concerned about the impact the ISDS—the investor-state dispute resolution provisions—will have on the prices of medicines. Indeed the leaks coming out in relation to the TPP recently show that there will be a number of ways in which the TPP can threaten affordable prices of medicines in Australia and will limit our capacity to continue to deliver those benefits for our community. Food labelling is also clearly shown to be a problem in some of these provisions. It is quite possible that Australia could be sued if it introduced labelling of food for source and place of manufacture if a foreign company sees that its sales drop after that labelling is introduced.

Very interestingly, over the weekend the Republican-dominated US congress refused to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. They recognise that there are real challenges in these agreements that we must be very careful about. I am concerned that in this parliament we are seeing a dumbing-down of the debate. If we raise concerns about the detail, about the investor-state dispute provisions or about the free movement of people, we are deemed to be anti-trade. This is not how we need to run our country in the 21st century. We need to be capable of having a sophisticated and detailed debate rather than this boosterism that says you that you are pro-trade or you are anti-trade. We want to have trade. We want to open up those barriers. But we are not prepared to sacrifice the long-term interests of this country. (Time expired)

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