Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Since the motion was last debated, the text of the ChAFTA has been released and, as AFTINET's excellent submission to the treaties committee shows, it reveals extraordinary concessions by the Australian government to China, of a type and level unseen in any of Australia's other FTAs. Government denials about these concessions constitute a serious misrepresentation to the Australian people.

The provisions on temporary movement of people are contained in four different documents: in chapter 10 of the agreement, in a side-letter to the agreement, and in two MOUs that were negotiated as a condition of the agreement. Chapter 10 of the agreement provides explicitly that there will be no labour market testing or economic needs test for any categories of temporary skilled workers. The side-letter states that Australia will remove the requirement for mandatory skills assessment for 10 occupations, including electricians, mechanics and carpenters, and will aim to reduce or eliminate skills assessment for all occupations within two years.

Despite the government's unprincipled denials, together Chapter 10 and the side-letter clearly remove local labour market testing and skills assessment for temporary workers in skilled occupations. There is thus no guarantee that temporary workers will have the same level of skills, health and safety knowledge and qualifications as required for local workers, thus creating serious safety issues for themselves, other workers and the general community.

A separate MOU on an investment facilitation arrangement provides that, where a Chinese enterprise owns at least 15 per cent of a project worth $150 million, it may bring in an unlimited number of temporary workers, with the terms and conditions of their employment, the English language requirements, qualifications and experience and minimum wage to be subject to negotiations between the department of immigration and the company. There will be no requirement for local labour market testing. There is a significant risk that these workers will be isolated from the local workforce and will thus be very vulnerable to exploitation. Given the lack of enforcement of the existing 457 visa regime, it is hard to see how the community will be able to feel comfortable about such arrangements, which will occur behind closed doors, hidden behind claims of commercial-in-confidence.

There is a further MOU by which Australia will grant, each year, 5,000 work and holiday visas to Chinese young people with a tertiary education, for working holidays; however, this arrangement is not reciprocal for Australians in China. There is also no reference in the MOU to compliance with Australian laws and workplace standards, so this would seem to be another potential area ripe for exploitation.

As with our FTA with Korea, the ChAFTA also contains ISDS provisions. However, the ChAFTA provisions—including important matters such as the definition of indirect expropriation and the minimum standard of treatment of foreign investors—are not complete and have been delegated to a committee to review in three years' time. One wonders how a country like Australia, with battalions of bureaucrats and lawyers, could sign up to an agreement that is not finished, unless it was a politically-driven decision to just get it done without regard to the consequences. It is also difficult to see how the Australian parliament could be asked to vote on implementing legislation for the agreement without having details as to the future provisions.

Regarding the ISDS clauses that are in the agreement, they demonstrate less transparency than the KAFTA, as they do not require ISDS hearings and documents to be made public. Given the recent imported frozen berries scandal, it is also extremely concerning that, while the KAFTA excludes ISDS from application to the 'Technical barriers to trade' chapter, which includes food labelling, the ChAFTA does not. Why did the Australian government not seek specific protection of food labelling from ISDS in ChAFTA?

As the AFTINET submission notes, in October last year the Australian Industry Group reported that a survey of its members found that many manufactured goods coming from China do not meet Australian safety and quality regulations, including dangerously faulty electrical cables which could have affected up to 40,000 homes and businesses. However, rather than strengthening the assessment of imports for conformity with Australian safety and quality standards, the government—through ChAFTA—is doing the very reverse, in reducing import controls and assessments. Unlike KAFTA, ChAFTA also does not contain chapters on labour environment, which means that neither government has made any commitments not to reduce labour rights or environmental standards, nor to implement ILO rights or international environmental agreements. This means that ChAFTA, in effect, rewards violations of labour and environmental standards by granting preferential market access to Australia for goods produced in substandard conditions.

Finally, I think it is important to say—as did Rep John Conyers, a Detroit democrat, in the context of the recent TPP debate—that instead of asking about implications for economic growth I hope my colleagues ask: 'Is this policy good for living standards, the health of the planet, creating jobs with dignity, promoting peace and ensuring an educated populous?' The truth is that, as the Productivity Commission has found, these so-called free trade agreements stand to undermine the high-quality social, economic, health, workforce and environmental standards that countries like Australia have painstakingly established.

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