Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome our guests as well. I rise to take note of the motion by the then trade minister regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is the largest preferential trade deal—I will not call it a free trade deal—this world has seen, covering 800 million people and, from memory, about 40 per cent of global trade. It is a very significant trade agreement.

The questions that this parliament should resolve through the treaties committee and ultimately through parliament is: 'Is it merely a standardisation of trade access? Is it opening up freer trade for the 800 million people who live in those economies covered by it? Is that the reason we are doing it? Is that the outcome—standardisation of things like rules of origin, investor state procedures, harmonisation of rules of content—or is it more about advancing and strengthening monopoly rights over intellectual property and strengthening the rights of foreign corporations to sue sovereign governments?' I suspect the answer is a bit of both.

That is one of the difficulties pertaining to the Trans-Pacific Partnership—that is, there are well and truly some beneficial things in this trade agreement. There is no doubt that it will improve the lives of some of the poorest people in the world; there is no doubt about that. But there are also plenty of ugly things in the agreement that this parliament should scrutinise carefully, because this trade agreement does impugn and does reduce the sovereignty of this parliament to make laws in the interests of the Australian people. The question that we always have to resolve here is, 'Is slightly more trade access for our agricultural exports and our service sector worth that sovereignty being reduced?' I am not sure what the answer is, to be clear.

Some of the most egregious parts of this trade agreement go to investor-state dispute settlement clauses, ISDS, which my colleague the member for Griffith alluded to and went into some detail about. But I will simply say that any clauses in free trade agreements that have been cautioned against and criticised by the Productivity Commission and by the High Court of Australia through the Chief Justice are things to be worried about. The Productivity Commission and the High Court are not organisations traditionally renowned for being mad, rabid, left-wing, anti-trade organisations, yet both the Chief Justice and the Productivity Commission have cautioned against investor-state dispute settlement clauses.

As the previous speaker talked about, there is no market failure that ISDS is seeking to solve. There is not a market failure that justifies giving foreign corporations greater rights than domestic corporations to sue the Australian government. We saw Philip Morris's pursuit—ultimately unsuccessful, thankfully—of our plain packaging laws through an obscure Hong Kong arm of their organisation, because their Australian arm had already tried the case and lost in the High Court. So it is an incredibly worrying clause. It is a clause that impugns the sovereignty of this parliament to make laws for the betterment of all Australians.

I am concerned about the expansion of ISDS in this agreement and about the safeguard provisions contained in this, because often, when trade ministers—in particular the member for Goldstein—say there are safeguards, when you look at the detail they are sorely lacking. So I looked at the agreement. The national interest analysis put together by DFAT that accompanies the treaty says that there are safeguards around governments' ability to provide social services to the people, and it goes into some detail in a paragraph around health, education and other measures. But it is unclear whether those social services, for example, cover the ability of this parliament to make laws around climate change and to restrict carbon pollution that is increasing global warming. Is that a social service that is safeguarded under the ISDS provisions, or does a foreign corporation have the ability to challenge climate change laws made by a future parliament? That is of great concern.

Another concern is: does the TPP expand monopoly intellectual property rights that give greater length and greater powers for IP holders? We are an IP importer in this country. We pay more to IP holders overseas than we gain in revenue from the rest of the world on IP. IP is an important economic provision, but ultimately it is providing a rent to corporations that have developed intellectual property. That rent is necessary to drive innovation, but it should be kept to a minimum, because ultimately it reduces the welfare of economies by providing a rent to corporations.

There are other concerns in this agreement, particularly on labour rights. Labour rights in the TPP were once promised to provide full safeguards around ILO conventions to signatory nations, but, if you look at the actual agreement, it appears that the only commitment is to implement a nation's own labour laws, not recognised international standards. If this is true, this is very worrying, because the agreement refers to the International Labour Organization declaration but it does not appear to reference the core ILO conventions that guarantee access to collective bargaining and the rights to organise and form a trade union and not have forced labour. If the only protections are to the ILO declaration and to the nation's own labour laws, which can be reduced at any time by a parliament of that nation, then we will not have advances in countries in the TPP that currently allow forced labour, do not have free trade unions and do not guarantee the right to collectively bargain, which are recognised human rights through the ILO conventions. This TPP does not advance that cause one jot, and that gives me cause for concern.

Around labour movement, my information is that this agreement removes labour market testing within Australia for temporary skilled visas for another five nations covered by the TPP. This is concerning because, again, any time we look at using temporary skilled migration without guaranteeing absolutely that there is not an Australian who can do that job is of great concern.

Around environmental commitments within the agreement, at the start of and during the process we were promised that there would be enforceable commitments to at least seven international environmental agreements. But the text mentions only four environmental agreements, and there is only one that has clearly enforceable commitments—that is around trade in endangered species. That is an important treaty, but there are six other international environmental agreements that are lacking, and there is not a single mention of climate change, which is, quite frankly, the greatest economic and environmental challenge the nation is facing at the moment. To have a trade agreement that covers 40 per cent of global trade and 800 million people not mentioning climate change is a concern.

Provisions around pharmaceuticals are also a worry. Whether they stymie access for affordable medicines to 800 million people, particularly in the poorest nations, is a concern. There is still considerable uncertainty around biologics. We were promised that there would only be a five-year protection for biologics, but in the text it states that it is either eight years or five years plus an equivalent of a further three years, which seems very wishy-washy to me. It is either five years or eight years. It cannot be both at the same time. But United States negotiators are saying it is eight. The member for Goldstein, the previous trade minister, is saying it is five. If it is eight, that is of great concern.

In summing up, if this trade agreement is mostly about standardising country-of-origin labelling and content rules, reducing tariff access for our agricultural exports and giving service providers a chance to crack markets then it is a good thing. However, if it is about impugning the sovereignty of this parliament, if it is about extending IP monopoly rights, if it does not provide decent labour rights protections and if it does not provide enforceable environmental protections then this is a substandard agreement that this parliament should scrutinise carefully, as our US colleagues are doing right now, because this trade agreement will have a real impact on this nation, and I, for one, hope it will be positive rather than negative.

Debate adjourned.