Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

and for the courts to be the ultimate decision makers in terms of the legal framework, the laws of the country and how the laws of the country are implemented. Once you devolve that decision making power to corporations you might as well give up as a parliament and as a government—and that is precisely what the Abbott government is doing.

The Labor Party knows it. They had this experience with the Korean free trade deal and that is why, to their credit, they did not sign up. They knew what investor-state dispute resolution meant. Tragically, they have now gone onto the same bandwagon as the government. But the people of Australia do not like it. The people of Australia do not like the idea that once again we have a Liberal government that pretends to protect the sovereignty of Australia selling out to the United States and, in particular, selling out to multinational corporations—

A government senator interjecting—

because that is the consequence of what is going on. I have cited the examples—the Philip Morris case, the Canadian case of Lone Pine, the German antinuclear case and the El Salvadorian case of environmental regulation. The trouble with some senators on the other side is that they prefer ignorance and ideology to get in the way of evidence. The evidence I have presented stands alone.