Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

and then going out to the bush, like they have today—thank you for reminding me, Senator O'Sullivan, through you, Mr President—to spruik these dodgy trade deals with farmers. Hopefully, by now, farmers should know better than to listen to this government on trade. They have seen the other side of the equation—that is, what damage these cheap imports can do in the markets they are trying to compete in.

While it is fine to pluck numbers out of the proverbial on how much money this will contribute to the economy, they never talk about the downsides or risks. They never talk about the damage to our sovereignty, the risk to workers or the risk to the environment. They do not talk about the risk of getting sued by foreign corporations because we are giving them special rights under these deals to challenge laws and regulations, in this country, that we as parliamentarians representing the Australian people will bring into practice.

These deals are going down the gurgler. The Australian public does not want to have $24 million of its own money spent on an advertising campaign that will be nothing but political spin. What we need to do, if we want the Australian public to participate in these trade deals, is give them the information. It is pretty simple. Fix the treaty-making process, like the Senate defence foreign affairs committee recommended, so that these deals are made public before they are signed and before they are politicised by a government that is desperate to do anything to get headlines and distract from the total sham and chaos of a government that it is. It is using trade deals to promote its own political agenda.

Now they are using $24 million of taxpayers' money to promote their deal. I have no doubt that during that Governor-General's speech—the first speech the Prime Minister gave to this country—they expected that signing and promoting trade deals would be their bread and butter. But there is nothing on the plate. There is no interest in these deals. That is because of the process that underlies them and the fact that they have included things in these deals—like in the Chinese trade deal—for the first time ever, where special clauses will potentially undermine the rights of Australian workers.

These things, like intellectual property law relating to pharmaceutical medicines, should be debated in parliament. We should not see a total rort of taxpayers' money being used to sell dodgy trade deals on TV. I have other things I want to watch when I switch on the box.

Question agreed to.