Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee report Blind agreement: reforming Australia’s treaty-making process. I rise to take note of this report because earlier in the session the government's response was tabled and I want to take a modest amount of time to go through that response and perhaps keep the debate alive.

The first recommendation I want to refer to arising out of the committee's evidence and deliberations was that the committee recommended that the government, prior to commencing negotiations for trade agreements, tables in parliament a detailed explanatory statement setting out the priorities, objectives and reasons for entering into negotiations. The statement should consider economic, regional, social, cultural, regulatory and environmental impacts which are expected to arise. The response was that the government does not accept this recommendation. Under Australia's existing treaty-making system, extensive information is already made publicly available both in the lead-up and during the course of trade agreement negotiations. This includes detailed feasibility studies where appropriate.

That was not the evidence before the committee. Really, the government's response more or less says that what we are asking for is available, so it would be a very small step, if it is available so readily, to put it in a concise form and put it into the parliament. Then everybody, including the electors of Australia, could access that. At the moment, they would have to go to different or disparate sources to gather that information. So I found that response less than satisfactory. It may be the subject of more debate during the course of the year as we look at the conclusion of the quadrella, so to speak: the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement, the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement, the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement and the forthcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

The next item I wanted to put on the public record was the committee recommendation that a cost-benefit analysis of trade agreements be undertaken by an independent body such as the Australian Productivity Commission and also be tabled in parliament prior to the commencement of negotiations or as soon as practicable afterwards. The cost-benefit analysis should inform the government's approach to negotiations. The committee further recommended that treaties negotiated over for many years be the subject of supplementary cost-benefit analysis towards the end of negotiations and that statements of priorities, objectives and cost-benefit analysis stand to automatically refer to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties for inquiry and report. During the course of our deliberations and evidence-taking, when we asked where the detailed analysis of the 1,800 treaties that we have made has been, the answer that came back is that we do not do that. We make treaties—quite appropriately—but, when we make economic bilateral agreements, we never measure them. So in the history of the Australian parliament we have not measured the agreements we have made. It might be a waste of time in some respects—because the level of trade is so low or so high that you do not need to—but it beggars belief that we are in a situation now where we have a trade minister who appears to be doing an excellent job, and that is probably supported by all of the commentators in the media—