Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

The Customs Amendment (Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement Amendment Implementation) Bill 2017 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement Amendment Implementation) Bill 2017 update the Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement. Labor supports the bills because they support the agreement. The updates will actually improve the operations of that agreement.

Together, the bills will introduce new rules of origin for goods imported from Singapore; they will introduce a new procedure to claim preferential tariff treatment for goods that originate in Singapore; they will extend record-keeping obligations; and they will provide for excise equivalent rates of duty on some alcohol, tobacco, fuel and petroleum products.

The updated agreement also restricts the applications of the investor-state dispute settlement and litigation. The ISDS provisions will no longer apply to regulations protecting public welfare—including health and the environment; Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme; the Medicare Benefits Schedule; the Therapeutic Goods Administration; and the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator—or to measures affecting creative arts and cultural heritage, including Indigenous cultural expression. It also includes Australian foreign investment policy, including decisions of the Foreign Investment Review Board.

All of these are changes that are definite improvements. However, I want to make it clear that Labor remains fundamentally opposed to ISDS provisions in trade agreements. We support the bill now before the Senate because the ISDS provisions were already part of the free trade agreement with Singapore, and the legislation winds back those provisions. Labor would have preferred that these provisions be removed in their entirety. They should not be included in any trade agreements that Australia negotiates in the future. Investor-state dispute settlement is an infringement of our national sovereignty. Sovereign governments should be able to legislate in the national interest; their ability to do so should not be constrained by litigious companies or groups.

There are well-known examples of how ISDS provisions are being used for pernicious reasons by commercial interests. We could take the examples of Philip Morris, the global tobacco company, taking action against Australia over the plain-packaging laws; the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis suing the Colombian government because it plans to reduce the price of leukaemia treatment; Lone Pine, the US mining company, suing the Canadian government over the environmental regulation of gas mining; or Veolia, the French utilities company, suing the Egyptian government over a contract that grants workers a pay rise. All of these are examples of what has, I think legitimately, been described as globalisation gone mad.

The aim of ISDS litigation is to make public policy makers defer to the interests of corporations that seek profit over public interest. That is why, at the last election, Labor declared that, in government, we would not sign agreements that included ISDS provisions and we would seek to remove those provisions from existing trade agreements.

There is another part of the updating of the agreement that Labor also opposes which is not in the bill before us. This government has removed the labour market testing for suppliers for contractual services. It has also removed the requirement from the free trade agreements in regard to China, South Korea and Japan. My colleague the member for Blaxland said during the debate on these bills in the other place:

This is the sort of stuff that makes Australians angry—

and legitimately so. Why should a company that wants to bring an electrician or a mechanic from overseas not have to check whether or not there is an Australian who can actually do that job? What's wrong with having to undertake that test? It is a simple proposition.

The Prime Minister has failed to live up to his rhetoric on this issue, and earlier this year he said:

… if a job is able to be done by an Australian it should be done by an Australian.

The Prime Minister also said:

… every nation is entitled to take that point of view and we certainly do.

Now, at a time when unemployment is higher than 10 per cent in some parts of the country and when youth unemployment is twice that, we have to make sure that local workers get the first chance to obtain a job. The government indicated that it would do this when it stated that labour market testing would be mandatory for all temporary skill shortage visa applications. But apparently it doesn't apply this principle when we're dealing with free trade agreements. We regard that as a sellout of Australian workers' interests.

Finally, Labor also notes with concern that there has been no independent economic modelling of this updated agreement. Australia's trade agreements should be transparent in their operations. The benefits claimed for them should be testable, and, again, that doesn't seem to have worried the government in its presentation of this update. And that's certainly not the way in which a Shorten Labor government would handle these matters. Subject to these reservations about aspects of this agreement, Labor will support these bills.