Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to this debate on these particular bills, the Customs Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation) Bill 2018 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation) Bill 2018. It's not the first time that I've spoken on the failures of the TPP or against the TPP. Given the danger that it poses to this country's sovereignty, the danger that it poses for our labour workforce and labour market, and the very real danger that it poses to our environment and our economy, we do not support this legislation.

I come from a background—it's now getting on for quite a while ago—of the environment movement, where we fought long and hard to get better environmental regulation in this country. But under this process you can kiss some of that good environmental legislation and regulation goodbye. We've just had the most severe warning that we've ever had about the impacts of climate change on this planet. We are basically cooking this planet. So, if Australia in the future actually brings in much more effective legislation to protect our planet and to deal with climate change, such as an emissions trading scheme, better emission controls or a carbon price—or even legislation on land clearing if that were going to hold up a development, for example—that may be of interest to one of those multinational corporations. We don't even actually need to be taken to court, because what will happen is there'll be a chilling effect on the regulatory process in this country: the regulators and the government of the day will be too scared to make regulation change because they may be taken to court through the ISDS processes.

What this legislation does, and what the TPP does, is hand over control not to consumers or to workers, because they lose out, but to multinationals. Unelected, faceless multinationals will be making decisions that affect every single one of us in this country. That will put a chill on regulation. It will put a chill on any actions this country wants to take around climate change. I know a number of my colleagues have mentioned this, but the EU is no longer supporting ISDS mechanisms. New Zealand has had the guts to do side letters so there's an agreement that they won't be affected by these ISDS provisions.

Oh, but it's okay; if Labor gets into government they're going to save us from it! Anybody who believes that they'll do that has rocks in their head, because they'll find they won't be able to do that. I'm not accusing them of not having the intent or of not wanting to do it, but why support this flawed legislation with those provisions not in there and with those ISDS provisions still standing? Why would you support the legislation and not fix it now? It is because they don't want to have a cigarette tissue's difference between themselves and the government on this particular issue; they don't have the guts to stand up for protection for our environment and for our medical and pharmaceutical processes here in this country. They'd rather not be seen to be any different from the government on this particular issue.

We continue to have very serious concerns around what those provisions will mean for our environment and also for our labour market testing and our labour market in this country. This TPP commits Australia to accepting unlimited numbers of temporary workers from Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico and Vietnam. These workers will be spread across a wide range of professional, technical and skilled trades occupations. And it doesn't require that there be any labour market testing to establish whether there are local workers available first. The government are saying on the one hand, 'There are too many unemployed people in this country, and they need to get out there and find work, and we'll punish you if you don't,' but on the other hand they are saying: 'It's okay to bring in all these temporary workers without doing any labour market testing beforehand.' This weakens our domestic labour market and is more than likely leading to exploitation of temporary workers. That seems like a lose-lose to me. Migrant temporary workers will remain tied to one employer for the course of their time in Australia and face deportation if they lose their jobs for any reason. Australia has benefited greatly from the contribution of migrant temporary workers, and they perform a vital role, but we have a right to expect that migrant workers will not be brought to Australia to fill roles that unemployed Australians could fill, without even trying to see if that is a possibility—particularly if Australians who already have those skills and experience are living in the same area and looking and ready for work.

The Fair Work Ombudsman reported that temporary visa holders accounted for one in 10 complaints to the agency in 2015. These risks of exploitation are not hypothetical; they are happening right now. I have relatives who work in the building industry who tell me endless accounts of that very exploitation and the work that unions do to ensure temporary workers truly get the money they are due. Modelling since the US withdrew from the TPP negotiations is very thin on the ground, but modelling prior to their withdrawal shows a very thin increase of 0.6 per cent in Australia's GDP after 30 years. This represents growth of between zero and 0.1 per cent a year—somewhere between nothing and a rounding error.

A separate study of the TPP-12 by academics at Tufts University in the US found that job losses in Australia would total 39,000 over 10 years. According to September 2018 economic modelling commissioned by Australian big business—including the Minerals Council, the Business Council, the Food and Grocery Council, the Australian Industry Group, the National Farmers' Federation and others—Australia's agriculture stands to make zero gains in exports under TPP-11. As my colleagues Senator Waters and Senator Hanson-Young have pointed out, grain exports would not change at all under TPP-11, and all other agriculture could actually decline under TPP-11. So it's great for agriculture—not! Durable manufacturing will shrink in Australia by two per cent under TPP-11. Any increase in exports could be completely offset by an increase in imports. TPP-11 will add less than 0.5 per cent to GDP in a decade's time, or around 1½ days worth of income to the Australian economy. On wages, the report is brief, but it states that wages would only grow, after decades, by the minuscule amount of 0.46 per cent a year, or less than $10 a year, to 2030 when we already have an appallingly low growth rate in our wages in this country.

The economic benefits are not there, and we would basically have multinationals put in charge of this country. If we pass regulation they don't like, what we're saying to them is that it's okay to take us to the cleaners as a country, as a nation. As I was saying earlier, we just won't regulate for these extremely important issues—and that's given that this country actually had leadership from the two old parties on climate change where we would see real legislation being put in place. I know I'm making a huge assumption there, but I'm always optimistic that we will in fact achieve good climate policy in this country. Our workers lose out, our farmers lose out, our economy loses out, consumers lose out and the environment loses out. It seems to me that this is a dud, it's not worth supporting, it shouldn't be supported and it should be thrown out and not passed by this chamber. We will not be supporting this legislation.