Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, as you'd be aware if you'd listened to the debate and to both the minister's and my speech yesterday, the Australian government very strongly supports the ISDS considerations in here. We heard the rhetoric from, I think, four Greens senators yesterday, ad nauseam, about neoliberalism and all of these other great Greens conspiracy buzzwords in relation to ISDS. But, as we both said yesterday, these are not new provisions. This conspiracy—I think you described it yesterday as a great neoliberal, whatever that means, conspiracy—about large corporations and losing sovereignty is simply nonsense. These are provisions that have been in place in other treaties for a considerable amount of time. There is no company that has been successful. As we heard yesterday, there was one company, and they were unsuccessful because the courts had no jurisdiction over that matter.

So, yes, they are reciprocal requirements. And if we're expecting to get that benefit out of the treaty ourselves, it is only logical that others expect us to provide the same clauses. There is no loss of sovereignty and there is no breach. In fact, if we did do that, we would now be in breach of the treaty itself. Penny Wong, Senator Kitching and Senator Farrell last night all gave very cogent arguments as to why this treaty must be signed. And if it's not, and if we did do anything with the ISDS or the labour-market testing then we would be in breach of this. Again, they gave very cogent reasons last night why this has to be moved without these amendments.