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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Human Services (Senator Payne) to a question without notice asked by Senator Whish-Wilson today relating to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

This country is currently negotiating the biggest and most dangerous corporate deregulation agenda it has ever seen, in secret, behind closed doors, under the disguise of a trade deal. This deal is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Trade impacts right across our country. The TPP has 30 chapters. We have had some leaked chapters, so we have some idea of what is being negotiated away in our name. But, apart from that, Australians—not just your average Australians but parliamentarians like myself and, I would dare to say, most of the front bench in this government—have not seen any detail at all on this trade agreement.

I have raised issues in this place time and time again, including in question time today, asking for detail to be provided. Anyone who questions this secret, dangerous, deregulation agenda is called a scaremonger. I have raised questions from the AMA, from the Public Health Association, from the Productivity Commission, from the Harper review, from Choice—from a lot of very respected groups across this country who want answers. Last year, when the Senate passed an order for the production of documents for the government to release the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the government came out and said it could not do so in the national interest, I went and saw our very helpful Clerk, Rosemary Laing. I said, 'What does a senator do in these situations when a government won't listen to what the Senate says?' She passed me Odgers' Australian Senate Practice and said: 'You've got to keep making their life difficult for them. Keep putting up motions. Keep asking questions. Send things off to committee. Keep using the Senate to try and get the government to comply.'

Well, they have not complied. Again Senator Payne said she would take my questions on notice today. Well, I think it is fair to say that for the last five years every Australian, everyone in the USA and everyone in Japan, in Malaysia, in Singapore, in Brunei, in Vietnam and in New Zealand—everyone—has had their questions taken on notice by their respective governments on this secret deregulation agenda. It has an environmental chapter. It has a chapter on intellectual property and how that impacts the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in this country. It has a chapter on internet usage. It has a chapter on labour standards. It has a chapter on quarantine. You see, this deregulation agenda under the disguise of trade is all about synchronising laws and regulations between countries. There is no such thing as free trade; it does not exist, because markets are imperfect. So what this is is an attempt to take away what are called transaction barriers or barriers to transactions and free exchange.

As parliamentarians, we make the laws in this country. Our laws should not be made by negotiations involving one or two ministers in this country and all the special interests that are in their ear the whole time. It is a feast of friends for special interests, particularly big corporations, at these behind-the-scenes trade deals. They should be coming to us and saying, 'This is what we want to do.' We should scrutinise it before it has gone into law.

This will be signed by cabinet before it is given to government, and it cannot be amended—a massive deregulation agenda given to us: 'Vote for it lock, stock and barrel, or get out of the way.' How is that fair? How is that equitable? How is that good democracy? Well, it is not, and we have to do something about it here in the Senate, because trade deals are political.

The minister said today that there have been a thousand briefings. I have been to one of them. There was no information given to anyone in the briefings. Yes, they will listen to your concerns, but you do not know if your concerns are taken and put into this text or incorporated in these deals. Why would they be when, for the government of the day and the executive, all the politics around trying to get headlines, sign deals and go up in the polls is driving these deals, rather than getting good legislation in place for things like public health?

I asked a question today about public health. I will continue to ask questions in this place, because it is the only place where I can do so as an elected representative. That is what I was put into parliament for: to hold this government to account. It is high time now for us to be getting answers to questions from this government on the secret deregulation agenda which is the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.

Question agreed to.