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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Human Services (Senator Payne) to questions without notice asked by Senator Bushby and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) today relating to the China Australia Free Trade Agreement.

The last thing that this country needs is more spin from the trade minister, Andrew Robb, on so-called free trade deals. We get enough of that from all his press conferences, from his Press Club appearances and from some of the nauseating information that is given out by people in this chamber—the relentless rollout of the messaging around the so-called benefits of these free trade deals.

You have to ask yourself, why is the government spending $24 million of taxpayers' money to sell something that is not even signed yet, that has not even been passed into law? The deal has not even been closed. I will tell you why they need taxpayers' money to sell it: because they have failed to convince the Australian people that this deal is actually going to benefit them at all. It is the third trade deal they have signed, and now they have to go out and spend $24 million of taxpayers' money to sell it. They are not doing this because of a union advertising campaign against the China free trade deal. If this deal was as good as it sounds it would stand on its own merits. They are doing this because it has failed the pub test. This deal, just like the Korean deal, has failed the pub test, just as I am sure the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement—another secret deal that has been signed behind closed doors—will also fail the pub test. They will fail for a really simple reason. It is because these deals are secret and there is no information. Nobody knows what is going on behind closed doors.

The special interests that had the minister's ear might get what they want. While that is good for them it is not necessarily in the national interest. People are sick and tired of hearing about it. This is a government that said in its Governor-General speech it was going to hang its hat on being the government of free-trade deals. There was a rush to sign them, a rush to have as many headlines as possible, press conferences standing next to flags, standing next to national dignities—

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Fancy the Greens giving us a lecture on that!

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

and then going out to the bush, like they have today—thank you for reminding me, Senator O'Sullivan, through you, Mr President—to spruik these dodgy trade deals with farmers. Hopefully, by now, farmers should know better than to listen to this government on trade. They have seen the other side of the equation—that is, what damage these cheap imports can do in the markets they are trying to compete in.

While it is fine to pluck numbers out of the proverbial on how much money this will contribute to the economy, they never talk about the downsides or risks. They never talk about the damage to our sovereignty, the risk to workers or the risk to the environment. They do not talk about the risk of getting sued by foreign corporations because we are giving them special rights under these deals to challenge laws and regulations, in this country, that we as parliamentarians representing the Australian people will bring into practice.

These deals are going down the gurgler. The Australian public does not want to have $24 million of its own money spent on an advertising campaign that will be nothing but political spin. What we need to do, if we want the Australian public to participate in these trade deals, is give them the information. It is pretty simple. Fix the treaty-making process, like the Senate defence foreign affairs committee recommended, so that these deals are made public before they are signed and before they are politicised by a government that is desperate to do anything to get headlines and distract from the total sham and chaos of a government that it is. It is using trade deals to promote its own political agenda.

Now they are using $24 million of taxpayers' money to promote their deal. I have no doubt that during that Governor-General's speech—the first speech the Prime Minister gave to this country—they expected that signing and promoting trade deals would be their bread and butter. But there is nothing on the plate. There is no interest in these deals. That is because of the process that underlies them and the fact that they have included things in these deals—like in the Chinese trade deal—for the first time ever, where special clauses will potentially undermine the rights of Australian workers.

These things, like intellectual property law relating to pharmaceutical medicines, should be debated in parliament. We should not see a total rort of taxpayers' money being used to sell dodgy trade deals on TV. I have other things I want to watch when I switch on the box.

Question agreed to.