Matters of Public Importance: US Free Trade Agreement

4th Aug 04

Mr ORGAN (Cunningham) (4.09 p.m.) — I welcome the opportunity to speak to the Leader of the Opposition's MPI regarding the government's failure to adequately protect the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Australia's cultural content rules in its free trade agreement enabling legislation. There is no doubt that the enabling legislation is a dud. Why? It is because the FTA itself is a dud. But what we are seeing here today with this MPI is nothing more than a piece of Labor politicking. The Leader of the Opposition is trying to dig himself out of a hole—the hole that he dug himself into when he turned his back on Australian workers and our national interest by supporting the Prime Minister's free trade agreement with the United States.

Rather than taking a principled stand against the free trade agreement, which, as I told the House on 24 June, delivers very little to Australia in real terms, the ALP is now tinkering around with amendments which expert advice tells us serve no purpose. For example, we are talking about patents and evergreening. What about the bigger issues—the central issues regarding this FTA? Did the opposition members miss the PM program last night? Professor Peter Drahos from the Australian National University was interviewed on it, and he had some things to say about Labor's amendments to the US Free Trade Agreement Implementation Bill 2004 and about other changes. He said:

While I think the proposals are well intentioned, ultimately they don't really achieve the objective of protecting the PBS. What really matters is the text in the actual agreement. That is what a free trade panel deciding our obligations under the act will look at.

That's what will ultimately govern a dispute resolution process, not the implementing legislation the Labor Party dream up.

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They will look at the implementing legislation and they say, “does this implementing legislation fulfil the obligations that Australia agreed to when they signed the agreement?” and if there is a gap between what we've implemented and what we've agreed to in the text, then it is the text that has priority.

It's like entering into a contract. We've entered into a contract with the United States and that's the contract that will determine whether or not we've fulfilled our obligations.

The multinationals, that are really the architects of this free trade agreement, will look at our implementing legislation and they will ask themselves, “are the Australians complying? Are they doing what they have undertaken to do in the free trade agreement?”

And if they come to the conclusion that we haven't complied, then they will take us to court or the equivalent of a court, namely the dispute resolution process that is in the free trade agreement.

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The whole point of this agreement is to obtain higher prices to deal with the domestic crises in the United States, to deal with the fact that PBS represents world's best practice for Australia producing cheaper medicines. That is the entire point of this.

Labor's amendments and the government changes count for very little if that expert analysis is correct—and I believe it is. The reality is that any amendment to this agreement—whether it be on manufacturing jobs, pharmaceuticals, the environment or the proper transparencies and processes overlooking this legislation—coming into this place cannot be inserted into the free trade agreement, because it is signed outside the parliament. It is an agreement between Mr Howard and President Bush. It is extramural. It is outside the reach of this parliament.

Labor has two amendments here which are at the margins and are acceptable, it says, within the free trade agreement. It dare not move outside the free trade agreement, for it cannot. You accept it or reject it. Labor accepts this. The Greens reject it because we do not believe it is in the national interest. The FTA is a dud. Everyone accepts that there are negatives—for example, the loss of up to 50,000 jobs in the manufacturing industry—but there should be no negatives. There are so many problems with this so-called free trade agreement that the opposition should have rejected it outright, just as the government should have pulled the plug when it realised that Australians would be worse off as a result of this agreement.

There is nothing free about this agreement. It is a restricted, pointed, biased agreement which favours our giant but friendly neighbour across the ocean—the United States—against the interests of this nation. The Greens oppose the legislation because it is not in Australia's national interest—although it is in the interests of the United States and, in particular, the corporate sector in the United States, which stands to gain the most from it. The agreement binds not only many of the processes in our society but also this parliament. It does so in a way that is out of the reach of this parliament, because once the parliament gives assent to this agreement changing it becomes conditional on the American interest being fostered. If you do not have that, it will not be changed in the future. Being able to alter the agreement will be out of the question unless the American interest is served. The only option would be to repudiate it further down the line. That of course is unconscionable when the option now is to repudiate it before it comes into force, with many fewer consequences for this nation—a nation which has an economy and population less than one-tenth the size of those of the United States.

It is very important to understand that the agreement is outside the reach of our democracy in both its formulation and its future impact on this country. This agreement is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny, it is not subject to parliamentary accountability and it is not subject to parliamentary alteration. It is another manifestation of the increasing wish by executive governments in this country—which has been refined and strengthened by the Howard government—to act as extra-parliamentary governing authorities that make decisions outside the ability of parliament to review and make alterations to in the future.

This agreement will help line the pockets of pharmaceutical corporations in the United States. It inevitably moves us a step towards the far inferior system of the United States, where the sick, the aged, the retired and the poor not only cannot afford many of the pharmaceuticals available but also, as we know, cannot access hospital care. That country is far worse served by the unrestrained market and the division between rich and poor than this country is.

As I said in this place on 24 June, the fact that our government is seeking to paint meagre concessions and horrendous potential damages as overall wins for Australia is at best naive and at worst anti-Australian. It is clear that the costs of this deal will dramatically outweigh the benefits and cause irreversible damage to our economy, to our major national institutions and to our enviable status as a disease-free producer. That is why this so-called free trade agreement should be rejected—not amended in the Senate as Labor proposes, but rejected outright for the outrageous sham that it is. This FTA threatens jobs, it threatens our industries, it threatens our health care system, it threatens our environment and it threatens our culture and our cultural heritage.

It is easy to understand why the Prime Minister pursued this agreement with his good mate George Bush, but it is not so easy to explain the dodgy decision by the opposition to cave in yet again. The public will undoubtedly judge both harshly whenever the next election is held. However, you can rest assured that the Greens will continue to stand up for ordinary Australians and defend Australia's national interests.