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

We have heard significant debate and rhetoric today about the unfortunate decision taken by Toyota yesterday. Some economists are already talking about a recession in Victoria in 2017, following the simultaneous shutdown of both Ford and Toyota. I certainly hope it does not come to that—and we have all got a lot of work ahead of us to prevent it.

I want to focus on the free trade aspect of the decision announced by Toyota yesterday. I quote directly from their media release:

… with one of the most open and fragmented automotive markets in the world and increased competitiveness due to current and future free trade agreements, it is not viable to continue building cars in Australia.

The topic of free trade is very seldom debated; it is very seldom in the public realm. Certainly, it does not seem to be a popular topic for the media either. There is this implicit assumption that somehow free trade deals are always good for us, in whatever country we live. I would like to spend some time debunking that notion, but unfortunately I do not have enough time today. However, I want to talk specifically about why we can use this as an opportunity to have a bigger national discussion on free trade deals and how we need to prevent this sort of thing from occurring in the future.

In previous years, we have heard Mitsubishi, Holden and Ford talk about the impacts of free trade deals. They have been vocal, for example, on the unilateral deal that we did with Thailand, where we pushed agricultural product at the expense of their industries. Whether you believe it or not, that is the rhetoric that has been coming out of the car industry. Minister Robb had an op-ed in the Australian newspaper yesterday in which he exhorted the benefits of trade agreements. He said that free trade agreements 'can deliver truly enormous gains for Australia'. This is a similar to Labor's view. There is no doubt that trade agreements can deliver jobs, investment and wealth, but they can also have negative impacts on industries. There is actually a logic inherent in trade agreements that is often overlooked.

There are always trade-offs inherent in trade agreements. Negotiation, by definition, means trade-offs. Free trade has winners and losers. Who picks those winners and who picks those losers is the crucial question here: negotiators in secret deals behind closed doors? What is the logical extension of those negotiations? Who feeds the information to our very good DFAT negotiators who have been in secret trade talks on the TPP or on the Korean free trade deal for three or four years?

The way I see the world working, especially during my short period of time in the Senate, is that it tends to be those special interest groups who get into your office and push their agendas. This is how the world has always worked. Free trade agreements are the ultimate feast for friends with special interests. For example, I had some very fine gentlemen from the meat and livestock industry in my office recently. We were discussing free trade deals to enhance their export overseas. They said, 'Why have you got an issue with the TPP?' I listed whole areas of public interest which the Greens have particular issues with—for instance: health regulations; the PBS being under threat and how new patent provisions can cause the price of pharmaceuticals to rise; and freedoms being curbed by draconian copyright provisions et cetera. These are general matters of public interest. One of the gentlemen shrugged his shoulders a little bit nervously and said, 'Well, I don't know anything about that; I'm here to sell more beef.'

That is fin He is doing a good job representing the people that he has come to parliament on behalf of. But the point is that there are much broader areas of public interest that impact under free trade deals—and, once again, that is something we do not ever seem to have a discussion on. It is not just me and a few people out there in civil society who are saying this. Treasury and the Productivity Commission also agree with this proposition. Treasury, in their incoming government brief in 2010, stated:

Current approaches to preferential trade agreements, FTAs, are not meeting Australia's needs. The proliferation of FTAs has not built support for multilateral liberalisation and is delivering only modest preferential market access outcomes at the cost of reduced government policy reform flexibility.

In 2010 the Productivity Commission also released a report into bilateral and regional trade agreements. In that report they recommended that the Australian government should 'improve the scrutiny of the potential impacts of prospective trade agreements and opportunities to reduce barriers to trade and investment more generally. It should commission and publish an independent and transparent assessment of the final text of the agreement at the conclusion of negotiations but before an agreement is signed.' That is exactly in line with the order for the production of documents that the Greens and Labor pushed through the Senate earlier this year to compel the government to provide a draft text to the public for scrutiny prior to this going to parliament and prior to it being signed by cabinet—before the issue becomes political, before the government give it their stamp of approval.

I understand that a big, complex trade deal that covers 29 chapters and just about every aspect of economy, our community life and our environment is going to take a long time to negotiate. But if that is the logic for doing it in secret—and I do not believe it is justification—then at least release it and make it available for public scrutiny prior to it being signed by cabinet.

So, two premier economic advisory institutions have both expressed strong reservations about the trade path Australian governments are going down—and this includes Labor prior to the current Liberal government. Despite this advice, and concerns expressed by civil society, it is clear from the behaviour of successive governments that they are uncomfortable with the notion of transparency in trade agreements.

Without transparency the Australian people have no insights into the trade-offs inherent in these types of agreements. For example, lack of transparency allowed the Howard government, when negotiating the Australia-US free trade agreement, to extend drug patents, meaning 70 per cent of the drug patents expire later in Australia than in other countries. This means more expensive pharmaceuticals and the suppression of Australia's generic drug manufacturing industry. I have met these guys, and that is exactly what they are telling me. There may have been a legitimate reason for this trade-off. However, the government did not have to present its case. So who makes these trade-offs in our name? Who are the decision makers? We will never know the reason we agreed to that provision.

Minister Robb also wrote yesterday that he would not sign up to anything that does not materially advance the national interest. The national interest is a contested concept. That is why there are different political parties in this chamber today. The national interest is a very broad area, and politics and the role of parliament is an ongoing test of national interest. I would expect that Minister Robb's concept of national interest is very different from mine and that of many Australian voters. For example, Minister Robb has made it clear that he supports a free trade deal with Japan, and the necessity of that, over putting pressure on the Japanese government and causing a diplomatic incident in relation to whaling and preventing the slaughter of whales in the Southern Ocean. That is something most Australians feel very strongly about. More than nine in 10 Australians do not want to see Japanese whaling fleets in our Southern Ocean. The Liberal government had a very strong policy, going into the last election, to prevent that from happening by sending a Customs vessel.

It was only this week that Minister Robb went on record and admitted that our priority is a trade deal with Japan and not jeopardising that. That is a matter of public interest to this country that has not been incorporated into looking at the costs and benefits of these agreements. Who can put a value on the death of whales? For people like me, there is no economic value that can justify that. No doubt, people in the agricultural industry will feel differently.

Transparency is very, very important, particularly when free trade deals in their current form cover such a broad area of public interest. We are not just dealing with traditional exports and imports of goods and services like we used to, mostly around agriculture. We are now dealing with investment, the internet, access to generic medicines, and also the ability for a new world order to emerge from these types of deals where corporations have the ability to seize sovereign governments if they believe a decision is not in the spirit of a trade deal or will impact their future profits. To most Australians, that is totally unacceptable.

The Greens will continue to call for transparency. We call on the government to release not only the text of this agreement, as it has done for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, but also the modelling that outlines the costs and benefits of this trade deal. This is something we negotiated with Labor last year for any future free trade deals—that these costs and benefits had to be assessed upfront. We have been calling for this for months. It is time to release the modelling, as well as the draft text, so that this country can scrutinise it and we can put the public interest on a level with special interests in this country. While I agree that special interests are sometimes in line with public interest, they are not always.