Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to contribute to this debate on the Customs Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation) Bill 2018 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation) Bill 2018, and to clearly outline the Greens' strong opposition to the TPP. We have stood in this place for a number of years now, very concerned at Australia's signing up to a shocker of a trade deal when it comes to sovereignty of our nation, the rights of Australian workers and protecting our environment.

We've just heard a number of opposition issues and concerns outlined by Senator Carr of the Labor Party in relation to this TPP agreement. There are big problems with the TPP, and it is so tragic that, rather than standing up for these principles and fighting to ensure Australia doesn't get locked into this dodgy deal, the Labor opposition are prepared to roll over and vote with the Morrison government on this deal today. We know that a number of Labor opposition members in this place and in the House are very concerned about Labor's position on this—and rightly so. Kudos to those members who stood up in their own party room and tried to fight and to hold back the tide. I'm sorry you didn't win—because Australia needed you to, democracy needed you to and the Australian environment needed you to. And Australian workers need you more than ever. Yet what we have got is the opposition rolling over to vote with the Morrison government to tick this dodgy deal through.

The irony, of course, is that we can list as many as possible of the terrible things that this deal does, but, because of the way trade negotiations are undertaken, we can't fix any of this in this piece of legislation. So we have to take it or leave it, and this is such a bad deal that we should be leaving it. There is no point in playing around and saying, after the fact, that we might fix it—which is what the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, is doing. Well, you can't fix it afterwards, mate—that's the point. It's a dodgy deal and it has been done. We've got to kill it once and for all. That is what has to happen. That is the mettle that needs to be relied on in this place today. Don't tick this through with some false hope being given to Australian unions and Australian workers that, somehow, down the track, if Bill Shorten were ever to become Prime Minister, you could fix it—because we know that is just not the case. It cannot be done.

The truth is that Australia would have to withdraw from the TPP altogether before anything could be amended. So why sign up to it in the first place? This is a bad deal designed in the back room to benefit the boardroom and corporations. This deal is for corporations, not for the community. This deal is for big multinational corporations, at the expense of people. We know that the economic benefits are exaggerated and the costs are downplayed. Big industries' own modelling shows that grain exports will not change and other agricultural exports may decline—as well as the potential of a two per cent decrease in durable manufacturing. This is a pretty cruddy deal. At the time this deal was negotiated by the former Minister for Trade, Mr Ciobo, he was so desperate to come home with something that he signed Australia up—despite the fact that there really aren't the economic benefits that those on the other side are trying so desperately to crow about.

To make matters worse, the agreement represents an affront to democracy and sovereignty because of the insidious ISDS causes. It should be absolutely rejected, up-front, in the strongest possible terms. These investor-state dispute settlement provisions mean big corporations will have more power than ever before to sue Australian governments and the Australian people, regardless of whether our governments are doing things that we have asked them to do or not. This means that these measures advance the interests of these corporations over the interests of governments and the citizens whom they are accountable to. ISDS provisions expand the legal rights of multinational corporations based on legal concepts not even recognised in our domestic legal systems and offer advantages to multinational companies that are not even available to domestic investors. So they are simply unfair, even from a business perspective. They are unfair, they are unrepresentative and they are unnecessary.

The fact that they are unnecessary has been recently upheld in the European Court of Justice. The decision made in 2017, and again in 2018, by the European Court of Justice found that ISDS provisions are fundamentally incompatible with national sovereignty. We should be listening to the experience of others before we sign up for something that includes these provisions. As a result of this finding, the EU is now proposing that ISDS clauses are not to be acceptable in any of their trade negotiations or trade deals, including in the EU's trade negotiations with Australia. So in our negotiations with the EU, which have only recently commenced, the EU has said, 'We're not going to talk to you if you want ISDS provisions.' That is the same approach that we should be taking in relation to the TPP or any other trade negotiations that are on foot.

The New Zealand government has made it clear throughout negotiations that it does not support the inclusion of ISDS provisions as part of the TPP, and it spent time negotiating before signing on the dotted line to ensure that ISDS provisions were removed through four supplementary, legally binding letters with Brunei, Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam. They obviously saw that there was a desire amongst the New Zealand community to have their government stand up for sovereignty, democracy and the right of New Zealanders to have laws in their interests, not in the interests of big corporations.

Australia has not negotiated any such agreement. We are now left with a TPP that signs Australia up to these terrible provisions, undermines our democracy and sovereignty, and, of course, cannot be renegotiated after the fact. We've heard from the Labor opposition that they promise to renegotiate them if they form government. This is an absolute farce and needs to be called out for the furphy that it is. They cannot have it both ways. Why would any country enter into renegotiations with Australia just because there's a change of government when the opposition at the time had the opportunity to fix it once and for all? The sad reality is that this legislation, when it passes this place today, will be subject to ISDS provisions. Labor will not be able to wind them back without withdrawing fully from the TPP. They will be committing Australian taxpayers and citizens to an agreement which they themselves say is against their own party's platform. No wonder Australian unions and workers are furious at the Labor position today.

ISDS powers are routinely used by corporations to attack governments and communities for doing what governments are supposed to do—namely, regulate in the interests of their citizens. In 2016, Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis filed an ISDS dispute against the Colombian government over the government's plans to reduce prices on patented treatment for leukaemia. The Colombian government wanted to reduce the cost of medication for leukaemia so that its citizens could access it, and the big pharmaceutical company came in and said, 'Oh, no, we'll sue you for that.' It is just appalling that this type of power is being handed to these big multinational corporations at the expense of the rights of the Australian people to have our government legislate and regulate in our best interests.

Over and over in this place we talk about the power and influence of big corporations on politics. Well, there is no better example than this TPP legislation before us today. This deal has been put together for the interests of big corporations at the expense of the community and of the rights of the people. We know that in Canada, in 2017, the Canadian Bear Creek Mining Corporation was awarded $26 million from the government of Peru because the government cancelled a mining licence after the Canadian company failed to obtain informed consent from indigenous landowners. In that case, we had a big multinational mining corporation going into Peru and not getting the right consent from the indigenous owners and, when the Colombian government wanted to do something about it, the big multinational company said, 'We're going to sue you,' because the government was standing up for its own people. Just imagine if we signed this piece of legislation into law today and the world's biggest coalmine in Queensland, run by Adani, started thinking that it can sue its way into operation. Giving these corporations this massive amount of power to undermine the interests of the Australian people is on the line today. We are opening ourselves up to the risks of ISDS, and it is simply unjustifiable. The government will argue, and we've heard it time and time again, that these provisions are needed because they give certainty to investors. Well, how about certainty to the Australian people, to know that when they demand action from the government the government will do it and it will stand; that it won't be overridden because of the desire of a multinational corporation?

Of course, these provisions are even more inexcusable given the United Nations IPCC report which was tabled last week, which served as yet another reminder of our gross inaction on climate change. While successive governments have frittered away the last decade squabbling over climate and energy policy, we have moved closer and closer to thresholds that our scientists warn will dramatically and drastically change life on the planet. While the environmental provisions in the TPP are wholly inadequate, the real risk is that these ISDS provisions will stop real action on climate change, because these big multinational companies don't give a damn about the impact of their operations on the people and communities, and they certainly don't consider the impact on the environment or future generations.

Stopping governments from taking necessary action in the best interests of their citizens and our environment is unthinkable. That is what our governments should be doing: looking after our community and acting in the best interests of their citizens—which is why I'm foreshadowing that I'll be moving a second reading amendment that will stop this TPP legislation in its tracks. We should not be considering this legislation anymore until these provisions are removed and until the issues are resolved specifically in relation to the right of Australian workers to know that there is proper labour force market testing in place.

This TPP legislation commits Australia to accepting an unlimited number of temporary workers from Canada, Mexico, Chile, Japan, Malaysia and Vietnam. These workers will be spread across a wide range of professional and technical skilled trades and occupations. The agreement does not require that there be any labour market testing to establish whether there are local workers who could do these jobs first—not even an initial check is required. These workers would then be brought to Australia to work in jobs and on projects regardless of whether there are Australians—particularly young Australians—who are ready and able to do the job on the same project. This weakens our domestic labour market and exploits these temporary workers all at the same time.

Migrant temporary workers remain tied to one employer for the course of their time in Australia, and they face deportation if they lose their job for any reason. This means the exploitation of these workers will remain high and their positions will be very risky. Australia has benefitted greatly from the contributions of migrant temporary workers, and they perform a vital role, but they must be protected by genuine rules and regulations that ensure they are not exploited. This TPP deal not only opens them up to exploitation but also, as a result, pushes down the rights of workers here in Australia domestically. We already know that the Fair Work Ombudsman says that one in 10 complaints to the agency in 2015 came from the exploitation of migrant workers. It is happening already, and this deal will make it even worse. When we sign up to trade agreements we should be signing up to ensure that they maximise job opportunities for Australian workers and give proper protection to both domestic and migrant workers as a gold-clad guarantee, not allow people to be further exploited and undermined. These agreements are written for corporations so that they can continue to exploit Australian and foreign workers twofold. Meanwhile, those corporations get to bank their profits, and nobody looks in either direction.

Even if all these reasons weren't enough, we're sceptical, as the Productivity Commission has been, of the economic modelling promised by the government in relation to this deal. We've had no independent modelling from the Australian government in relation to this. They promise that things will get better, but, in fact, all the modelling that has been done proves otherwise. The government makes generous assumptions of full employment and costless adjustment to claim that there will be only winners, not losers. But anyone who's watched trade negotiations unfold knows that there are always winners and losers. It's a question of whether the government of the day is willing to be up-front about that; that's what counts. We've seen over and over again that this government is wanting to brush all the issues under the carpet.

The government assumes perfect labour mobility and assumes away any income-distribution effects or trade-balance effects. The government can't promise anything except that this is a dodgy deal. What is surprising is that, once you've factored in all those rosy assumptions that are coming from the government side, the economic benefits remain stubbornly minuscule. The Peterson Institute for International Economics in the US has produced a study estimating a very small increase in Australia's GDP after 15 years—0.6 per cent. For Australia, this represents a growth of between zero and 0.1 per cent per year. This is somewhere between nothing and a rounding error.

Today we have before us a deal that signs away the rights of citizens to have the government implement policies and laws in their best interests; a deal that undercuts the ability for Australian workers to get a look-in, first and foremost, if they're able to do a job; and a deal that allows for multinational corporations to exert even more power over the government of the day to create a chilling effect on regulation. And for what? A rounding error, perhaps, of economic benefit. It's a dodgy deal, and it should be thrown out.