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

There's an old saying: 'There's nothing new under the sun.' Just to remind senators, we've had this debate—exactly the same debate—in this chamber numerous times over the last six years. I remember I put up an order for the production of documents in the early stages of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, in 2014. Although the Senate voted for that order for the production of documents, the government refused to bring in any documents at all. I remember going and speaking to the previous Clerk of the Senate, Rosemary Laing, and I said, 'What do you do when the government is not complying with an order of the Senate?'

She got out OdgersI remember the exact spot she went to in Odgersand said to me: 'All you can do is disrupt their legislative agenda. If they won't comply with the order of the Senate, then every time something comes up on trade, every time we debate some legislation, you need to basically make their life hell'—more or less; those weren't her exact words, but that's my interpretation of what she said. We're still here, six years later, talking about lack of transparency around trade deals.

If anybody wants an informed document to read about exactly what we're debating today, then I suggest they go to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee's report, Blind agreement: how to reform the treaty making process. I was part of that committee; in fact, I initiated that inquiry into the treaty-making process. We had a number of senators in this chamber on that committee, and it was a great piece of work. It talked about the urgent need to reform our treaty-making process—the treaty-making process that allows agreement like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other agreements like the Chinese free trade agreement or the US free trade agreement.

This treaty-making process is hundreds of years old. It hasn't changed since we adopted the Westminster system in this country. It goes back to almost precolonial days, when governments were able to negotiate treaties with other nations following wars. It gives an executive government complete power over parliament, and that's exactly what has happened. There's nothing complicated about this. The executive can negotiate through these processes not just trade deals in the sense that we tend to think—'We're going to swap goods and commodities with other countries'; that's not what trade deals are these days—but trade deals that are a holistic set of regulations between countries. It's an attempt to synchronise regulations between countries, regulations that affect just about every aspect of our lives. The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement had 33 chapters that covered every aspect of Australians' lives. It had very little to do with traditional trade. It had very little to do with that at all. It's about a global rules based order. And guess what? Parliament doesn't get a look-in at all.

Over the years of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement—negotiations started in 2010—the only information we got on the text of that agreement was from WikiLeaks. The only information we got, thank goodness, was from Julian Assange's WikiLeaks, where we had downloads of what was going on. Do you think civil society could get into any of the meetings that were occurring behind closed doors between big business and governments? No, they couldn't. This was all negotiated behind closed doors, in secret.

I want everybody to stop and think about what exactly this trade negotiation is—this trade deal that we're talking about. It's not just what you see on TV, where you see minister wearing a floral shirt in another country who is about to sign a piece of paper. It's not about governments and DFAT negotiators behind closed doors. Think about it: this is about business coming together, going to government with vested interests and saying, 'We want you to negotiate improved access in these countries for us so we can make more profit, so we can make more money.' That's where it all starts. Governments act on their behalf, and then we get these agreements that the parliament doesn't get to look at until they're signed. That point has been made very clearly by Senator Hanson this morning and by Senator Carr. It's a joke. These are signed before they come to parliament; in other words, the government, the executive, agrees to this without the Australian people, without their representatives in parliament, even having a look or a say.

The JSCOT is the committee that we set up to look into this, but the JSCOT is a rubber stamp; it is a government-dominated committee. It will never reject a trade deal—never! And, by the way, you can't change a single thing, a single word, without the entire trade agreement falling apart. You can't amend it and you can't improve it, because it's signed and sealed by the executive. It's a direct snub at the parliament of this country, as it is in other countries. It's totally unacceptable. It railroads our democratic process, and it's allowed to do this because the treaty-making process hasn't been properly reformed since its inception. The JSCOT itself was a suggested reform: an attempt to try to give some kind of semblance of democracy to the negotiation of these deals. But it has failed completely, so the whole thing needs reform. We, the Greens, put in a dissenting report to that treaty-making process committee report. Nevertheless, I think that all parties agree in here that it needs reform and that it needs reform urgently.

I have pointed out consistently that the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is a dangerous agreement, not just for Australia but for many countries. We can't allow our rules and regulations to be written in this country by corporations for corporations. They are the power behind the throne in terms of these agreements. Have absolutely no doubt about it, transnational or multinational corporations—whatever you want to call them—push these agreements because they have operations in all the countries associated with them. They want to synchronise rules and regulations, such as investment rules, between countries to get what they want.

The investor-state dispute settlement clauses are a classic example of that. We had a separate Senate inquiry into ISDS and it got international attention; everybody wanted to know what the Australian government was going to do around ISDS. It is totally unnecessary in countries that have good legal systems. It is designed to give corporations the chance to second-guess and to intimidate parliaments. Again, that is antidemocratic. These are Trojan Horse clauses that are totally unacceptable in a modern trade deal. There is no need for them, they are proliferating, they have a number of adverse consequences and just about everybody agreed that we shouldn't have them in our trade deals. The only reason they were kept in the trade deals was because both Labor and the Liberals felt like they didn't want to be bound by this in case it jeopardised future trade negotiations. That's not a good enough reason to have an antidemocratic, dangerous ISDS clause in a trade deal.

So we've got to this point where we're having this debate again, asking the government to provide the information to the Senate. It won't, because it doesn't want to give up its executive power. It wants, essentially, to be able to have a parallel parliament and a process that completely circumvents our democratic parliamentary process because it has the power to do this and it will not give that up. Have a think about when these proliferations of trade deals started. They started in 2013, when the Abbott government was elected. Suddenly, we had this plethora of trade deals being signed: five trade deals. They were great photo shoot opportunities. We got really crappy modelling around all of these trade deals; just about every decent economist in this country said, 'The modelling is not worth the paper it's written on,' including the TPP modelling. Even the modelling that was done showed negligible benefits. We never have an honest debate in this country around trade. All we hear about are the benefits; we never focus on the cost. That's why I applaud Senator Hanson for bringing this forward today.

With every trade deal that we sign, and they cover just about every aspect of our lives, there are costs. We can have an argument about whether there is a net cost or a net benefit, but at least be honest with the Australian people: there are costs to these deals. While we get access for our exporters, we open up our markets, as you well know, Mr Acting Deputy President O'Sullivan, to foreign companies which actually sell products and undermine our local producers as well.

The car industry is a classic example, and there are so many more. In fact, I remember that the Korean free trade deal was called by the media in this country the 'cows for cars' deal. We traded away our car industry for more access for beef farmers. Who gets to decide whether beef farmers should win over car manufacturers? We don't get to decide it as an Australian people and we don't get to decide it as an Australian parliament. Who gets to decide it? It's the executive and the ideology—I would say the blind ideology—behind the blind treaty-making process that's in this country which allows this kind of circumvention of our democracy to occur.

I applaud bringing this forward. With every opportunity we have we should put pressure on this government to show some transparency around trade.