Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Thursday, 18 October 2018

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://www.cecaust.com.au

‘Box of chocolates’ fight to save Australia from TPP looting

The independents and cross-benchers that Prime Minister Scott Morrison said voting for was “like the good old box of chocolates—you never know what you’re going to get”, have fought a last-ditch effort to save Australia from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), after the Labor Party rolled over and sold out its union base.

A source confirmed to the Australian Alert Service that Labor’s sell-out is connected to its ties to big finance, which stands to gain from the TPP’s liberalisation of trade in financial services—Australian-based banks will be able to sell all over Asia the crappy financial products that the Financial Services Royal Commission has shown they have used to loot Australians.

The ALP’s ties to big finance are less prominent than the Liberal Party’s, but significant: while the major banks donate $1.6 million to the Liberals, they also donate $1 million to Labor, and they don’t donate out of the goodness of their hearts.

The Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, slammed the fraud of “free trade” in a hard-hitting 15 October statement headlined “Kill TPP bill”.

“Most of my last speeches in Parliament have been what I’ve hoped are fierce attacks upon the hypocrisy of free trade; upon our industry representative organisations particularly in agriculture”, Katter said. “All we’ve got out of these bodies in Canberra is a clapping of hands for every free trade deal.

“The Federal Government couldn’t drive the drover’s dog to a drink in the Murranji Track, and yet, they live in a world where their peculiar Adam Smith policies eliminate any reference to the assumptions upon which free markets are valid.”

Katter was referencing the assumption of a simple free market, in which seller and buyer have equal information, like a fruit stand at a farmers’ market; modern global markets put both producer and consumer at the mercy of massive corporate “middle-men” which have all of the information and all of the power, and are the real beneficiaries of these trade agreements.

Katter continued, “Adam Smith would turn in his grave if [he knew] his principles had been used to abolish arbitration in the dairy industry when there were 15,000 sellers in the market, and only two buyers: ‘Woolworths and Coles’.

“These people would fail the most elementary economics course at a reputable university and yet they continue on with the most crude and snivelling supine pathetic resort to the mantra of free trade when it has removed our car industry, made us petrol mendicants, blasted production, halved our cement and steel industries and reduced us to two quarries: iron ore and coal.

“Take note, if the TPP-11 is signed it will be the greatest blow to democracy in 300 years, and will amount to nothing more than a new form of Corporate Colonialism.

“This agreement is not about trade, it’s about sovereignty”, Mr Katter said. “Governments will now be stripped of their power to regulate the behaviour of overseas companies and will face legal consequences if they do.

“Companies will be able to come here under certain terms and conditions and no Government will be able to change those without fairly horrific consequences, if at all. It takes away our sovereignty and hands it over to the giant foreign-owned corporations.

“Once in place, withdrawing from the TPP will ensure the wrath of countries infinitely more powerful than our own.

“Over the last two centuries America has constantly enforced these principals upon the Latin/American countries and reduced them to grinding poverty if not quite mendicant states.”

Katter pointed out that the Australia-USA free trade agreement has been in the USA’s favour; then-Foreign Minister Julie Bishop admitted in January 2017, when trying to argue against incoming US president Donald Trump’s opposition to free trade, that the deal was an annual net $27 billion profit to the USA.

In the Senate, the Greens, Centre Alliance, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation dug in to interrogate the government and Labor opposition on the implications of what Australia is signing up to, but the major parties refused to answer.

“The dodgy TPP deal was designed by corporations, for corporations”, declared Greens trade spokesman Senator Sarah Hanson-Young in a 15 October release. “It is baffling to Australian workers, and the broader community, that the Labor Party has abandoned its base, and unions, to give this toxic trade deal the green light.

“Labor has an opportunity to say no to the TPP enabling legislation and back withdrawing from the agreement. Labor is trying to walk both sides of the street on the TPP. We can only address the TPP’s failures of ISDS provisions and weak labour market testing before the deal is ratified.”

Labor is saying it supports ratification of the TPP, but when it is in power it will change the bad provisions relating to corporate tribunals allowing corporations to overrule sovereign governments, known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS); labour market testing to see if foreign workers are needed or if they will undermine the local workforce; and pharmaceutical provisions that force nations to pay more for medicines. However, in the Senate debate on 16 October, Labor Senator Kim Carr shot down the attempts of the cross-benchers to amend the ratification legislation, insisting that customs bills cannot be amended. Senator Pauline Hanson immediately asked, “I want confirmation on what the Labor Party are saying. They are saying that, if they win government next year, they intend to change the ISDS and they intend to address the workers coming into Australia. Can they do that in light of what Senator Carr said on the floor here? The review is in three or five years’ time. So, in light of that information, Labor cannot make any changes to this, with regard to workers coming into Australia or the ISDS, even if they are inclined to make changes to it?”

Senator Hanson’s question, which wasn’t answered, highlighted the hollowness of Labor’s assurance. Labor can only change the TPP if it is prepared to walk away from it, as Donald Trump did. It won’t, because the modern ALP is still captive to what “old” Labor called the Money Power, which only a grass-roots revolution of the type that carried Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the UK Labour Party will change.

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