Minutes/Policy Development Committee Meeting/2014-05-28

Agenda

 * KAFTA
 * Education policy
 * Discourse
 * Agriculture and Food WG

Attendance

 * Laura Killian
 * Daniel Judge
 * Bill McLean
 * Mozart Olbrycht-Palmer
 * Brendan Molloy

KAFTA

 * Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement
 * Submission to JSCOT due on 13 June
 * For an overview of the treaty process see http://olbrychtpalmer.net/2013/12/10/resolving-australias-treaty-making-democratic-deficit/
 * Submission has been started, read only link: https://www.writelatex.com/read/wcsxyqtgkqmj
 * Contact policydev@pirateparty.org.au for the read and edit link or check Discourse.
 * General issues:
 * Contains investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions.
 * Contains intellectual property rights (IPR) provisions
 * Nothing has been done about the Productivity Commission's recommendation against including IPRs in agreements
 * Furthers the vertical integration of IPRs
 * AUSFTA required Australia and the US to be party to 13 different IP treaties.
 * Each FTA adds another layer, making it impossible to reform domestic laws without renegotiating virtually every trade agreement.

Education policy

 * Mark emailed around proposed amendments for the education policy.
 * http://pad.pirateparty.org.au/p/education_insert
 * Please read over and correct/offer feedback.

Discourse

 * We have launched a new forum, Discourse, available at http://discuss.pirateparty.org.au
 * It's slowly being spread across the membership: NC and Officers are on it already, PDC may as well start using it.
 * Logical to get the entire PDC on it as it's useful for policy issues.
 * There are a couple of topics in the policy category already.

Agriculture and Food Working Group

 * One AFWG meeting so far.
 * Please post relevant material in http://pad.pirateparty.org.au/p/AgricultureWG
 * A meeting will be called again within the next few weeks.
 * Might be valuable to post the details to Discourse.