The Pirate Party denounces any attempts to include certification provisions in the highly secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The United States, one of twelve negotiating nations including Australia, may be given the power to opt-out of the Agreement if countries do not implement the TPP according to the standards of the United States Trade Representative. This has been used by the United States to pressure other countries into adopting its interpretation of trade agreements[1].
These provisions give an inordinate amount of leverage to the US Government to pressure treaty partners, such as Australia, to alter and adopt laws that go beyond the negotiated text of the treaty. In practice this could result in a situation where the US Government and its advisors are approving, or even drafting, Australian laws to ensure they comply with the interests and expectations of the United States.
Brendan Molloy, President of the Pirate Party, commented: “This is an egregious overreach. I daresay that any Australian government that signs such an unbalanced agreement, which puts such an unequal share of power in the hands of a foreign entity, is guilty of betraying the interests of the Australian people. A partnership where all parties do not have equal power is not a partnership. By signing such a fundamentally unbalanced agreement, Australia would be granting the US significant control of our sovereignty, making us effectively a vassal of the United States.
“The United States, as a major exporter of intellectual property, will naturally push for an interpretation that favours greater protection of their intellectual property rights. This will significantly hamper reform of domestic intellectual property laws which have already adopted many of the stricter aspects of the US system without introducing any of the flexibility, such as a fair use exception for copyright.
“The Pirate Party insists that all treaties be negotiated transparently, without the levels of secrecy that have thus far defined the TPP negotiations. We call upon the Australian Government to reject any attempts to force a particular nation’s interpretation of the TPP and other agreements. If the provisions are so ambiguous as to allow multiple and conflicting interpretations, then they are clearly not refined enough. Public scrutiny and criticism of the text prior to it being signed would go a long way towards avoiding such pitfalls. Genuine public consultation would go even further.”
Leaks of draft chapters indicate that the TPP will have many controversial provisions, including harsh patent and copyright amendments which may drive up the costs of medicine and force Internet service providers to monitor customers’ Internet usage[2]. Perhaps the most controversial draft provisions relate to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) which provide international investors and corporations with the power to challenge Australian laws in an international tribunal. This can allow corporations to sue for lost profits should a law be deemed to impact their bottom line, and completely bypasses Australia’s domestic legal system. Domestic businesses would not be given the same rights, except against foreign signatory governments.
The secrecy of the negotiations allows these provisions to be determined with minimal public consultation. The cost of granting such significant new powers to multinational corporations would be so high that any government proposing them would face enormous public opposition. United States Senator Elizabeth Warren has stated that “If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.”[3] The Pirate Party says it should not be the policy of Australia either.
The Pirate Party’s policy seeks to ensure that treaty negotiations are subject to oversight and public participation, is opposed to ISDS provisions, and seeks to increase Parliamentary oversight and consent in treaty making[4].
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/08/certification-allows-us-trade-negotiators-rewrite-tpps-copyright-rules
[2] https://wikileaks.org/tpp/static/pdf/Wikileaks-secret-TPP-treaty-IP-chapter.pdf
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/12035523456/senator-warren-if-tpp-transparency-would-lead-to-public-opposition-then-policy-is-wrong.shtml
[4] https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Policies/Foreign_Policy_and_Treaty_Making
So it’s finally come to what some of us have feared for the last decade or two; The corrupt (-ed and -ing) and self serving American political system finally finds a way to get its claws into the political systems of its “friends and allies”.
Our federal governments are selling us down a very dirty and industrial-waste-filled river and the stench is stomach churning. The opening up of our health and education sectors to allow emulation of the failing and discriminatory system enjoyed by all Americans is nothing short of moral bankruptcy and the TPP in its current state of secrecy is nothing more than a self serving attempt by corporate America to garner a higher percentage of profits. They don’t like it when we complain that the price of software is ridiculously high; They don’t like it if we choose to exercise our rights with regard to consumer protection; They certainly won’t like it when they try to foist upon us the substandard, foreign assembled rubbish they call a motor vehicle and we continue to buy an Asian assembled and designed vehicle with a safety rating, acceptable fuel economy and a resale value.
This HAS to be argued strongly and vehemently because if this is where we’re all heading we’ll end up with the FBI, CIA, NSA and various mega-corporates reading our email, watching our ‘net surfing, monitoring our snail mail and replicating our DNA for their own reasons. We’ll be forced to pay whatever we’re told to pay for a set of dvd’s, life saving medications, a motor vehicle, clothing or any electronic device that is needed to connect into this wired world.
In 1999, Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, said “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle said a few years later “The privacy you’re concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy.” (quoted from the Wall Street Journal because i couldn’t remember them verbatim)
The other quote to add to this would have to be “We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
This issue is widely publicised. Even in the USA it’s been criticised;
http://www.iatp.org/documents/10-reasons-ttip-is-bad-for-good-food-and-farming
Then there’s GeorgeMonbiot;
‘http://www.monbiot.com/2014/03/10/all-give-and-no-take/
Arundhati Roy;
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39577.htm
And;
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/tpp-dangerous-proposal-whose-time-gone.html
ETC
By usurping our sovereignty the treaties cause governments to betray the Grand Bargain that confers legitimacy on them. We allow the government to govern because it is tasked with looking after the interests of all its citizens. By betraying that governments are rendered illegitimate.