Some Relief on Deadline for the Parliamentary Inquiry on the WTO

The deadline for submissions to the Federal Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Treaties public inquiry into Australia’s relationship with the WTO is August 25.

However the secretariat says the main reason for this is to get an indication of who will make submissions so they can plan public hearings. You can send a letter with a summary or plan of your submission by August 25 and then send the full submission later in September.

Public hearings will probably not start until October and are expected to run until the end of the year.

There is also an email update list from the committee on the inquiry which can be accessed on the parliamentary website: www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jsct

The Committee can be contacted by phone (02 6277 4002), fax (02 6277 4827) or email jsct@aph.gov.au

Information for submissions

See the AFTINET Bulletin No 7.

A summary of the AFTINET submission will be sent to subscribers and to the Committee on 19/8/2000 .

The full submission will be completed and circulated in September for comment and endorsement by those who wish to do so. It will be based on the AFTINET principles and will deal with the general issues.

Organisations are strongly urged to make their own submissions on issues of most relevance to them.

There is now an eGroups email discussion group to which submission ideas can be posted for comment and development. To subscribe, send a blank email to JSCOT-subscribe@egroups.com

There is also a co-operative website on which the JSCOT terms of reference are listed, together with suggested material and online references:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~jenks/WTOjscot.html