1. Report of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Australia’s relationship with the WTO released
2. Conflicting WTO drafts on TRIPS and access to Medicines
3. An end to the myth of security, by Kathy Kang
4. Sydney Reminder: Election debate on Trade and Aid, Tues Oct 9, 6pm, Pitt St Uniting Church, 264 Pitt St, Sydney

1. Report of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Australia’s relationship with the WTO released

The report was tabled in Parliament on September 24 and should be available at http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jcst

AFTINET lobbied for this inquiry and many AFTINET member organisations made submissions to it. We saw it as an opportunity to promote public debate through the public hearing process of the inquiry and to educate politicians about community concerns. These concerns included the lack of community consultation and parliamentary scrutiny of trade policy, the secretive and undemocratic structure of the WTO and its exclusion of developing countries from decision making, the conflicts between international trade law and UN agreements on human rights and the environment, the ability of WTO disputes panel decisions to over ride legitimate public interest regulation and the potential expansion of trade agreements into areas like public services and investment policy which should remain at the level of national and local democratic policy making . This process was perhaps more important than the report of the Inquiry, which was predictable given the domination of the committee by members of government parties.

The membership of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties of the is 10 Liberals, 1 National, 5 Labor and one Democrat. It is worth noting that the former Chair of the Committee, Andrew Thompson was replaced after he lost the Liberal pre selection for his seat. His publicly funded trip to the USA, allegedly to do research for the Committee, was surrounded by controversy.

The title of the Report, "Who’s Afraid of the WTO?" reveals its direction. The report endorses current government policy, while conceding that some changes are needed around the edges of that policy. The report argues that much community criticism of current policy is based on ignorance or misunderstanding, and recommends "community information programs" on the benefits of trade liberalisation.

The body of the report does record many of the criticisms of the WTO and Australia’s policy towards it raised by many of the 300 submissions to the inquiry from organisations and individuals. Most of these criticisms are not found in the recommendations, but some have influenced the recommendations.

One positive and revealing recommendation is that the government should commission multidisciplinary research to evaluate the socio-economic impact of trade liberalisation in Australia since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1994. This is based on the damaging admission by DFAT that, while DFAT produces studies which claim to predict future benefits from further trade liberalisation, no studies of the actual economic and social outcomes had been done (p25).

The committee also recommended that the likely socio-economic impacts of future WTO agreements on industry sectors and communities be assessed before deciding whether Australia should enter into them. This is also an implied criticism of the DFAT and other studies which always claim long term net economic benefits for the whole economy from liberalisation precisely because they exclude consideration of social impacts like job losses on particular sectors and communities.

A related recommendation is that a specific Joint Standing Committee on Trade Liberalisation be established to monitor and review the impact of Trade agreements on Australia, to have input into trade negotiation positions as they are developed by the government, and to conduct an annual review of WTO policy.

Other recommendations support community consultation about trade policy and inclusion of community representatives in WTO delegations. However, as we have noted in submissions to DFAT, the current advisory body is still overwhelmingly made up of business interests, with only four community representatives out of 16.

The report also acknowledges that there has been a lack of consultation with State and Territory governments on trade policy and recommends some measures to address this.

The dissenting voice in the report (Appendix A) is that of Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett, who endorses the concept of "Fair Trade" rather than "Free Trade", and supports many of the concerns raised by community organisations.

2. Conflicting WTO drafts on TRIPS and access to Medicines

- From BRIDGES Weekly Trade News Digest - Vol. 5, Number 32, 25 September, 2001

The developing country group and Australia, the US and other industrialised governments have produced conflicting drafts for a Ministerial declaration on access to medicines for the WTO Doha meeting.

The 14-point draft submitted by the developing country group aimed at interpreting and clarifying the TRIPs Agreement regarding the rights of Members to take actions for the protection of public health. T he paper states that, "nothing in the TRIPs Agreement shall prevent Members from taking measures to protect public health." The supporters of the draft hold that this interpretation stems from the objectives and principles of the TRIPs Agreement (Arts. 8 and 9).

Other parts of the draft declaration addressed the questions of flexibility of the TRIPs Agreement and public health: the draft called for freedom to use parallel imports and allow compulsory licensing. It also included extended deadlines for applying TRIPs provisions and restraint in bringing related disputes to the WTO.

The draft preamble submitted by Australia and four other developed countries on 19 September focused on constraining the alleged flexibility of the TRIPs Agreement to the tackling of pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. The draft also emphasised that patents are important for creating new drugs and therefore for making them available to the sick. The paper further stated that countries' rules for parallel imports should not allow cheap drugs supplied to poorer markets to leak into richer markets because this would undermine differential pricing. In addition, the draft stressed the need for technical assistance to poorer countries.

Another complementary draft submitted by the US and four other countries also limited the scope of discussions to HIV/AIDS and other pandemics.

Delegates from several developing countries generally expressed disappointment with what they qualified as the "hard line" taken by the proponents of the Australian and US drafts.

India, supported by a number of other developing countries, made it clear that it could not accept a reduction in existing flexibility under the guise of a Ministerial declaration. India also stated that it could not accept the limitation introduced by the US draft, which qualifies the definition of "national emergencies" to encompass only pandemics of life-threatening and communicable diseases.

3. An end to the myth of security, by Kathy Kang

The terrorist attack of 11 September leaving some 6,800 civilians dead or missing in the US, and the ensuing initiatives by the US government, are deeply unsettling.

It is distressing to think about the deaths and human suffering in the attack, yet that distress does not fully account for the unsettling impact. Distress of the same kind and intensity was, or should have been, our constant companion, given the avoidable suffering and deaths of innocent people that have occurred in recent times, and are still occurring, in many regions of the world. The exceptional impact of the attack of 11 September, for those of us living in the wealthy Western nations, has to do with a change in social consciousness. There is no fortress in which a materially well-off world’s way of life can be protected: we are experiencing a long overdue, mass awakening to that fact.

In Australia’s case, our government busies itself raising drawbridges to keep out asylum seekers, in the belief this will increase its electoral support. Those drawbridges can stay up, but as of 11 September 2001 it is clear that they won’t save us from being exposed to the uncertainty and the eruptions of suffering and upheaval that are present in the world of human affairs, shaped as it is today.

Problems with the "war against terrorism"

The US government, with predictable strong support from the global mainstream media, is rallying other governments, and attempting to channel mass sentiments, the people’s hearts and minds, in support of a "war against terrorism". The sad fact is that the US state, as part of its foreign policy strategy, has long been using terrorist networks, and carrying out acts of terror itself. Notorious examples include: US support for the military coup that overthrew the Allende government in Chile in the early 1970s; US support for fighters who used terrorist methods in ousting the former Soviet Union’s occupying forces from Afghanistan in the 1980s. All of these instances, and more, would be already familiar to most readers on the AFTINET list. (If anyone wants assistance in obtaining information on this aspect, they could contact me by e-mail at kkan8973@mail.usyd.edu.au)

Against that background, the US government’s "war against terrorism" is almost certain to cause an escalation of terrorism, on a global scale. Congress has allocated $40 billion (US) for the initial strikes in this "war". It has passed legislation to widen US police and security agencies’ powers - notably powers regarding phone tapping, and the procuring of assassinations - at the expense of citizens’ rights not just in the US but all over the world. The passage of this legislation amounts to a mind-boggling act of faith in the competence, and the good intentions, of official police and security agencies and the individuals and organisations with whom they will be working. And as if that weren’t enough, the US military, by its own admission, is going to falsify information on what is happening in the "war" (see report on page 2 of the Sydney Morning Herald, 26/09/01).

International affairs commentators Michael Albert and Stephen Shalom point out that the US government’s current approach violates international law, which provides for international courts, established by the United Nations, to try persons who are accused of crimes against humanity such as the massacre in the US. According to UN doctrine, a nation is entitled to act in self-defence but - in Albert and Shalom’s words - this "does not allow countries themselves to launch massive reprisal raids - precisely because to allow such reprisals would lead to an endless cycle of unrestrained violence." (from "Five Reasons Not to Go to War", www.zmag.org)

Economic initiatives are not disrupted

In contrast to the extraordinary measures that are to be used in the "war against terrorism", governments’ and corporations’ aim is to keep the economies of the US and allied nations operating on the same footing as previously. Some sectors lose from the events of 11 September while others gain, and the market - possibly with help from the ultra-wealthy players and the established regulatory authorities - does not relinquish its grip. At least, so it appears at the time of writing.

The multilateral financial and economic institutions - the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation – are determined to proceed in the same manner as before. In other words, they will continue to press for further removal of barriers to trade, further privatisation of public sector activities, and expansion of market arrangements into practically all fields of human interaction.

The WB and the IMF have cancelled their annual meeting which was scheduled for 29-30 September in Washington DC, but this is not because the WB/IMF are re-thinking their agendas. They cancelled the meeting due to security concerns. The two organisations said jointly in a media release on 17 September "This decision was taken out of deepest respect and sympathy for the families of all those touched by the horrific events of last Tuesday, and in order to dedicate law enforcement personnel fully to the extraordinary and immediate priorities at hand," (http://WWW.WTOWatch.org/News/index.cfm?ID=2855 ). It would have required a major effort by police and security forces to give the WB/IMF the protection they needed in order to hold the annual meeting in their customary manner, ie behind closed doors and thus buffered from their many critics in global civil society.

Officials representing the US, the European Union, and the WTO have said in a media release, also dated 17 September, that they remain committed to holding the next ministerial meeting of the WTO in Doha, Qatar, on 9-13 November as scheduled. A further indication of the free trade agenda going ahead without missing a beat was the announcement on 17 September that China has been given the go-ahead to join the WTO. The Director-General of the WTO, Mike Moore, confidently declared that this was "a defining moment in the history of the WTO, a defining moment in the history of co-operation between nations." Underlining the fixity of the WTO agenda, the chief US negotiator Jeffrey Bader said, "At a time of the most profound national sorrow, combined with determination and resolve to defeat the deadly menace of terrorism, the United States government will not neglect its other interests. This week's decision on China's WTO entry demonstrates that." (reported in the Canada Globe and Mail, and archived at http://CitizensontheWeb.com)

The US administration has already begun a new drive to persuade Congress to grant the president the authority to proceed with fast-track negotiation of trade agreements. US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick has told lawmakers that legislation to let the president negotiate the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the new round of global trade talks in the WTO would help to signal the US’s determination to defend free trade against terrorist threats and opponents of globalisation. "This president and this administration will fight for open markets. We will not be intimidated by those who have taken to the streets to blame trade -and America - for the world’s ills," Zoellick said. "The global trading system has demonstrated, from Seoul to Santiago, that it is a pathway out of poverty and despair." (reported by Associated Press, 24/09/01)

Implications for Social Movements

The worldwide movement whose slogan is ‘A better world is possible’ sometimes called the movement for an alternative globalisation - is a loose-knit collection of many interconnected organisations and individuals. AFTINET, with its focus on fair trade not free trade, is one of the multitude of ‘hubs’ in that movement. The various hubs, located all around the world, serve to organise campaigns and actions that are critical of transnational corporations’ policies, and critical of many nations’ government policies, in multiple spheres: the environment; cultural diversity; international trade and finance; human rights; controlling the arms industry; and action to improve the human health and economic prospects of the poorest nations.

In the wake of the terrorist attack in the US, some of the movement’s larger hubs in North America which were participating in mass campaigns or actions, have temporarily withdrawn from those campaigns/actions. There has been a period of quiet at those hubs. At the same time, there are voices within the movement who see the US’s "war on terrorism" as a frightening further step by the well-off Western nation-states and powerful corporations to try to secure their dominant position in the world. The voices that have not gone quiet, within the movement, for the most part maintain that adopting a neutral or pro-war stance would be a betrayal of all we stand for. They hold that now, even more than before, we have a responsibility to disseminate information and to speak out. As well as the movement’s previous agenda, they argue, we ought now to be agitating on two new fronts: against the racist scapegoating that has emerged following the terrorist attack in the US, and against a war that could cause extreme global damage and suffering.

Most of the actions that had been organised by particular coalitions of groups in the movement are still going ahead. The ‘Quebec to Qatar caravan’ in Canada, for instance, will soon hit the road; sponsoring groups are altering their teach-in material and other messages to address the issues in the new situation. A mobilisation for peace, and against racist scapegoating, is going ahead in Washington DC in the period 24-29 September. Some of those who had planned to take part in the mass action around the WB/IMF meeting, will instead be mobilising for an end to anti-Muslim and anti-Arab fervour, and against a military sequel to the terrorist attack. The Fair Trade rally planned for November 13 in Sydney is proceeding as planned.

Oppose Violence and Mistreatment of Innocent People

We should oppose all forms of action undertaken with scant regard to the death and suffering of innocent men, women and children. This means we are as firmly against corporate globalisation as we are against terrorism.

In the better world which we maintain is possible, neither corporate globalisation, nor the forces that would be prepared to strike at the powerful by mounting attacks on defenceless civilians, would be able to flourish.

In summary we must steadfastly oppose all forms of violence and mistreatment of innocent people. This means we will do what we can to expose the "war against terrorism" as nothing but new-speak for an escalation of terrorism. We will oppose racist scapegoating. And, despite the pressure we are now under to look away from corporate globalisation and drop our campaigns against it, we will continue with those campaigns.

"The army that can defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive Humvees, or call in airstrikes. It doesn't have a high command, or high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts sweatshops and special interests. Where people feel powerless, it helps them organise for change, and where people are powerful, it reminds them of their responsibility."

4. Sydney Reminder: Election debate on Trade and Aid, Tues Oct 9, 6pm, Pitt St Uniting Church, 264 Pitt St, Sydney

Representatives from the Liberal, ALP, Democrats and Greens Parties will debate Trade and Aid policies, chaired by the Rev. Dorothy McRae McMahon.

Top of page