The Singapore/Australia Free Trade Agreement came into force on July 28 2003.
The agreement contains a 'negative-list' for services, a list that includes all service areas except those explicitly exempted. This is highly problematic as there will almost certainly be included in the agreement areas that may not be intended, resulting in the existing measures regulating those services being bound at current levels, and the introduction of any more regulatory measures being exposed to challenge under the FTA. This applies to all future services that are yet to come into existance.
The FTA also includes the problematic inclusion of the GATS definition of public services. This definition refers to public services as those provided for free and without competition. Under the agreement Australia has listed for exclusion Australia's health, education, water, social welfare and prison systems among others but only under to the extent that they are "social services established for the public purpose". Under this exception most services do not apply.
This leaves Australia's regulatory approach open to challenge from private companies if they are deemed to be "more burdensome than necessary". If the challenge was successful then Australia would be obliged to change its law. The same applies to Singapore.
For more information see AFTINET's analysis of the text in our submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties.
The text of the agreement is available from the Australian Government website.
