4 October, 2023: Australian Resource Minister, Madeline King, commented last week that the EU might “miss the boat” on securing Australian critical minerals, amping up tensions in current EU-Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations.
September 30, 2023: Dr Patricia Ranald’s article in the Saturday Paper explains how Clive Palmer has registered his company Zeph Investments in Singapore and is using the Australia-New Zealand-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement to make multiple claims against the Australian government of almost $340 billion.
September 28, 2023: The Joint Standing Committee on Trade Investment and Growth is conducting this enquiry at the request of the Trade Minister.
19 September, 2023: Following failing efforts to ‘modernise’ the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) and the EU Commission formal proposal to collectively exit the agreement, the UK is facing increasing pressure to withdraw from the ECT.
18 September, 2023: Experts are confident that the Pandemic Agreement, the latest draft of which is being discussed this week, will be adopted in May 2024 at the World Health Assembly meeting but there are doubts on how meaningful the agreement will be.
11 September, 2023: Australia is part of the ongoing World Health Organisation negotiations to build the international response for future pandemics, through both improving the existing International Health Regulations and negotiating a new Global Pandemic Agreement .
September 9, 2023: Negotiations for this text were completed in May and the text was released on September 8. The text may be signed in November 2023, after which it will be tabled in Parliament and reviewed by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. It could come into force in the first quarter of 2024.
7 September, 2023: On August 17, the South African NGO Health Justice Initiative won a huge victory when the Pretoria High Court ruled that South Africa had to make its COVID procurement contracts public.
September 6, 2023 AFTINET Media release
Australia's Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040 announced today will “review the scope of existing Free Trade Agreements to determine priorities for agreement upgrade negotiations.”
The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (CPTPP), a free trade agreement between 11 countries; Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam, has now been in force for 5 years. This milestone means the CPTPP has to undergo a 5-year post-implementation review, which considers the impacts of the agreement since it has come into force.