The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is a proposed new regional free trade agreement which builds on an existing Free Trade Agreement between New Zealand, Chile, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam. The negotiations now include the United States, Australia, Peru and Vietnam.

Official negotiations began in Melbourne on 15th March 2010. Four negotiation meetings are planned during 2010.

Thirty Australian unions and community groups, on Sunday 14th March 2010, asked the Trade Minister to safeguard the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Australian local content in media, regulation of GE food, regulation of foreign investment and industry policies that support local employment in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations which start on Monday March 15.

Follow this link to read the statement.
Follow this link to download the joint statement and this link to download the media release.
Individuals can get directly involved by emailing Stephen Smith

On Wednesday 16th June 2010, in the Jubilee Room of NSW Parliament House, AFTINET held a successful public meeting to launch our new publication, a community education leaflet about the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) called:

An electronic copy of the leaflet is available for download by following this link.

AFTINET is able to supply bulk copies of the leaflet but will need you to cover the postage costs. If you wish to order bulk copies please download an order form by following this link or call AFTINET on 02 9212 7242.

The AFTINET Campaign has recieved some media attention - follow this link to read the reports.

You may remember the campaign in 2003-4 about the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement. The US government and companies identified the following Australian health, social and environmental polices as barriers to trade that they wanted to remove or change:

• Price controls under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which ensure affordable access to medicines and kept Australian medicine prices three to ten times below US prices
• Labelling of genetically engineered food
• Australian content rules in audio-visual media like film and television
• The Foreign Investment Review Board
• Quarantine regulations
• Local content requirements for government purchasing

The US government also wanted an investor-state disputes process, which would have given US companies the right to sue Australian governments for damages on the grounds that environmental or other public interest laws could harm their investments. US companies have used this process in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to sue Canadian and Mexican governments for millions of dollars and to force them to change environmental protection laws which were different from US laws.

Our biggest victory was the exclusion of the investor-state complaints process, which means that US companies did not gain extra rights to sue Australian governments. The Australia-US FTA is the only US free trade agreement which does not include this process. We also prevented changes to genetically engineered food regulation, and limited the changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

The agreement also had very weak labour and environment clauses, which were not legally based on International Labour Organisation standards, but committed each government only to implement its own laws, with no penalties.

All of these issues are now back on the agenda, because the Australian government has agreed to negotiate with the US, Chile, Peru, Brunei, Singapore New Zealand and Vietnam to develop a multilateral free trade agreement based on the bilateral FTAs the US has with five of these countries.

This means that all of the issues we kept out of the US–Australia FTA will be up for negotiation again. We know from submissions made by US business groups that they want to use the negotiations to obtain more changes in all of the areas listed above. And there will be strong pressure for Australia to accept an investor-state complaints process, because four of the other bilateral FTAs include this process.

CAMPAIGN INFORMATION FOR INDIVIDUALS:
For individual members, we have created an on-line email to be sent to Mr Smith, or if you prefer to use mail you can choose to download a letter to send to him.

Click on this link to Send an Email to Stephen Smith.

or you can download and send Mr Smith a letter.

Select this link to download a letter to mail to Mr Smith:


Resources are available on our resources page

TPPA Campaign: Don’t trade away health, labour, cultural and environmental policies

More than thirty Australian unions and community groups today, Sunday 14th March 2010, asked the Trade Minister to safeguard the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, Australian local content in media, regulation of GE food, regulation of foreign investment and industry policies that support local employment in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations which start on Monday March 15.

The following is the joint statement:

The Australian Government is involved in negotiations for a Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) with the US, Chile, Peru, Brunei, Singapore, New Zealand and Vietnam to develop a multilateral agreement based on the bilateral agreements the US has with five of these countries. This will resurrect all of the issues that were debated in the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

The Howard Government negotiated the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement in 2003-4. The US government and companies identified the following Australian polices as barriers to trade that they wanted to remove or change as part of the free trade agreement:

• Price controls under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which ensure Australians affordable access to medicines
• Labelling of genetically engineered food
• Australian content rules in audio-visual media like film and television
• The Foreign Investment Review Board
• Quarantine regulations
• Local content requirements for government purchasing

The US government also wanted an investor-state disputes process, which would have given US companies the right to sue Australian governments for damages on the grounds that environmental or other public interest laws could harm their investments. US companies have used this process in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to sue Canadian and Mexican governments for millions of dollars.

There was strong community opposition to the US agenda, because we believed that health, environmental, social and cultural policies should be decided through democratic parliamentary processes, not secretly bargained away in trade agreements.

The community campaign did have an impact. There was no investor-state disputes process, no changes to GE food labelling, and limited changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and local media content.

The agreement also had very weak labour and environment clauses, which were not legally based on International Labour Organisation standards.

The TPPA means that all the issues we kept out of the US–Australia Free Trade Agreement will be up for negotiation again. We know from submissions made by US business groups that they want to use the negotiations to obtain more changes in most of the areas listed above, and to push for an investor-state complaints process.

The government has said that they will try to use the agreement to improve Australian access to US agricultural markets, but the danger is that further changes to the PBS and the other policies will be demanded as trade-offs.

We are asking the government to adopt the following principles in the TPPA negotiations:

• No further changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme which would reduce affordable access to medicines
• No investor-state disputes process which would give special rights to international corporations to sue governments for damages
• Full rights to regulate labelling of genetically engineered food and to regulate GE crops, including existing moratoria
• No further weakening of Australian Government power to regulate audiovisual media for Australian content purposes
• Retention of the Foreign Investment Review Board, and of its powers to review foreign investment in the public interest
• No weakening of quarantine regulations
• No reductions in the ability to have local content requirements for government purchasing and industry policies that support local employment
• Strong labour clauses that require signatories to enforce the core International Labor Organisation’s (ILO) standards in the ILO Conventions, with trade penalties for non-compliance
• Strong environmental clauses that require signatories to meet all applicable international environmental standards including those contained within UN environmental agreements, with trade penalties for non compliance.

The following organisations support these principles:

We are campaigning to prevent these health, cultural and environmental policies from being traded away.

Get Involved and Stay in Touch – check back regularly and follow the link below to find out more about the campaign and what actions you can take.

Follow this link to return to our TPPA Campaign Page.

By following this link you can now Send an Email to Stephen Smith.

To Download the Statement select this link and the Media Release follow this link.

Our Campaign has gained some media attention: follow this link to read them.