2015-10-07
The Australian Greens spokesperson for Trade, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, has written to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to request that he refers the entire Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) to the Productivity Commission for full economic assessment.
Senator Whish-Wilson said, “The public and the Parliament have a right to hear the full story about the TPP, not just the spin from the government.
“The Treasury has previously said that the ‘benefits of FTAs currently under negotiation have been oversold and the negatives largely ignored.’ The Parliament and the public need to be given all the information so they can make up their own minds about the pros and cons of these deals because you can’t trust the government to tell us the whole truth.
“When selling the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement the government made a basic maths error and overstated the potential jobs benefit by a factor of thirty-three.
“Inquiry after inquiry, the most recent being the Harper Review of competition policy, have called for genuine independent economic analysis of the potential benefits AND costs of these deals.
“We strongly oppose the inclusion of Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions in trade deals and we have enormous concerns about the impacts of changes to intellectual property laws, digital rights and financial regulation that may flow from the TPP.
“I have written to the Prime Minister asking him to refer the TPP to the Productivity Commission for assessment. If the TPP really is the ‘foundation stone for future prosperity’ that Malcolm Turnbull says it is then he should have no fear in putting it up for proper scrutiny,” Senator Whish-Wilson concluded.