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Issue No. 154 | 27 September 2002 |
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War On The Collective
Interview: Still Flying International: President Gas Politics: Australia: A Rogue State? Unions: Welfare Max Bad Boss: Welcome to Telstra! Health: Fat Albert: The Grim Reaper Satire: Iraq Pre-empts Pre-emptive Strike Poetry: A Man From the East And A Man From The West Review: The Sum Of All Fears
Legends The Locker Room Bosswatch Awards Week in review Activists
 The Shame (Sham) of the Democratic PartyWeapons of DestructionTears From TomGood Hearts
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News Sydney Trade Talks Face Backlash
On November 14-15 an "informal" meeting of World Trade Organisation (WTO) member governments will be held in Sydney. Only 25 of the 144 member governments of the WTO have been invited. The WTO is dominated by the economically powerful: the USA, Canada, Europe and Japan. The Australian government has joined with them to pressure selected governments to support an agenda dominated by transnational corporations. The WTO major Ministerial meetings are held every two years: the next one will be in Mexico in September 2003. In between these meetings there is a process of negotiations through committees. The meeting in Sydney is an attempt to lobby selected governments to speed up the negotiations leading to the Ministerial Meeting in Mexico . The Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) is a network of 55 organisations, including unions, church groups, environment groups, human rights groups and other community organisations which supports fair trading relationships with all countries. We recognise the need for regulation of international trade but we want a different and fairer trade framework: one which is open and accountable and which supports United Nations and ILO agreements on human rights, labour rights and the environment. AFTINET has convened a broad group of unions, environment organisations, church groups, human rights and development groups and other community organisations to organise events around Sydney WTO meeting. We plan to hold an educational seminar on Sunday November 10 and a large, peaceful rally on November 14. The NSW Labor Council gave in-principle support to these events at its last meeting. Why are we complaining about the WTO? We live in a world where 2 billion people live on less than US$2 per day, with little access to health, education and water services, where workers rights are violated in many countries, and with continued destruction of the environment. Poverty and inequality are also increasing in countries like Australia. In this context of increasing global and local inequality, governments are making the political decisions to transfer economic powers to global economic bodies like the WTO, often behind closed doors and with little public accountability. These bodies create uniform economic conditions for global trade and investment but can actually remove local policy options for addressing poverty and inequality. For example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) makes loans to countries experiencing temporary crises. The loans are conditional on the implementation of economic rationalist or neo-liberal policies: trade and investment deregulation, reductions in business taxes, removal of workers rights and lower wages, consumption taxes and user pays for essential services, cuts in government expenditure and privatisation. The IMF only recently produced a report on Australia which argued against the role of the award system in setting minimum wages, which it said were a cause of unemployment The IMF recommendations would be a return to nineteenth century conditions which Australia rejected a hundred years ago when it established the award system. Unlike many indebted developing countries, Australia is not obliged to follow IMF recommendations, but the IMF report is part of the ideological push for such policies. The World Trade Organisation makes binding legal agreements for trade and investment which can impact on many areas of government regulation and policy. These agreements seek to apply commercial rules to all areas of policy, paying little regard to social or environmental impacts. In the context of increasing poverty and inequality this can mean global policies which actually reduce the capacity of national and local governments to act for greater equity . The WTO agenda puts free trade and corporate rights before worker and human rights. Some examples of this agenda are: � Further tariff cuts regardless of their impact in terms of job losses and economic insecurity. � Restricting governments from using government purchasing to assist local jobs and development, through a proposed new WTO agreement on government purchasing which would prevent policies to favour local firms. � Treating essential services like health, education and water purely as commercial goods, weakening regulation to ensure access to them and opening them to privatisation, through proposed changes to the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). � Reducing the right of governments to have social and environmental regulation by allowing objections to them from transnational investors through a proposed new WTO agreement on investment, resurrecting the discredited OECD MAI defeated by community campaigns in 1998. � Double standards about free trade in agriculture to benefit subsidised agribusiness in rich countries, especially the US, Europe and Japan while undermining food security in poor countries. The recent US decision to increase agricultural subsidies at home while arguing for other countries to move to further reduce their agricultural subsidies and tariffs is an example of this � Giving corporations patenting rights regardless of the impact on basic needs, such as medicine and seeds. WTO rules on intellectual property rights enforce the payment of royalties on patents for 20 years. Last year pharmaceutical companies persuaded the US government to make a WTO complaint against Brazil to try to prevent the local production of low priced medicines for the AIDS epidemic. The complaint was only withdrawn after campaigns by community organisations. There is still a debate in the WTO about how WTO rules can allow the right of governments to act in the interests of public health and to protect rights of indigenous people to the plants and seeds that they have developed over centuries. � The WTO ignores the violations of workers rights which occur in many countries as governments compete for transnational investment by reducing workers' rights, as advocated by the recent IMF report. Fair Trade: a better world is possible We believe a better world is possible. We support international regulation of trade through open and democratic processes with all nations freely participating. Trade is not an end in itself, but should support social and environmental objectives. We argue that � Trade agreements should support not undermine United Nations standards on human rights, labour rights, indigenous land rights and the environment. � Essential public services should not be included in trade agreements. � Governments should retain full rights to regulate for social and environmental reasons, and to have industry policies to support local jobs and development. � Corporations must conform to United Nations standards on human rights, labour rights and the environment Key events Seminar on Alternatives to the WTO Agenda featuring local and international speakers Sunday November 10 , 10 am to 5pm, Tom Mann Theatre, 136 Chalmers St, Surry Hills (South of Central Station). Peaceful rally 12 noon, Thursday November 14, Hyde Park, City. More information will be available soon at www.aftinet.org.au
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