Jul 2 2015 at 12:21 PM
Updated Jul 2 2015 at 1:11 PM
TPP: Australia 'will regret' signing away rights, says Heather Ridout
Heather Ridout was critical of "investor-state dispute clauses" which may curtail governments' ability to legislate against companies covered by the TPP. Luis Enrique Ascui
by Luke Malpass
Australian Super chairman Heather Ridout said the country "will regret" signing away sovereignty over government policy in the Trans-pacific Partnership agreement.
"Mark my words, we will regret it, if we sign away our rights," Ms Ridout said.
Ms Ridout was critical of the so-called "investor-state dispute clauses" which could potentially curtail governments' ability to legislate against companies covered under the regional trade deal.
These clauses tradtionally provide companies with the right to use a disputes settlement process against foreign governments, which might regulate against their interests on legitimate public policy grounds.
High-profile government health policies like plain packaging of cigarettes, ostensibly undertaken for public-health reasons, could fall under investor-state dispute clauses included in any deal.
Ms Ridout's comments follow criticism of ISDS provisions in free trade agreements by both the HIgh Court chief justice Robert French and most recently the Productivity Commission which last week said the provisions favoured foreign companies over domestic companies which would lead to "regulatory chill."
But warnings aside, Ms Ridout said that "free trade is better than no free trade."
The comments were made in a panel discussion that included the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Kate Carnell and former trade Minister Mark Vaile at a US Studies Centre conference in Sydney celebrating the 10th anniversary of the US-Australian Free Trade Agreement.
Prospects of the TPP agreement, which is being negotiated by 12 countries including Australia, the United States, Japan and South Korea, loomed large over the discussions.
While Ms Carnell and Ms Ridout both agreed that the free trade deal with the US should be considered a "living document", they both said efforts to evolve the deal to date had been sluggish.
"It really behoves Australian business and industry to decide what they want out of this deal and really work actively to get it, because I think the fault has been on our side, not being organised enough to extract as much from the agreement as we might," Ms Ridout said.
While all the participants welcomed the prospect of new bilateral deals in principle, in practice, they such deals do have the ability to actually make things more complicated for business.
"It's true we've got a range of new agreements, and they are fantastic and we support them, but they are very complex," Ms Carnell said.
"If you think about the fact that 96 per cent of Australian businesses are SMEs, 1700 page agreements that are fundamentally different makes it really difficult for the business."
"They can be quite opaque documents," Ms Carnell said, adding that it can be particularly challenging for smaller firms without large legal teams or substantial resources.
"One of the challenges for us to make these agreements more accessible to more Australian businesses," she said
She said that including more actual businesses in negotiations and not just industry groups should be a priority for new negotiations Australia entered into.
Former US trade negotiator and World Bank President Robert Zoellick gave the keynote address where he warned against the difficulties of achieving free trade, citing Barack Obama's recent difficulties in obtaining a TPA to trade from the American congress.
"The opponents of free trade in the United States are relentless. Free Traders always have to be on offense," Mr Zoellick said.
Mr Zoellick lamented the free trade drift which has set in the amongst US political elites, saying that regular FTA's help "lessen the risk of the opposition that has built up in recent years when the Executive Branch [of the US government] lost the initiative on trade."
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