America still rolls us for a tummy tickle

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This was published 13 years ago

America still rolls us for a tummy tickle

By Kenneth Davidson

Australian politicians seem to go weak at the knees over US power.

The WikiLeaks cables and Julia Gillard's initial supine response - agreeing with American politicians who claimed without evidence that Julian Assange had acted illegally, and by implication that the Australian government would not stand in the way of his rendition to the US for punishment - was, to say the least, cringe-making.

One thing can be said about US administrations, Republican or Democrat - their representatives understand that when they are dealing with foreigners they know their job is to protect and enhance the US public interest as they see it. But a majority of Australian politicians seem to be overawed by US power and influence.

As former Liberal prime minister John Gorton said in the 1960s, too many Australian politicians and bureaucrats are infected by the puppy dog syndrome: roll over and get your tummy tickled. Not much has changed. We are seen as a loyal ally. In Washington this gives Australian politicians and diplomats plenty of access but no influence when our interests aren't in line with America's.

This was seen in the negotiations over Australia's 2005 free trade agreement with the US. The Howard government went into the negotiations on the basis that the US would open up its market for our agricultural exports.

The Bush administration wasn't interested in opening up its markets to Australian imports. It was interested in opening up Australian markets in services such as finance, protecting US investment in Australia, extending protection of US intellectual property rights and weakening the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. The latter, by keeping drug prices low, was seen rightly as a brake on ''big pharma's'' right to gouge the Australian health system, as occurs in America.

Some Australian negotiators wanted to break off the talks. Australia was effectively on a hiding to nothing. Howard refused. Instead, the man described by President Bush as ''a man of steel'', rang Bush and begged for an increase in Australia's sugar quota to the American market. Howard was refused point blank, but he still signed up.

A few months later America announced an increase in sugar quotas for Latin American sugar producers including Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama for reasons related to US strategic and political objectives.

However, Australia resisted some of the more outrageous demands and largely preserves the PBS. Australia also rejected a US demand for an investor-state dispute settlement regime (an investor complaints process giving special rights to international corporations to sue governments for damages from any legislation, including legislation to protect health or the environment).

The Obama administration is pushing the failed Bush administration agenda through the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which is now being negotiated. Insofar as Australia is concerned, the TPPA is aimed at getting more intellectual property rights and the right to sue governments by corporations, which were rejected in the bilateral agreement.

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As pointed out in an excellent book that sets out how this agenda threatens national sovereignty and democratic process in Australia and New Zealand (No Ordinary Deal, edited by Jane Kelsey), the US has no interest in a free trade agreement. Obama has no delegated trade negotiation authority from Congress. The balance of US public opinion is that free trade agreements are job destroyers not job creators. This is in the context of a background where unemployment is 17 per cent, including discouraged job seekers who are no longer counted in the workforce.

Last week the Productivity Commission released its research report on bilateral and regional trade agreements. It concludes these agreements do little or nothing to promote national welfare by comparison with multilateral agreements or even unilateral reductions in protection.

It contains a minority report by the associate commissioner, Andrew Stoler, who came to this country from America and is executive director of the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide.

In the foreword to the report, chairman Gary Banks pointed out that Stoler's experience included ''extensive experience as a United States trade negotiator in Geneva''.

This raises a possibility of a conflict of interest. Stoler's minority report argues that it would be in Australia's interests to adopt the American negotiating position on intellectual property rights and investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms. He also dissented from recommendations that would make the negotiating process for agreements more open and subject to independent scrutiny by the Productivity Commission.

As presented in the report, Stoler's reasons for his minority report were an embarrassment to everybody, including the Americans.

What brownie points did then assistant treasurer Nick Sherry think he would earn from the Americans when he foisted this appointment on to the commission?

Kenneth Davidson is an Age senior columnist.

kdavidson@dissent.com.au

Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU

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