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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (20 June) . . Page.. 2219 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The issue of concern at the moment is the extent to which disciplines will apply to the provision of funding for public services such as health and education. The concerns are about not only the impact on service delivery and quality, but also the impact that these agreements have on the capacity of governments to respond to local conditions with the good of their communities in mind. In other words, this is a threat to democracy. To allow the powers of legislatures to be diminished by the influence of trade rules is to take a very serious step, and we need to know that we are taking it and we need to involve the broader community. There has been very little public debate or even awareness in Australia and the other communities round the world. The threat to democracy is only just being realised and has started to enter the debate.

Pressure is now on governments to progress the General Agreement on Trade in Services in full and current rules seek gradually to phase out all government "barriers" to international trade and commercial competition in the services sector. Every service imaginable could be included-the environment, culture, natural resources, water, health care, education, transport, construction, social security, and so on; in fact, everything except services supplied in exercise of government authority, and several critiques now express grave doubts about how even that exception will hold up. The move to apply national treatment rules to government purchasing and subsidies strikes at the heart of the right of governments to regulate in the public interest.

The current government of Australia has attempted to reassure the community by claiming exemptions, but this argument has to be challenged, not only because the exemptions are vague, but also because in accepting the notion of exemptions we accept the norm from which we are to be exempted, opening the way for increased pressure from other governments, transnational companies and their lobbyists through the World Trade Organisation disputes settlement system. In the view of the Greens, it would be better for the norm itself to be challenged by governments at this year's WTO ministerial meeting in Qatar, even though in some respects it is already too late since GATS is well advanced in the WTO. Australia has already signed on to sections of it, even though we have not had the debate.

The WTO is potentially more powerful than any elected legislature. Once countries have signed up, the trade rules apply and there will be severe penalties for non-compliance. Already countries have had their nationally agreed laws overruled as trade restrictive. It appears that only the United States, Japan and the European Union have the resources to easily access the WTO dispute resolution process to their advantage. It is too costly for most countries. Even the Australian government admits that it has trouble keeping up with it.

Legislation or regulation on environmental standards must not be "more trade restrictive than necessary". The obvious questions are: where does the precautionary principle come into it? How is the decision about what is necessary made? What is the role of the local community and the legislature in deciding what is necessary? If the WTO rules are challenged, the accusation of protectionism is made, but that is much too simplistic. Worthy objectives and well-founded caution have been labelled trade restrictive and laws directed to public health, such as the asbestos and petrol additives ruling, environmental protection, such as the shrimp and turtle ruling, and economic development, such as the banana ruling, have been overruled.

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