In its latest submission[1]  to the Australian government’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) TPP-11 inquiry, Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA) has again called on the government to scrap the controversial treaty and to open fresh negotiations for a genuine free trade agreement between former TPP parties, this time without so much of the cloak-and-dagger approach.

"The Australian open source software industry tends to be a great supporter of free trade, since freedom as a principle is the basis on which our industry was built", said Jack Burton, OSIA company secretary, "but CPTPP is overwhelmingly not about free trade. Of its 30 chapters, only Chapter 2 (National Treatment & Market Access) speaks to free trade. The other 97 per cent mostly seeks to proliferate restrictions on trade and restrictions in a wide range of non-trade areas."

 

But the absence of any substantial emphasis on free trade is far from OSIA's only beef with CPTPP. The submission was scathing of the treaty (which it described as a "Byzantine monstrosity"[2], and "almost five times the length of Tolstoy's War and Peace"[3]) on multiple other fronts too, including the suspension provisions which form its centrepiece.

 

"The manner in which certain TPP provisions were suspended (rather than removed properly) by CPTPP gives rise to great uncertainty in industry about whether and when they might be reanimated. The associated risk is likely to discourage further investment in Australia's FOSS sector," said OSIA chair Mark Phillips.

 

OSIA's latest submission echoed its earlier[4,5,6] calls for the government to commission independent economic modelling of the treaty's likely impact. Calls that, amongst those of many others, fell on deaf ears. The industry body went further this time, criticising what it called DFAT's blatant propaganda and condemning once more the treaty's lack of economic benefit.

 

"We are appalled that the government is still pushing ahead with this treaty without having referred it to the Productivity Commission for independent analysis and modelling," said Phillips, "but given the earlier overseas modelling of TPP showed no economic benefit at all for Australia and that was while the USA was still involved, we strongly suspect that with that one large, attractive export market removed from the equation, CPTPP will yield negative economic benefit for Australia."

 

Many other aspects of CPTPP also were criticised in the submission, but perhaps the most striking is OSIA's continued outrage at the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions in CPTPP. The provisions grant aggrieved foreign investors a new right of action against the Commonwealth, but deny that right of action to domestic investors in the same circumstances.

 

"The ISDS provisions make Australian companies second class citizens in our own market," Burton continued, "We welcome competition, but when we see a deals like this put Australian companies on a lower footing than their overseas competitors---that's the exact opposite of free trade. Giving overseas companies rights denied to Australian companies cannot ever be in Australia's best interest."

 

References

 

[1] Burton, J. & Phillips, M., Submission to JSCOT re CPTPP, OSIA, 20 April 2018. Available at http://osia.com.au/f/osia_sub_201804_jscot.pdf and at https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=19af91f2-b876-4dd9-8683-17e0a1b23d47&subId=565185

 

[2] ibid., s. 2.2, p. 4.

 

[3] ibid., s. 5.2, p. 10.

 

[4] Burton, J. & Foxworthy, P., Submission to JSCOT on TPP, OSIA, 11 March 2016. Available at http://osia.com.au/f/osia_sub_201603_jscot.pdf

 

[5] C'th, Official Committee Hansard, Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, Trans-Pacific Partnership (public), 2016, p. 30. Available at http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/commjnt/a6fa4bc7-9c2e-4788-9378-e676fc0a3f53/toc_pdf/Joint%20Standing%20Committee%20on%20Treaties_2016_10_07_4491_Official.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf

 

[6] Burton, J. & Foxworthy, P., Submission to the Senate SC FADT re TPP, OSIA, 29 Oct 2016. Available at http://osia.com.au/f/osia_sub_201610_sscfadt.pdf