The US-Australia Free Trade Agreement: Dollars
              versus 'Sense' (by Sebastian De Brennan)

The US first proposed a free trade agreement (FTA) with Australia as far back as 1946. In more recent times, the prospect of a US-Australia FTA was raised in the 1980s by the Hawke Government, and in 1992 US president George H. W. Bush offered to begin FTA negotiations with Australia, but was turned down by ALP Prime Minister Paul Keating.

It was not until early 2001, after the election of George W. Bush in the US and with John Howard in power in Australia, that a US-Australia FTA finally began to take shape.

The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement entered into force on January 1, 2005. Under the terms of the agreement, the Joint Committee will meet annually to supervise the overall implementation of the FTA. The inaugural Joint Committee is expected to be held in March 2006.

With the inaugural Joint Committee meeting just a few days away, the overall efficacy of the agreement has been raised once again, and some formidable criticisms have been leveled by both sides. My reservations over the agreement are not so much for the economic (although there are some real issues here), but moreso the moral considerations attendant in the agreement.

Let's be clear, the US-Australia FTA is first and foremost an economic arrangement. As such, any discussion that transcends the economic lexicon will always be seen as secondary.

Nevertheless, all Australians ought to be concerned about the seeming relegation of important moral issues, including those relating to fundamental human rights.

Australia was once regarded as a bastion of - and champion of - democratic principles. When nations, even superpowers, abrogated their responsibilities at international law, Australia was regarded as pretty vociferous for its global significance and size. In short, Australia had no qualms about telling other nations to 'pull up their socks'.

Indeed, once upon a time, Australia might have looked beyond the economic imperatives of a bilateral agreement. No doubt, concerns over the effect of an FTA on the local sugar industry, our intellectual property and the ongoing viability of a pharmaceutical benefits scheme, would have been put stoutly, but they may not have been the only objections raised.

In a different era, social, moral, and other human rights issues might just have made the radar. What's changed?

We live in volatile times. The verities of international trade, international criminal justice, the environment and, more recently, the scourge of terrorism represent but a few of the multifarious challenges facing nation states. The friction points are obvious – the Corby case, Australian police cooperation resulting in the arrest of the 'Bali nine', the tension between free trade and human rights in the case of other trading partners such as China, and the recent execution of young Australian Nguyen Tuong Van in Singapore, are just a few examples that reveal the inherent complexity of a 'globalised' legal and economic order.

Arguably these challenges have hindered the quest for a universal bundle of human rights, but this need not be the case. For example, threats to national security in the form of terrorism are grave, perhaps even unprecedented, but principled and well-informed responses are not incongruent with the demands of balance and proportionality in a democratic country. It is important to bear in mind that emergencies do come to an end - even the Hundred Years War, or the Thirty Years War, or the Wars of the Roses - and we should not dig trenches for all time.

Ordinary Australians should be concerned, then, when our closet ally and proposed trading partner, continues to oppose a litany of important global treaties – treaties which have been acceded to by nations of all persuasions and ideologies.

Once an exemplar of democratic ideals, the recent contribution of the U.S. to international law includes a decision to reject the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, the Convention is often described as the international bill of rights for women, defining what constitutes discrimination against women and establishing an agenda for national action to arrest it.

Today that treaty has been endorsed by more than 170 nations. However, while the entire industrial world fully supports the CEDAW, the United States is the only developed nation that continues to oppose it.

Regrettably, this is not just an aberration by our FTA counterpart. Recently, when the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted to adopt a new treaty that protects cultural rights worldwide, the United States was conspicuous in its opposition.

The treaty allows nations to maintain, adopt, and implement policies they deem appropriate to protect the diversity of cultural expressions on their territory. The U.S. grounds for rejecting the treaty seemed to be grounded in economic pragmatism. "This convention invites abuse by enemies of democracy and free trade," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is said to have told UNESCO members in a letter in October.

On the environmental front, the U.S., along with Australia, remains the only other industrialised nation to reject the Kyoto Protocol on climate control.

In terms of humanitarian law, after significantly influencing the form of the Rome Statute constituting the International Criminal Court (ICC), the U.S. refused to ratify it, while simultaneously requesting, and in some cases coercing various nations dependent on aid, to sign the so-called 'section 98 bilateral immunity agreements' favouring U.S. personnel. In doing so, the U.S. acted contrary to Article 18 of the Vienna Convention, which obliges signatories to refrain from undermining treaties that they decline to ratify.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the fact that America has continued to refuse - along with only Somalia in the entire UN system - to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Nor did the U.S. permit the U.N. Human Rights Commission to investigate, fully, the allegations of torture at Guantanamo Bay (where David Hicks and other Australian prisoners had been held).

Of particular concern also is America's role in relation to preventing the proliferation of arms. After playing an important leadership role just over a decade ago in securing a rigorous international inspection regime for chemical weapons, the US has gone some way in eroding that good work. Thus, U.S. leaders continue to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear weapons, the Treaty Banning Antipersonnel Mines, a protocol to create a compliance regime for the Biological Weapons Convention and the Antiballistic Missile Treaty.

Australian leaders were once reknowned and respected for their ability to provide frank, fearless and robust advice in international circles. With the US-Australia Joint Committee to review the agreement in the next few days, that 'fair dinkum' approach is needed more than ever.

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