Free trade & the high cost to democracy

By Jen T. Kwok (NTEU National Office). ‘If the prophets of the demise of the nation-state are right, we should be thinking about making international decision making itself more democratic, open and transparent.’
   – Sir Anthony Mason, former High Court Chief Justice
Mason made this statement on 4 March 1998 to the Melbourne Convention at the height of international debates about the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). In that speech, he extensively critiqued Australia’s treaty-making process, saying:
‘But at the end of the day it is possible that the terms will be set in concrete leaving Australia with very limited choices to make, the effective choices having been made by Treasury and Federal Cabinet during the course of the unpublished negotiations.’
The MAI was another agreement negotiated in secret; another plurilateral agreement that was the worst the world had ‘never seen’. The Agreement was comprehensive in breadth. It also contained clauses that would enable corporations to sue nation-states where new investment conditions resulted in loss of profit, as well as providing access to secret arbitration tribunals as the arena for the recovery of costs. Sound familiar?
In 1998, the anti-globalisation protesters won. By October, the host nation France announced it could not support the Agreement, effectively ending negotiations. In a little over a year, anti-globalisation groups would coalesce in the ‘Battle for Seattle’ bringing together tens of thousands of civil society protestors, trade unionists and environmentalists. The victory should have been the end of this story. But if anti-globalisation activists won then, why does the MAI sound so similar to some of the bilateral and plurilateral agreements being negotiated now and including the Australian Government. More...