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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (20 June) . . Page.. 2230 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
constitutional balance in this country and in other developed countries as well? What does it mean for the relationship between the balance that occurs within the federal government in this country, between the executive of the federal government and the broader parliament, and the relationship between the trade minister and the cabinet, because what we have here is a situation where decisions made by the trade minister will go very deeply into all areas of domestic policy. We are talking about trade in services in all areas.
You have that balance there being disturbed and then you have the balance between what is happening between the federal government and the state and territory levels of government and then again local government. Mr Humphries and his colleagues are using Tom Connors, apparently, as their main source of information in this argument. I have no comment about Tom Connors in particular. I referred to a very detailed analysis by a ministry of the British Columbia government in Canada and hope people will read it. I have highlighted as well as I could in the time available the particular concerns that they have about the so-called exclusions for what we consider to be sacred public services in this country. They have not been addressed.
I have upstairs a file containing many articles by journalists from newspapers all over Australia and the rest of the developed world, and developing countries, which would challenge that article, but I do not particularly want to refer to newspaper articles in this argument. I could tell you that there is now a series of motions being put across the UK about GATS. It might be argued that certain people in the UK are evil because they are trying to challenge the free trade agenda in some way. They are doing so because they care about the people they represent.
Mr Humphries fascinatingly said that he did not have a particular position on GATS, but went on to praise the whole concept of free trade under the World Trade Organisation and told us that it has been proven to be the case that it is going to make everybody much better off. I am sorry, it has not been proven to be the case. Very serious concerns are being expressed right round the world about the impact of the current form of economic globalisation. Poor Mr Smyth likes to see it as the Greens saying that there should be no trade. I have never at any point in time said that there should be no trade. What I have said and, I think, made quite clear in debate is that I am concerned about a trade rule system which is just informed, at this point in time, by the corporate agenda. It is not informed by social or environmental concerns. That is the point I am raising. It is not informed by concerns for democracy. It is not informed by any of those considerations which this government, when it stands here and talks to the people of the ACT, says it cares about it. This government says that it cares about democracy, social issues and the environment. All the members of the Liberal Party say that.
Mr Kaine: They like to talk about social capital.
MS TUCKER
: Thank you, Mr Kaine. They talk about social capital. The point of the debate today is about how those considerations are being integrated into world trade rules. They are not. I gave examples of how they have been proven not to have been taken into account. Interestingly, last year when I was at an international social policy conference, and I have been to a number of social policy conferences in my time in this Assembly, for the first time the economic dimension and globalisation were keyed into every session. This conference was in South Africa. The majority of people there were
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