Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4007 ..

The discussions were very interesting to the members of the committee. The inquiry took some time and the members of the committee worked hard on it. I thank the members for their input. In particular, I thank the secretary for putting a difficult report together in the excellent way that she has.

MS TUCKER (11.20): As one of the members of the committee, I would like to speak to this report. We were asked to inquire into the implications of GATS for governance in the ACT and the impact on regulation, funding and the provision of essential services. The committee also looked briefly, as Mr Smyth said, at the free trade agreement between Australia and the United States and looked generally at the process for other bilateral agreements.

As members are aware, GATS is a multilateral trade agreement, agreed to in 1995, which extends trade rules to the service sectors. It covers 12 service sectors: business; communication; construction and engineering; distribution; education; environment; financial; health; recreational, cultural and sporting; tourism and travel; transport; and a residual “other” category. So it is very broad ranging. The overwhelming view of the majority of the submissions—in fact, all of them, except for the one from the federal government—was that we need to be looking much more carefully at the implications of these sorts of agreements.

Just to make a point on that, the committee looked at the question of the environment and took as an example the supply of water. One of the submitters made the point that the effect of deregulating the management of water would be that the supply of water, a substance which is essential to human life and which is in crisis globally, would become subject to the rules of GATS, which operates on a market basis. The submission continued:

This change is sought to be made in a global context in which 10 major water multinational corporations dominate the market and exercise great influence.

The supply of water in Australia, as elsewhere, involves the weighing of public policy objectives, including the need to ensure access to all and the need to conserve the resource. Currently in Australia a robust public debate is under way as to the appropriate and fair means of regulating water supply, particularly with the drought affecting eastern and southern Australia. A broadening of the definition of environmental services to bring water for human use within GATS would dramatically changed the balance of interests in this important area without public debate as to the merits of such a change.

Other examples were given as well in the section of the report on sustainability. The general feeling that the committee expressed on this section was that it believed that the possible social and environmental impact of the areas included in Australia’s member commitments needs further consideration.

A number of the submissions drew attention to particular case studies. One example was of Tasmania’s salmon industry, which was negatively affected economically and environmentally by Canada’s decision to use the WTO dispute resolution process to challenge Australia’s ban on the importation of Atlantic salmon. Worsening the situation was the fact that the Tasmanian government could not resolve the issue because, under the rules, the matter could only be settled through nation-to-nation negotiation. The

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .