WTO Primer from Australia - Bertie was reading their Public Relations Shit into Dail Record Tday

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday October 16, 2002 20:53 by Blisset (slight return)

WTO Primer:

The World Trade Organisation, or WTO is coming to Sydney for an informal meeting of trade ministers over November 14th and 15th this year. The WTO's focus is purely on freeing up international trade and in it’s own words, the WTO “is the only international organization dealing with the global rules of trade between nations. Its main function is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible.”

It sounds okay at first glance, but what would stop trade flowing smoothly?

Human Rights, environmental protection laws and public services for a start. The WTO website goes on to say "Governments need to be armed against pressure from narrow interest groups, and the WTO system can help." Narrow interest groups of course comprise of environmental groups, industry organisations protecting Australian jobs and the union movement here in particular.

The WTO has recently ruled in favour of:

Venezuelan oil companies against sections of the US Clean Air Act,
US agribusiness against a European ban on beef raised with artificial growth hormones,
Asian fishing companies against US regulations forbidding the sale of prawns caught in ways that kill sea turtles,
US banana companies against a European scheme giving trade preferences to small banana growers in the Caribbean,
US exports against Indian government use of tariffs to ease its balance of payments problems, and so on.
But does the WTO have an affect here in Australia?

Marrickville council thinks it does and was so concerned that it placed the issue on the agenda of the NSW and National Local Government Association Conferences.
The EU is requesting the removal of all limits on foreign investment in services like Telstra and the removal of the Foreign Investment Review Board.
The EU document also requests Australia to open to private investment all postal services "handled by any type of commercial operator, whether public or private." This would mean privatisation of Australia Post and the end of the 45c standard letter charge which gives people in rural and regional areas affordable access to postal services.
The EU document also asks Australia to list all water services in the GATS. This would reduce that ability of state governments to make decisions about the public ownership and public regulation of water services.

National laws are seen as impediments to the global neo-liberal economy, and WTO-sponsored treaties and the associated threat of sanctions are used to force countries to comply. The pressure for trade liberalisation is likely to further limit the ability of national governments to effectively regulate and control the activities of multinationals as well as limit a governments rights and obligations to provide services for it's citizens.

According to Article 1:3(b) of the WTO's General Agreement on Trade and Services (or GATS), public services excluded by this agreement include all "services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority" which is defined in 1:3(c) as "any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers. "

Very few public services would appear to be excluded by this definition which essentially means all Australian public services are essentially up for grabs: Education, Health, Water, Air Traffic control, just about everything.

The Australian Council of Trade Unions points out: "It can be argued that government schools compete with private schools in the sense that they are competing for enrolments. TAFE colleges also compete with private vocational education and training providers." What does this mean? It means that if an overseas education-providing company wants to set up aschool where a state-run school already exists, the WTO will rule that the state-run school must be shut down. On an on it goes, in fact all governmental services provided on a commercial basis are subject to GATS provisions.

By forcing these services to be privatised, countries are being forced to give up national sovereignty and the right to protect it's own citizens. Of course, when these services get privatised, control of the service and it's associated resource goes to the highest bidder - usually a globally elite multi-national corporation.

Following the successful shutdown of their meeting by community groups in Seattle in 1999, moves are afoot to do the same thing in Sydney. Groups are being formed around the country, starting with Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane.

Since their failed meeting in Seattle, protestors have followed the WTO wherever it had it's meetings until the WTO thought they had found a way around the protesting by having their last big meeting in Qatar, where protesting is illegal. A world-wide protest was called to coincide with this meeting and over 120 cities mustered together for a Global Day of Action.

And the Sydney meeting is particularly bad. Out of the 144 member states only 25 of them, including the United States, European Union, Japan and Singapore are invited to this closed-door elitist chin-wag. 25 trade ministers from some of the richest nations on the planet will be in Sydney and will be ensuring the rest of the world reduces all the barriers to corporate profit. 25 trade ministers will be in Sydney, and so will we.