Monday, November 13, 2017

It's the Trans-Pacific Partnership, with fewer bad bits

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead. In its place, maybe, we'll have something lesser, with a longer title: the Progressive Comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership, or PCTPP.

The name change is apparently a sop to the Canadians, who like things progressive. They are the only nation, ever in the history of the world, to have named one of their political parties the Progressive Conservatives.

To get it past the Canadians, and a number of other nations that aren't too happy about what was agreed to in the original Trans-Pacific Partnership at the behest of the Americans, much of it will be "suspended".

Gone for the moment will be most of the rules governing copyright, patents and pharmaceuticals designed to support US lobbyists.

Unwilling countries such as Canada and New Zealand won't have to extend their copyright terms from 50 years after the death of an author to 70 years. (Australia has already done it, in order to get the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement over the line).

Gone, too, will be the onerous provision that each country provide the equivalent of eight years' protection to the makers of highly expensive so-called biologic drugs, lengthening the time before many can use cheaper alternatives.

Also gone will be the requirement that member countries make it illegal to hack devices such as DVD players to get around region coding and other technological copyright protection measures. And the requirement that member countries allow copyright owners to sue internet service providers for allowing their customers to illegally download copyrighted material.

Also narrowed, a tiny bit, are provisions that will allow foreign corporations to sue sovereign governments, provisions John Howard refused to accept when he negotiated the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement.

Other suspended provisions are those protecting labour rights and the environment imposed on reluctant, less-developed countries at the behest of former US president Barack Obama.

They are suspended, not entirely removed. The TPP 11, as it is informally known because it includes each of the original 12 signatories apart from the US, will leave those provisions dormant, ready for reinclusion when a new post-Trump administration decides to join.

But it doesn't mean they will be reincluded. For that to happen, each of the 11 members would have to agree, and most likely get legislation through their parliaments.

There's much still to be sorted out. Trade Minister Steven Ciobo said on Sunday the agreement was 90 per cent complete, meaning the hardest 10 per cent is to come. He had wanted it sewn up by the end of the year. Now he won't give a timetable.

If it happens, its provisions will be less contentious than they would have been. The Productivity Commission has spelt out its concerns in detail. It even may get to run the cost-benefit analysis the government has blocked. Labor may be in office by then and has promised it will happen.

In The Age and Sydney Morning Herald