[Submissions to DFAT on the TPP][1] are still open. I’d expected to see one from PPAu. At present, the preponderance seems to be in favour - not surprising as most are from trade and industry groups. Will the party be lodging a submission?
As it stands, the government will have little difficulty making a case that the TPP has broad public support.
[1]: http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/tpp/submissions/Pages/submissions.aspx
We generally don’t make submissions to DFAT as they are irrelevant and have nothing to do with any formal process.
We’ve made our position clear to the negotiators in several meetings, both public briefings and some private meetings, since 2012.
The consistent leaks demonstrate that spending any time talking to DFAT negotiators is a waste of time.
We will be making a strongly worded submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties however, as we did with ACTA. Our submission was cited quite often in the recommendation that resulted in no ratification. Hopefully we will see a similar outcome here.
Ultimately the battle on TPP begins and ends in US Congress. If there’s fast track approval, we’re basically fucked either way.
I largely agree with @piecritic on this. We have made our views to DFAT known several times, and the lack of transparency hinders any meaningful criticism at this stage.
As Brendan points out, the leaks indicate that the views put forward by us (which are largely shared by intellectual property academics and activist groups with an interest in that area) have been ignored.
The submission we made on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in 2012 was, indeed, strongly worded. It was referred to numerous times within the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) Report 126, and ultimately ACTA has not been ratified by Australia (nor any other country besides Japan, from memory).
We will submit to JSCOT when (or if) the TPP is finished and put forward for consideration. It has not been past practice to ignore the recommendations of JSCOT: Alexander Downer once said that ‘any government would need to think very carefully of the political consequences before it ignored a unanimous JSCOT recommendation.’
However, if a member or members are willing and able to write a submission to DFAT on the TPP, I would be more than happy to see that done. If members are interested in doing this, the authorisation process for submissions can be found here http://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Authorisation_processes