Free trade and fair trade

It makes sense for Australia to work for multilateral trade freedom through the WTO and for bilateral agreements with our neighbours, exchanging what they want for what we want. They need our primary products and many of our other products and services.

The United States needs nothing that we produce, and it is hard to sell there, whether or not there are tariffs. Yet, I understand that there is no clause in The Agreement giving us a right to re-negotiate if disastrous consequences eventuate. We can only 'discuss.'Lawyers proliferate.

Surely our government must be concerned at the clauses that open up Australia to losing even more Australian ownership of assets and companies. The Agreement also adds risks to quarantines that have served us well, that threatens our intellectual property, extends copyrights that will cost us dear and risks corporate litigation that taxpayers must pay for.

Australian workers' wages and conditions are threatened by increased unemployment from competition with cheaper overseas products. There are too many areas where our government will be unable to protect our environment, welfare services, quarantine and assistance to industries, including primary industries.

Such agreements do nothing to help reduce our immense foreign debt, already $1.169 trillion for a nation of 22 million people. The cost of complacency about our ballooning public and private foreign debt will become clear sooner, rather than later.

International businesses seek their own profits and not Australia's welfare. An original function of the nation state was to protect the people against robber barons. It still owes this duty to protect its people against outside demands that can harm our enterprises, workers, environment, natural resources and provide continued sustainability.