BY NICK FREDMAN
The Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) currently being negotiated between Canberra and Washington has been criticised as attacking the interests of working people and the environment. However, much of the criticism of the proposed agreement has been within a nationalist framework, which assumes that Australian workers share common interests with Australian capitalists.
Near the top of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's "Statement of Australian Objectives" on the AUSFTA, it is claimed that the "outcomes from the AUSFTA negotiations do not impair Australia's ability to meet fundamental policy objectives in health care, education, consumer protection, cultural policy, quarantine and environmental policy". However, this list enumerates most of the areas under which the AUSFTA has been strongly criticised from many quarters.
Many of the "trade barriers" targeted by the AUSFTA are historical gains won by Australian working people, albeit gains resulting from an inadequate welfare-capitalist framework.
US negotiators have cited the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, by which the federal government controls the price of medicines through bulk purchasing, as a barrier to the profit-making potential of US pharmaceutical corporations. A study by the Australia Institute has argued that the removal of the PBS will see medicine prices increase to US levels, which range from 70% to 1000% above Australian prices.
Large job losses have occurred in manufacturing industries over the last two decades as tariffs on imports have been largely eliminated. Some tariffs have remained in the car and textile, clothing and footwear industries, as the political costs of letting these industries die have previously seemed too high. The AUSFTA could speed up the elimination of all tariffs, threatening 130,000 jobs in these industries.
Local content rules for media outlets, restrictions on foreign investment in the media and government subsidies for film production have also been cited as trade barriers. Under the AUSFTA the cultural industries could also see large job losses.
A position paper by the Australian Conservation Foundation argues that Australia's environment could be under threat through current quarantine standards, the labelling of genetically modified foods and the existence of national parks being defined as trade barriers.
A further threat to the environment and to the social and economic position of working people is the possible use of litigation by corporations against governments not adhering to AUSFTA regulations.
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, in force since 1994, US corporations have successfully sued Mexican and Canadian governments for not privatising postal and water supply services fast enough and for not relaxing laws prohibiting the dumping of toxic wastes and the manufacture of dangerous chemicals.
It is clear that the AUSFTA poses serious dangers for working people. Is the AUSFTA "trading Australia away" as the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network worries? Is the task to "maintain Australia's economic and cultural independence" and to prevent Australia becoming the "51st state of America", as the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) claims?
It is true that in any agreement with US big business Australian capital will be in a weak bargaining position, as the Australian economy is a mere 4% of the size of the US economy.
Nationalism, the idea of a singular "national interest", is a key ideological prop of Australian capitalism, and the left, the trade union movement and all those concerned with corporate dominance should be extremely wary of calls to defend "our" economy, even "our" culture.
Unlike Third World countries threatened by First World-imposed trade agreements, Australia has a rich, highly developed economy, dominated by big Australian-owned corporations that share in the First World's exploitation of the Third World.
While there is substantial foreign investment, Australian big capital itself invests around the world, and in particular is a major exploiter of the raw materials and labour of neighbouring countries, backed up by an increasingly militaristic foreign policy.
Much of the campaign against the AUSFTA skirts these facts, even implying that Canberra is not seeking a trade deal which will advance the interests of Australian big business. The Media Alliance, the union of media and cultural workers, argues, "for the US, these negotiations are all about business. For Australia, the issue is one of national sovereignty and the right to foster cultural expression."
The federal Coalition government would not be interested in the AUSFTA unless there were benefits for Australian capital. It is not only the US pharmaceutical corporations that would like to destroy the PBS. So too would Medicines Australia, the lobby group for the industry here, which campaigns against the subsidy scheme and champions the AUSFTA.
Of course, there are differences within the Australian capitalist class. Some sectors, such as agribusiness and mining, are hoping to win out, and are likely to make some minor gains in access to the US market, while others, including some manufacturers, are likely to lose out.
The problem with a nationalist approach is that it lines up with a sector of Australian big business, trying to construct a "national interest" with it, rather than setting out an independent policy for working people. The other main sector of capital, which is more dominant in the major capitalist parties and the mass media, can easily construct a "national interest" in favour of the AUSFTA.
While the nationalist opponents of the AUSFTA often rightly defend the public sector, they often focus, particularly in terms of the defence of jobs, on the maintenance of or increases in tariffs, quotas, tax breaks and subsidies. These measures are direct or indirect handouts to big business, paid for by working people through higher income taxes and higher prices on imported goods, and do not guarantee that the recipients of this corporate welfare will obligingly maintain jobs.
Advocates of high tariffs usually do not differentiate between tariffs on imports from rich, developed countries and those on poor, underdeveloped countries. The AMWU says it is particularly concerned about "rules of origin" in an AUSFTA. These would "allow products to come into Australia tariff free where the majority of manufacturing has actually occurred in another country such as Mexico", meaning "Australian workers having to compete with businesses in countries where the government does not protect even the most basic labour standards".
Even though the AMWU dresses up its tariffs-against-the-Third-World policy as concern for the conditions of Third World workers, denying trade to these countries does nothing but perpetuate their poverty, and such rhetoric can even feed reactionary nationalist/racist myths about "foreigners taking our jobs".
The AMWU would do better to increase its solidarity with, and material aid to, Third World workers and advocate policies that can consistently defend working-class interests, if necessary at the expense of "our" capitalists.
Such measures, which used to be advanced by the trade union left, include expansion of the public sector paid for by increased corporate taxation, a shorter working week with no loss in pay to share available work, retraining on full pay for workers in threatened industries and the nationalisation of companies that threaten layoffs.
While it is true that working people would not benefit from a wholesale expansion of US corporate media into Australia's cultural industries, the priority for the left should be not an abstract defence of "our" culture and media (which is dominated by the Packer, Fairfax and Murdoch families), but increasing the avenues for the voices of working-class and oppressed people to be heard.
Hence, rather than handouts to and other measures to protect the profits of Australian media corporations, an expansion of public and community broadcasting, film production and other media outlets should be our aim.
While the AUSFTA should be opposed, as should reductions in protectionist measures that threaten jobs if there are no alternative measures in place to protect workers' livelihoods, a nationalist approach plays into the hands of big business and cannot answer the fundamental problems facing working people.
From Green Left Weekly, December 10, 2003.
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