Stop MAI public meeting
By Nick Chesterfield
BRISBANE — Around 300 people attended a public meeting here on May 27 to hear Reverend Tim Costello speak against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI).
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries had been quietly negotiating the MAI since 1995 to protect the investments of transnational corporations. The main aim is to limit the rights of national governments to make laws which may be detrimental to transnationals' operations.
The MAI was due to be signed at the end of May, but has been postponed until November mainly because of the outcry against it around the world.
Costello told the audience, "The intention of the MAI is not to regulate investments but to regulate governments", placing the rights of transnationals above the rights of peoples and their governments.
The audience included many from the left, but also many right-wingers, including the ultra-nationalist gun lobby. The threat to "national sovereignty" raised the ire of the far right. The leader of the racist One Nation party, Pauline Hanson, also opposes signing the MAI.
Costello distanced himself from the likes of Hanson. Hanson's stance, Costello explained, was born "of the desire to scapegoat the very people that would suffer most" from the MAI: Aborigines and migrants.
The rights of indigenous people would be curtailed, as the MAI would overrule native title. Laws protecting human and labour rights would also be classed as breaches.
Environmental or industrial protection would be, according to the OECD, "contrary to the spirit of the agreement". Transnationals would have the right to sue governments if they could prove that their actions restricted profits. The only way that governments could have control over any areas is by specifically outlining "exceptions" before the MAI is signed.
Costello explained that these exceptions would be only temporary and would probably be rolled back completely, in line with the intention of the MAI.
Australia's interest lay not with the transnationals, Costello said, but with pushing for a just world economic order. People need to apply global standards of human rights to corporations and governments, and push for an end to unacceptable practices.