STOP MAI

MEDIA RELEASE -for immediate release, 7 September, 1998 Authorised by the STOP-MAI Campaign Coalition (WA) Website http://members.iinet.net.au/~jenks/fair.html Affiliated with the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTInet) and with the World Social Forum (WSF)

Tomorrow’s Rockingham meeting
is last chance for local public participation
in MAI debate

A final public meeting on the controversial Multilateral Agreement on Investment will be held on Tuesday, 8 September, 7.30 pm., at the Ocean Clipper Inn, Patterson Road, Rockingham. The meeting will be addressed by TLC president Keith Peckham, Phil Sparrow of Community Aid Abroad and Stephen Robson of Murdoch University

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will hold high-level talks in Paris on Oct. 20-21 to determine the future of the treaty.

Negotiators are expected to set a formal deadline for signing the treaty (whose text is believed to be 90 per cent complete) or to shift talks to the World Trade Organization as a result of overwhelming public concern about the MAI in many developed nations.

The MAI would establish far-reaching new rights for foreign investors and allow corporations and investors to sue signatory governments directly for cash damages. It would lock all Australian governments into the deal for a minimum of 20 years.

Under the same provision in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada was recently forced to revoke a public health law banning a toxic petrol additive and to pay U.S.-based Ethyl Corp. $A20 million in damages for profits lost while the law was in effect.

The deputy premier in the former Trudeau Government, Paul Hellyer, has commented: "Globalization is not about trade. It is about power and control. It is the reshaping of the world into one without borders ruled by a dictatorship of the world's most powerful central banks, commercial banks and multinational companies. It is an attempt to undo a century of social progress and to alter the distribution of income from inequitable to inhuman.".

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PHONE CONTACTS: Brian Jenkins +61 8 9528 1864; Dion Giles 0411 745 538