STOP MAI

MEDIA RELEASE -for immediate release, 3 August, 2004 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 International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO)

FTA – in the Multinational Interest

The Australian Labor Party, the only possible alternative Government, has once again tugged its forelock to transnational big business, ignoring the demands of constituents for rational treatment of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA)

The party's abrupt capitulation to Bush-Howard pressure recalls a string of previous cave-ins – to Indonesian occupation of East Timor in 1975, US encroachment on Iraq (1990 to 2004) and to the Howard Government's harsh treatment of refugees (2001).

The AUSFTA is clearly prejudicial to Australia's long tradition of affordable health care. It unnecessarily legitimises intervention by the ultra-profitable American pharmacuticals industry and leviathan private-hospital investment regime. It also hands control of Australian cultural content to US media interests.

It is simply not rational to endorse the lopsided agreement with the intention of seeking to negotiate changes at a later date, as ALP spokespersons have announced.

The timing of this fiasco suits only Mr Howard's general election agenda. It remains to be seen whether a Labor Government is electable on economic principles which are virtually identical with those of Mr Howard's Coalition.

Voters are slowly coming to realise that successive Australian governments are more strongly bound to global corporate demands than to any facade of democracy. In the short term, this will benefit Bob Brown's Greens and other minor parties. In the longer term, the national interest may need expression in radically different ways.

ends #57

PHONE CONTACTS: Brian Jenkins +61 8 9528 1864, Mobile 0414 730 096