back to article TPP treaty nearly ready to roll over us, says Oz minister

An Australian government minister has said he expects the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to be finalised soon. Talks on the treaty – which has been criticised for following a corporate America agenda on issues like patents, copyright law, and investor-state dispute settlement – stalled late last year. At …

COMMENTS

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  1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    I wonder how these people manage to sleep at night. Just how much of a backhander does it take for someone to support such obvious corporate greed?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      There's corporate greed on both sides. It's just different corporations.

      Australia is (for reasons best known only to themselves) trying to sell sugar. A commodity with little value add. In exchange for selling the US sugar, it will impose US defined rules on IP. As the majority of IP is owned by US corporations, the balance of benefit is to the US.

      1. DanceMan

        Sugar

        Did not bother to look up the details, but the US has forever had a restrictive policy on sugar to keep the domestic monopoly rich.

    2. Thorne

      They sleep very well on a big pile of cash.....

      1. LaeMing
        Unhappy

        Nothing helps sleep like lying under a bald-eagle-down doona

    3. Richard Jones 1
      Unhappy

      Will That's Easy

      Will, it is easy to see how these shysters sleep at night; at your and my expense.

      Take great care if you are prescribed any treatment from a US pharmaceutical company, will it kill, cripple or cure?

      It will be very hard to find out; 'news management' rules!

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Has Australia become another American puppet state?

      Like the UK?

  2. Breen Whitman

    Well, for Australia ad New Zealand its only a matter of time before US attack drones are criusing the pacific skies looking for copyrght infringers and taking out the infringing dwelling the IP address belongs too.

    Ozzies and NZ'ers aren't US citizens so they can be taken out with impunity.

    At the very least Ozzies and Kiwis will end up in Guantanamo Bay. Mark my words.

    1. Scoular

      Possibly a little overenthusiastic but the direction is right - unfortunately

  3. willi0000000

    all i wanted...

    for Christmas was for this treaty to go down in flames.

    [65 years and i still never get what i want]

  4. Winkypop Silver badge
    Big Brother

    America gets what it wants, and...

    ...minor officials from AUS/NZ get to feel important for a time.

    The rest of us get screwed each way till Sunday.

    1. RobHib
      Mushroom

      @Winkypop -- Re: America gets what it wants, and...

      ...And these mindless gnomes get off Scott free when they ought to be hung, drawn and quartered.

      This is what happens when there's secrecy in a democracy. Then again, because there's secrecy it really isn't democracy anyway, is it?

  5. Brad Ackerman
    Pirate

    Absent our continued propping-up of certain Floridian families (who were allegedly more important to President Clinton than spending time with his mistress), the US would be buying much of its sugar from Brazil, not Australia. Also, a good amount of sugar currently being bought in Canada would be bought in the US instead—those sugar quotas and tariffs have been causing the US to hemorrhage food-production jobs.

    What I'd want to see from a hypothetical trade treaty that wasn't just a giveaway to the MAFIAA: ditch the Jones Act, Buy America Act, and Fly America Act; eliminate the aforementioned sugar supports; give states the choice between allowing gambling and banning it (not, say, allowing a state-run lottery but no private-sector gaming); freedom of movement; and maybe even burying FACTA. Sadly, to get these things, we'd apparently need to actually exercise the option of ejecting the entire House and one-third of the Senate in an even-year election, which never seems to happen no matter how crappy our representation in DC is.

  6. Lapun Mankimasta

    Free Trade and the United States? The two concepts just don't mix, like oil and water. How long has the US been locking trading partners out of their markets with vast subsidies to their own products and simultaneously demanding unfettered access to others' markets? They make the European Community look like rabid free-marketers.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Two whitewashes

    The first was the ashes where Oz won but the second is US 1,000,000 OZ Nil.

    Well Aussies, you don't knowe it yet but you are about to become the 51st state, NZ will hold out a little longer.

    Soon Oz schools won't be playing Rugby, Aussie rules or Cricket but American Footie and Little League Baseball.

    The assimilation into the Borg, aka US society is almost upon them.

    I really thought you lot down under would have the balls to standup to US IMperialism. Ned Kelly will be turning in his grave.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Two whitewashes

      They wont be doing American footie or Little league - the US doesn’t actually like competition in case they loose.

  8. SolidSquid

    Seeing as the treaty is nearly ready for signing, I take it they wouldn't object to publicising it's contents? After all, the only objection before was that the incomplete version would give people the wrong idea of what it would cover since it would undoubtedly change

    1. GrumpyOldBloke

      Our tin soldier in chief has already bravely stated that we can see it when it is signed.

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