Front page headline Queensland Times January 22nd, 1998 ‘Government signing away Australia’s future’.
by chief reporter Mark Strong
Federal Member for Oxley Pauline Hanson yesterday joined a rainbow coalition of political, welfare and union groups opposing a treaty she said threatened to sign away Australia’s future to multinationals.
Ms Hanson accused the Federal Government of entering into a “secret treaty”, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, that would be “potentially devastating”.
Ms Hanson called on the government to stop its negotiations on the MAI and open up the issue to public scrutiny.
Her call received support from Democrat Oxley Candidate, Kate Kunzelmann, who said the MAI would exempt foreign firms investing in Ipswich from rules regarding using local labour and from buying goods for production locally, while multinational companies could sue Australian governments in international courts for “perceived discrimination”.
The MAI, which OECD countries have been negotiating since 1995, aims to set new rules to liberalise the flow of international investment.
Ms Hanson said she had a draft copy of the MAI from the Internet and opposed it because it was not in the best interests of Australia.
Ms Hanson said Australians should be made aware of the treacherous nature of the government’s intention to “sign away the future of Australians by selling us out completely”.
“The Multilateral Agreement on Investment, as it appears at this time, has the potential to be one of the most devastating issues Australians have ever faced,” she said.
“We will no longer be able to attach conditions to or limit the extent of foreign investment and many of our decisions will be made by international bureaucrats.
“The secret negotiations must stop and the government must come clean immediately.”
She said the agreement was due to be signed in April or May and she intended to bring it up in Parliament.
Ms Hanson said she understood the Australian Government had 29 objections to the draft agreement, and called on Trade Minister Tim Fischer to immediately reveal the Government’s concerns.
A spokesman for Mr Fischer yesterday said, “If Ms Hanson’s request is genuine and she is truly seeking information, we will respond and give her information she desires as a representative of the Australian people.”
He said the details of Australia’s objections to the MAI document were not yet public as negotiations were continuing.
Ms Kunzelmann said the Democrats had joined a range of community groups to question the proposal.
“Unless ordinary Australians speak up now and ask questions about the MAI, we could soon find our ability to govern our country sold out by a bunch of grey-suited bureaucrats in Paris doing the bidding of the world’s biggest multinational corporations,” Ms Kunzelmann said.
A group calling itself STOP MAI held its first meeting in Brisbane earlier this month, calling for more public debate on the issue which Griffith University academic Richard Sanders said threatened Australian democracy.
STOP MAI members include representatives from business, the Catholic and Anglican churches, unions, the ALP and Australian Democrats and other community interest groups.
A spokesman for the Treasury department, which is handling the MAI negotiations, said the agreement would have to go through a rigorous parliamentary process like all international treaties being signed.