THE fifth round of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) between the US, Australia, and seven other countries starts in Santiago, Chile, today. Over 30 Australian community groups, including the ACTU and 8 national unions, the Catholic Social Justice Council, Greenpeace, the Public Health Association and pensioner groups are calling on governments to release the draft texts of the proposed agreement.

"These negotiations raise many of the issues that were bitterly debated in the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement," Harvey Purse, Campaigner for the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) said today.

"US pharmaceutical companies want more changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme so they can charge higher prices for medicines, agribusiness companies want to abolish GE food labelling and media and services companies want to weaken Australian content rules in media and in government purchasing. These are health, social and cultural policies that should be decided through democratic parliamentary processes, not secretly signed away in trade negotiations," explained Mr Purse.

"The essence of democracy is the right of the people to know what governments are doing and debate policies and laws through parliamentary processes. Instead, these negotiations are conducted in secret. Citizens and legislators would never tolerate the text of domestic legislation being kept secret until it was passed", said Mr Purse.

"Four rounds of TPPA negotiations have taken place in secret and draft texts are now being discussed. We reject the argument that greater transparency would undermine negotiations. That presumes that negotiators are discussing policies that would not survive the sunshine of scrutiny. Publication would mean more diverse comments which can only be positive. Precedents for releasing texts in the trade negotiations include the 153-member World Trade Organization (WTO), and the recently completed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)," he said.

"We urge the Australian Government to support the publication of both draft texts and other relevant documents for public discussion," he said. Trade Justice Campaigner, 14/02/11.