Customs Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Implementation) Bill 2018

The majority voted against an amendment moved by Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, which means it failed.

Senator Hanson-Young explained her amendment:

This amendment deals with these most important issues that are lacking in the TPP. As has been pointed out numerous times by me and my colleagues in second reading speeches and also through the committee stage today and yesterday, we are extremely concerned that ISDS provisions remain in the TPP. We also are worried, of course, about the failure to include proper protections for Australian workers through labour market testing.

So this amendment says that, until these issues are dealt with, the TPP would not be able to come into effect.

What do these bills do?

The bill was introduced along with another to implement the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP-11). Their basic purpose is to implement the customs dimensions of the TPP-11 Agreement by making relevant amendments to the Customs Act 1901 and the Customs Tariff Act 1995. Read more in the bills digest.

Amendment text

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (cell at table item 2, column 2), omit the cell, substitute:

If the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, done at Santiago, Chile on 8 March 2018, enters into force for Australia —the first day that:

(a) both of the following amendments of that Agreement are in force for Australia:

(i) an amendment with the effect that Chapter 9 of the Agreement, which deals with investor-State disputes, does not apply in relation to investments within Australia;

(ii) an amendment with the effect that labour market testing must occur in relation to contractual service suppliers entering, or proposing to enter, Australia from all parties to the Agreement; and

(b) another Act is in force that includes provisions with the effect that Australia must not, after the commencement of that Act, enter into a trade agreement with one or more other countries that:

(i) waives labour market testing requirements for workers from those countries; or

(ii) includes an investor-state dispute settlement provision.

However, the provisions do not commence at all unless all of the events mentioned in this item occur.