[asia-apec 1568] Jane Kelsey - Select Committee Process on Singapore trade agreement a "sham"

[APEC Monitoring Group]

13 September 2000: For Immediate Release

Select Committee Process for Singapore Agreement a ‘Sham’

Referral of the Singapore free trade agreement to the Foreign Affairs
Defence and Trade select committee is a sham, according to Professor Jane
Kelsey of Auckland University.

The Committee is required to report back to Parliament within 15 sitting
days – around 19 October. That means there will be no time for solid
independent analysis, let alone calling for, preparation and hearing of
considered submissions by the Select Committee.

"The text was secret until it was tabled in Parliament on Monday. The only
information available until then was a minimal and self-serving cost-benefit
analysis prepared by officials, which formed the basis of the Government’s
much vaunted ‘consultation’, and a more recent updated summary of some of
its terms," said Professor Kelsey.

"Those of us with concerns about its implications were reduced to
shadow-boxing with the Government. Now that we have the text and can analyse
its details, the time frame means there will be no genuine opportunity to
make submissions and have the flaws in the Agreement reconsidered."

"The Select Committee is dominated by Labour and National MPs and serviced
by Foreign Affairs and Trade Officials. Leaving them to analyse the
agreement and National Interest Analysis without independent submissions
makes a mockery of the process".

"There would be constitutional outrage if this approach was taken with a
major piece of domestic legislation. It should be considered even more
outrageous in an international agreement that purports to bind the policy
and legislative options of future governments".

Background Information:

This is the first major international economic agreement to come before the
select committee under standing orders 384 to 387, as amended last October
after a limited review of the sessional orders for dealing with treaties
that were introduced in 1998. Once the agreement has been presented to the
House, both the text and the accompanying ‘national interest assessment’
stand referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade select committee.
The standing orders impose no time limits for the select committee to
report. Nor is there any specified procedure for conducting a public
inquiry.

The 1999 review of sessional orders said that 15 sitting days should be a
minimum time for a committee examination. Because this would be inadequate
where a treaty or agreement was controversial and the committee wished to
conduct a public inquiry including the calling for submissions, the
committee should be able to ask the Government for an assurance that no
action would be taken on the agreement within a specified further time.
There is no such provision in the new standing orders. Instead, a Cabinet
memorandum dated February 2000, which has been obtained under the Official
Information Act, requires the Select Committee to report within 15 days.

Professor Jane Kelsey