Ukraine challenges Australia's cigarette plain packaging laws

While those who detest the loss of national power to international bodies usually blame the UN, it is a World Trade Organisation decision this week that is posing the most serious threat yet to Australian government policy. The high-stakes decision is about cigarettes smoking, a global pandemic that kills six million people a year. Accounting for one in every 10 adult deaths, smoking is the most widespread public health threat in the world and the single biggest preventable cause of cancer.  At least 15,000 people die a year in Australia from smoking related causes.

Australia is now in the vanguard of public health initiatives against this pandemic.  Last year the Government passed ground-breaking legislation for cigarette plain packaging through a hostile parliament and then a high court challenge in August this year. The legislation requires tobacco products to feature standard olive-coloured plain packaging with large health warnings.

Within hours of that court decision a challenge came from tobacco-producing country Ukraine in the WTO. Ukraine is not the first country that comes to mind when dealing with Australia trade. According to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, trade is “modest” and it favours Australia. In 2009 Australia exported $70m of goods and services to Ukraine while just half that amount went the other way mainly to pay for Ukrainian fertilisers and electrical circuits equipment. Ukraine exports a lot of cigarettes but little or none to Australia.

Nevertheless Ukraine requested a WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) panel to look at the cigarette trademark restriction. After being deferred last month, the DSB agreed to form a panel last week. Now the DSB will determine if the measures “erode the protection of intellectual property rights” and “impose severe restrictions on the use of validly registered trademarks”. Ukraine explained why IP and trademarks trump public health policy. “Governments should pursue legitimate health policies through effective measures without unnecessarily restricting international trade and without nullifying intellectual property rights as guaranteed by international trade and investment rules," they said. In arguing international trade and property rights should be a factor in health policy, Ukraine said the measures were “clearly more restrictive than necessary to achieve the stated objectives” and  an “unnecessary obstacle to trade”.

With so little trade at stake, it seems an absurd argument but as ABC Lateline discovered, Ukraine's tobacco industry is especially powerful. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, production soared through conglomerates like Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and Philip Morris peaking at more than 130 billion cigarettes four years ago. Unsurprisingly JTI supports the challenge to Australia. “Put simply, if this measure is passed, Australia will be saying to the rest of the world, ‘we're not open for business’,” JTI said. Ukraine challenges two key Australian measures, the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 and its implementing Tobacco Plain Packaging Regulations 2011. Its case is that these Acts are inconsistent with several articles of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, some of the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreement and one of the 1994 GATT agreement.

Australia was furious with the interference. It said Ukraine had high death rates from tobacco and its actions were at odds with its own policies to comply with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Australia defended the tobacco plain packaging as a “sound, well-considered measure designed to achieve a legitimate objective — the protection of public health”. Australia said the WTO recognised public heath as a fundamental right of its members and the measure was non-discriminatory and not unnecessarily restrictive.

Unlike Ukraine, Uruguay understood Australian aims. Its WTO reps said Uruguay “could not remain silent in this fight against the most serious pandemic confronting humanity”. Uruguay said the Multilateral Trading System should not force members to allow a product that kills its citizens in large numbers “to be sold wrapped as candy to attract new victims.” New Zealand said that it is also considering plain packaging measures and Norway said that countries are under obligation to adopt measures to protect public health.

But other countries such as Zimbabwe, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Indonesia have backed Ukraine. Zimbabwe relies on tobacco taxes and has not forgiven Australia for its anti-Mugabe stance. It said 200,000 farmers and their families in the country depend on tobacco. How many Australian lives should die for these farmers, they did not say. Central American nations Honduras and Nicaragua supported the Ukraine too. Honduras said that the WHO Framework Convention is” indicative and non-binding” while Nicaragua said tobacco was one of their most important exports.

Big Tobacco has been careful to cover their tracks but no-one is in any doubt who is behind the charade. Fairfax economic correspondent Peter Martin said a Philip Morris International briefing note for the US trade representative in the Trans-Pacific Partnership wants an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, “including the right for investors to submit disputes to independent international tribunals.” Martin said the Howard Government FTA with the US resisted this notion but an Abbott Government might be more pliable.

G8 report says rich nations are failing Africa

A new G8 sponsored report issues a damning indictment of the world’s richest countries saying they are falling short on aid commitments to Africa. The Africa Progress Panel says the first world is falling seriously behind in its commitment to help the continent meet it challenge to escape poverty and debt. The aid problem is exacerbated by rising food prices and the impact of global warming. The report suggested innovative ways to meet the aid shortfall and called for immediate assistance in food production, an end to trade barriers, and a drastic increase in African infrastructure projects.

The report entitled Africa's Development: Promises and Prospects (pdf) cites four different but interlocking crises that dominate the global economy. They are the financial crisis in the West, a worsening energy crisis, the threat of global warming, and high food prices which are affecting the world’s poorest people. While it says the world has missed “early opportunities” to deal with the first two crises, it believes it is imperative “we meet the challenge of the third and take immediate steps to address the fourth”.

The Panel has drawn on the work of various institutions and eminent individuals working on African issues to present an independent assessment of progress. The report focuses on the twin challenges of food crisis and global warming. Many countries are undergoing a reversal of decades of economic growth and 100 million people are being pushed back into poverty. Export bans on key commodities such as rice are adding to the problem. The report issues a dire warning that unless a way can be found to reverse the current trend in food prices there will be a “significant increase in hunger, malnutrition, and infant and child mortality”.

The report calls on developed nations to raise the level of financial assistance to affected countries and aid agencies. It also calls on the rich nations to review economic and financial policies to ensure the production of food is not threatened. In the longer term, the report advocates “substantial new investments raise agricultural productivity and food production” in Africa and the wider world. The report also calls for a review of trade policies concerning biofuel subsidies, grain storage and the need to kick-start fertiliser markets. Africa needs fairer access to protected world markets but multi-lateral trade negotiations have been stalled since the Doha round were deadlocked in 2006. It also pleads for prioritising rural development and giving the poor access to world markets. But it warns that “the delivery of promises on aid for trade must not be held hostage to trade deals”.

The report follows other NGO warnings that Africa is ill-prepared for climate change and will bear the brunt of any negative impact. Climate change will further diminish the means of food production and will play havoc with the lives of the global poor. Already disadvantaged by high food prices, the urban poor in particular will suffer greatly if there is any further loss of agricultural productivity due to climate change. The report recommends increased funding for renewable energy noting solar, wind and geothermal production is “very viable” in Africa. It also lauds a Forest Carbon Partnership Facility to prevent the disappearance of tropical rainforests. The plan involves estimating nation’s forest carbon stocks for emissions estimates and providing financial incentives to reduce emissions below a defined threshold.

Investments in infrastructure are also needed to achieve lasting solutions to the food crisis. Africa requires roads, power and water so that farmers to produce and distribute food. Infrastructure projects will also generate economic growth, jobs and income and will help create a productive private sector currently missing in many African countries. 60 per cent of all enterprises fail to thrive due to lack of basic electricity due to a poor national grid or numerous power outages. The report recommends hydroelectric projects such as Congo’s Grand Inga Dam as having the potential to meet a significant share of the continent’s power needs. Poor roads are also a problem with only 12 percent of Africa’s roads paved and 10 percent of all road deaths worldwide occurring in Sub Saharan countries. The report calls for a Trans-African road network (pdf) linking Dakar, Lagos, Khartoum, Luanda, Mombasa, Windhoek and Gaborone.

The Africa progress panel was an initiative of the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles, Scotland. The eleven member Panel members has several high profile members including chair Kofi Annan, Tony Blair, Bob Geldof, former International Monetary Fund chief Michel Camdessus, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner and Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus. The Gleneagles Summit pledged large funds towards debt cancellation and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. But the G8 has been slow to match these pledges with action. It has had success with debt relief but has not yet produced a timetable to progress to the much vaunted goal of doubling aid. The G8 promised $130 billion in aid by 2010 but is likely to fall short by $40 billion.

The report acknowledges that traditional budgetary resources are unlikely to address this shortfall. It suggests innovative new sources of funds such as currency transactions taxes, carbon taxes, taxes on international
air travel and freight transport, a global lottery, and measures to increase private funding of development agencies, Annan and his team say urgent collective work needs to be a priority for the donor community to evaluate these and other options. Africa, they say, is at a critical juncture. It pleads with the G8 to renew its 2002 Canadian Kananaskis Summit goal that no countries genuinely committed to poverty reduction, good governance and economic reform, will be denied the chance to achieve their Millennium Goals through lack of finance. Kofi Annan’s introduction put it best: “the world has a stake in realising the African continent's huge potential to thrive."

World Economic Forum meeting ends at Davos

The World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting closed in Davos on Sunday with a call from Tony Blair for new “collaborative and innovative leadership” to address the big challenges of globalisation, conflict, climate change and water conservation. Blair, who co-chaired this year’s five-day meeting, addressed 2,500 global political and business leaders at the exclusive Swiss ski resort. He told the closing plenary session that globalisation is forcing politic leaders to adopt more collaborative approaches. “If we are interconnected and the world is interconnected, the only way for the world to work is to have a set of common values,” he said “We have no option but to work together.”

Blair also said he expects to see an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and a pact on climate change by the end of 2008. Sharing his optimism, Nobel Peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel demanded action on Darfur and Tibet. He made a call to "to alleviate the suffering in Darfur which has become the capital of human suffering in the world today." He also received a standing ovation when he said "I'd like China to open its doors to the Dalai Lama so I could accompany him to go to Tibet. That would be a great, great victory.” WEF founder Klaus Schwab warned that if the challenges are not addressed then “even the greatest opportunities will not be enough to guarantee our continuation as humankind if you look at climate change, terrorism, poverty."

The WEF was born in 1971 as a yearly “European Management Forum” of European corporate players initially funded by the European Commission. Klaus Schwab, Professor of business policy at the University of Geneva, chaired the gathering which took place in Davos. In 1987 the forum changed its name to the WEF in an effort to claim global reach. It now includes the most prominent transnational corporations, over a thousand of are WEF Foundation Members. Its members are mostly comprised of North American, European and industrialised Asian delegates.

The WEF aspires to be an agenda setting organisation. It is a private foundation that meets regularly but has no formal policy making power unlike similar groups such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Both however have supranational structures that Andrew Calabrese called representative of a “post sovereign era”. When the WEF Asia Pacific meeting met in Melbourne in 2000, it was the target of a major demonstration by S11 protesters concerned with issues relevant to the expansion of global capitalism such as its apparent lack of accountability, its environmental impact and international debt structures that hamper third world development. But while they captured media attention, neither the protesters nor the WEF succeeded in engaging in debate with each other’s views.

Australia was represented at this year’s talks by Trade Minister Simon Crean. He said the forum gave renewed impetus to the long-running Doha round to open up world trade. He told a news conference there were still big gaps among rich and poor countries, but ministers had agreed to finish the round as soon as possible with revised negotiating texts for agriculture and industrial goods. "It was a positive outcome from Davos" he said. “I'm encouraged by the response and the way that message has been conveyed back here and the momentum that that's hopefully generated.”

One of the themes to emerge from the 2008 conference was a quest to determine the values that underpin globalisation. The WEF has left behind its early market fundamentalism and is now charting a new course for global capitalism. This means enhanced “market discipline”, proactive crisis suppression and a recognition of the social cost of a rampant unchecked world economy. It is starting to reach out to parts of the world excluded from its social contract including Africa and Latin America as well as inviting NGOs to participate. According to Daniel Yergin, Chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), “globalisation is not going to go away.” The question, he said “is what kind of globalisation do we have.”

APEC begins in Sydney

The annual Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum opens today in Sydney. Better known as APEC, the conference will bring together the leaders of US, China, Japan, Russia, Canada and 16 other Pacific countries. The conference will last a week, will attract 10,000 visitors and is costing the Australian taxpayer $300 million. Although Sydney is the host, its people are not invited. The city is fortified with a massive steel and concrete wall to prevent attacks such as car bombing as well as stopping protestors from reaching the venue.

Security is intense for the Sydney conference. NSW has deployed 3,500 police backed by 1,500 soldiers, tanks, water cannon and explosives-detecting dogs. However the outbreak of equine influenza means mounted police won't be used to control protesters. The state government ran media campaigns which urged residents to take a holiday to avoid the city during this week and they declared Friday 7 September a public holiday for Sydney.

APEC was originally an Australian idea. Frustrated at being excluded from local power groups such as ASEAN, then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke hosted the first ever Asia Pacific ministerial meeting in Canberra in 1989. It was touted as an “informal ministerial-level dialogue group” and 12 countries sent attendees. Its mission was to promote trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific. And because it comprises member economies, not nation states, it allowed China and Taiwan (under the banner “Chinese Taipei”) sit side by side at the APEC table. In 1993 it expanded to become a leaders’ conference with Bill Clinton hosting the first one in Seattle.

APEC covers the Pacific rim countries and currently has 21 member economies in four continents. APEC accounts for more than one-third of the world's population, more than one-half of the world's gross domestic product and more than 40 percent of world trade. Its neo-liberal agenda involves accelerated trade and investment and has been used in the past to reach agreement in tariff reductions in areas such as IT which then forms a precedent for global versions under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation. APEC claims its member economies enjoy lower cost of living on average because reduced trade barriers and a more economically competitive region lowers prices for goods and services.

Among the leaders in town for APEC is Chinese President Hu Jintao. His visit comes as figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show China has overtaken Japan for the first time ever as Australia's biggest trading partner. According to the ABS, Australia's trade with China was worth US$41.4 billion in the 12 months to July, while trade with Japan was $40.7 billion. Hu is expected to witness the signing of a gas sales agreement between Australia’s Woodside and potential Chinese customers. At APEC, Hu will also outline a climate change initiative on the sustainable management of forests and will propose to restart the stalled Doha Round of global trade liberalisation talks.

China is taking growing leadership of APEC as the US remains preoccupied with Iraq. President Bush hasn’t helped this impression by cutting short his stay at this year’s summit in order to hear US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, testify to Congress. According to former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the US is neglecting Asia. "We're playing foreign policy at the moment like 5-year-olds play soccer,” he told the Australian newspaper. “Everyone is going after the ball at once rather than covering the whole field.”

Bush ally and conference host John Howard has his sights firmed placed on the APEC agenda. He is hopeful APEC leaders will decide on an aspirational "global goal" to reduce greenhouse gases at this week's historic meeting. However he also ruled out any binding targets. Howard, who refused to sign the Kyoto protocol, blamed developing countries for failing to agree on binding targets. Howard said he wanted to develop a post-Kyoto consensus that attracts participation by all emitters. However his position was rejected as indecisive by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd. "If you're going to be serious about climate change,” he said, “you must have a national greenhouse gas emission target for Australia”. With a federal election to follow in the next two months, Rudd may soon have the opportunity to set his own targets.

The Last Good Buy

Adbusters are a Canadian organisation dedicated to fighting rampant consumerism.

They are fighting a case in the Canadian courts to insist the Canadian TV channels accept their ‘subvertisements’ (also called anti-ads.) The channels are refusing stating that it is against their charters whereas Adbusters are claiming denial of freedom of speech.

Kalle Lasn, the Estonian born head of Adbusters is an original thinker dedicated to culture jamming and overturning the central tenet of consumerism at the heart of materialistic behaviour. He says "Our mental environment is a common-property resource like the air or the water. We need to protect ourselves from unwanted incursions into it, much the same way we lobbied for non-smoking areas ten years ago".

He also says that the automotive industry has been many times worse than Big Tobacco. He sees the strategies that almost brought the tobacco companies to their knees in the 80s and 90s being successfully repeated in the future against the car and oil conglomeration.

I hope he is right but a lot of work will be required to wean people off their love and dependence of motor vehicles. And with China and India gearing up for major development and the Third World generally wanting to own cars and live at the same standard as the First, the problem will get a lot worse before it improves.

Exorcism
smogness echoed ego
crowned in accolade of you
reflection hideously deformed
malnutrition of the body view
border curse in blood abandon
its gates bitter and spiked
torn in harmony dysfunction
its pausal flow disliked
taking handiclapped answers
whispered from the side
onstage parrot ordered
feathered, tarred and tied
gagged but speaking tongues
a ventriloquist bedroom farce
by a clever puppet master
with a gloved hand up your arse