By Jo Nova
The EU Free Trade agreement would Weaponize the Paris Agreement
The Labor Party want to sign a deal with the EU which means that future Australian governments won’t be able to drop the Paris Agreement without being bludgeoned in trade by the EU. If we revise our Net Zero goals downwards or delay them the EU can cut access for our farmers to their markets. And the EU will be able to say they are not bullying us, or interfering with our sovereign rights, they are just enforcing a trade agreement we signed up for.
In the Labor Governments own words:
For the first time in a free trade agreement, Australia (and the EU) has made a binding commitment to implement obligations under the Paris Agreement on climate change.
— Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Effectively Australian farmers or exporters to the EU will be held hostage by the EU to make sure we meet our Paris targets, even if we vote against Net Zero commitments. The deal has meaningless words like “Australia maintains the right to regulate in pursuit of its own public policy objectives” but if we actually do that, there will be a price.
Once farmers have adapted to the new EU market, and supply lines are established to advertise, package, transport and distribute the goods, there will be real pain if those markets are abruptly cut off because Australia didn’t meet it’s absurd impossible Net Zero targets.
This suits the Labor Party, they can sell out the regions without worrying about a voter backlash from country folk who don’t vote Labor much anyway. The Labor inner-city voters will be happy because they can buy their French cheese and European electric cars slightly cheaper, along with their discounted Dutch ham. But the farmers and the Coalition will be caught in a no win situation where they will pay if they try to get rid of the Paris agreement.
This is a pincer move that’s intricate and clever in the same way Ebola is
Labor hid its plans to raise our Paris Agreement commitment from the voters in the last election, only to, by golly, suddenly raise our commitment from a 42% to a 62 – 70% reduction a few months later. Lies and deception is the only way to “pass” a climate tax isn’t it? If Labor had told Australians what it was going to do, would it have still won?
And if this Trade Agreement goes through, the farmers won’t have much choice. They could choose not to sell to the EU to stop themselves from being held hostage. But the trade deal means new meat and dairy products from the EU will be arriving to take some of the Australian market away, so they will be, de facto, forced to find some new market.
Labor have thrown the regions under the bus in order to trap the Coalition into keeping the Paris Agreement, and the Paris Agreement is a ratchet that can only move in one direction. Commitments can only increase…
The good news is that the Coalition appear to be aware of this now and have vowed to oppose it:
EU free-trade deal in danger amid Coalition warnings it ‘locks in climate agenda’
The Coalition says it could oppose the Albanese government’s $10bn-a-year free-trade agreement with the EU, arguing it would lock future governments into Labor’s “partisan climate agenda” by making Australia’s emissions reduction pledges legally binding.
The position means the government could have to rely on the Greens – which has opposed recent free-trade deals – to ratify the agreement that took nearly eight years to conclude.
The bad news is that only last week the Opposition was saying they won’t drop the Paris Agreement because it won’t change anything they do, and “it’s just a piece of paper”. That didn’t age well. Didn’t they see this coming?
The true danger of Paris framework is coming into focus
It is the legal bomb that can be weaponized through other domestic legislation. If Labor can do a deal with the Greens to sign this, Australia effectively becomes a quasi satellite state of the EU at least on climate and energy. And the new ludicrous targets that Labor snuck in last September become an excuse for the EU to punish any particular industry in Australia that exports to the EU. And we can be sure the EU will pick the most politically leveraged industry to target. It’s not like they will block the Great Fashion Houses of Warringah, because the Teal politicians will squeal for free.
This is the elegance of the trap: the voters least enthusiastic about Labor’s climate agenda become the collateral for enforcing it. If a future government tries to loosen the Paris ratchet, it is not the inner-city teal voter who gets threatened with lost market access; it is the farmer, processor and regional exporter.
The irony is, it was a lousy inept trade deal for farmers anyhow
The incompetence of this offering made it easier for the Opposition to turn it down.
EU free trade more about climate policy than free markets
Ted O’Brien, The Opposition foreign affairs spokesman, in The Australian:
For the first time, Australia faces legally binding climate commitments in an FTA, including enforceable obligations and the prospect of sanctions. Yet the Albanese government has said remarkably little about this. Instead, debate has centred on agriculture, where Australia was out-negotiated by Europe – securing access for just an extra 30,600 tonnes of beef while Canada won 50,000 tonnes, and forcing Australian cheese producers to compete against government-subsidised European imports at home.
Imagine if Albanese had managed to arrange an EU deal which seemed appealing?
His incompetence is the best thing he’s got going for him.
Ocean Monster Image by Alana Jordan from Pixabay
Maze Image by gugacurado from Pixabay
*** I’ll be speaking at 3pm Saturday afternoon near Fremantle, Mt Hawthorn (Sorry for screwing that up!) in WA.
I’ll have more details tomorrow.
h/t to Dennis and Ms Smith