Nurses claim proposed pact will trigger a wave of privatisations of hospitals and other services

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The trade union representing Australia’s nurses and midwives is warning that a global trade deal in services may herald a new wave of privatisations in the country’s public hospitals and health services.



The New South Wales Nurses and Midwives’ Association has written to the federal trade minister, Andrew Robb, requesting that details of the Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa) be made public to address concerns from a range of groups that the proposed pact will have a profound effect on the provision of public services.

Negotiations on the Tisa resume in Geneva on Monday and Australia is chairing the talks from then until Friday.

The 23 parties to the agreement are Australia, Canada, Chile, Chinese Taipei, Colombia, Costa Rica, the European Union (representing its 28 member states), Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.

Talks on the agreement began last year, and Australia is moving the deal forward with the US and the EU. The pact is being pursued outside the World Trade Organisation by a group of pro-trade liberalisation countries with the idea that the final text be compatible with the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gat).

Australia has a substantial economic interest in liberalising the global trade in services. The services sector comprises about 70% of domestic economic activity and 17% of exports, according to analysis by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Tade.

But unions representing public sector workers internationally are preparing to campaign against the agreement.

Public Services International, the global body for public sector unions, has commissioned a report that attacks the foundations of the proposed pact. That report, released at the Australian embassy in Geneva on Monday, contends that the Tisa is “among the alarming new wave of trade and investment agreements founded on legally binding powers that institutionalise the rights of investors and prohibit government actions in a wide range of areas only incidentally related to trade”.

It claims the agreement will prevent governments from returning public services to public hands when privatisations fail, will restrict domestic regulations on worker safety, will limit environmental regulations and will affect consumer protections and regulatory authority in areas such as licensing of healthcare facilities, power plants, waste disposal and university and school accreditation.

The PSI has called on the negotiating parties to release the provisional text, exclude all public services from the agreement and ensure that all countries have the right to regulate in the public interest.

The New South Wales nurses have also written to Robb seeking clarification about Australia’s stance in the discussions. The union’s general secretary, Brett Holmes, claims the Tisa “would make it easier for multinational corporations to profit with impunity”.

“If successful it could open up a wide range of vital public services, such as health care, to be sold off permanently for private profit and never allowed to be returned to public hands,” Holmes said. “Every new health-care service would also have to be privatised under this agreement.”

The comments echo arguments the ACTU has put to the government as part of the public submissions process into the proposed agreement.

But the Tisa also has strong supporters in the business community, both in Australia and internationally. The Australian Services Roundtable has used its submission to the foreign affairs department to call for a pact with a “high degree of ambition”.

“Now that the Tisa negotiations have begun, it is crucially important to maintain momentum and retain a high degree of ambition,” the group says.

“We believe that an ambitious agreement should cover 21st century issues, including cross-border data flows, regulatory transparency and co-operation, movement of business persons and rules for state-owned and state-sponsored enterprises that compete in commercial markets and the digital economy.”

Another supporter is the ANZ Bank. Its submission says the bank “strongly supports the Tisa negotiations and believes they represent a significant opportunity not only for lowering barriers to trade for current parties to the negotiations, but can also set important targets for further liberalisation in the future by nations currently not a party to the negotiation”.