The Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties issued a report today recommending that “the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement not be ratified by Australia” unless and until the government can provide an adequate evidentiary record proving that the agreement will be in Australia’s best interests.

The decision follows close on the heels of a similar rejection by the EU parliament’s INTA committee, also the primary trade law committee in that body. As the report itself notes, the move by the Australian committee to reject ACTA makes it increasingly unlikely that ACTA will go into force in any member country.

Links to the report and background submissions can be found at:

Senator Scott Ludlam, a member of the JSCOT committee from the Australian Greens party, explained:

“The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has thoroughly examined the text, the arguments and the positions taken by other governments and sees the writing on the wall; there appears a very real possibility that ACTA will not be ratified by sufficient countries in order to come into existence,” said Senator Ludlam. “The Greens would welcome ACTA being ruled out completely because the content of this treaty is fatally flawed and the process that brought it about was shamefully and unnecessarily secretive. While our government did hold consultations they were farcical because those being consulted did not have the secret text and therefore couldn’t provide advice and feedback. “Australia’s parliamentary committee is not alone in its detailed criticism of this Agreement. No less than five European Parliament Committees have recommended it be rejected. Several EU countries have suspended consideration until further notice and the Dutch Lower house has recommended its rejection outright. Hundreds of thousands of people have come out in demonstrations against ACTA throughout Europe and the United States. “ACTA may well go down if governments listen to their people and parliamentary committees, however, many of the interests that drove ACTA are currently driving the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement – the obligations of this Agreement being negotiated in secret will affect very similar areas such as affordable medicines, Australian content and digital copyright issues.”

According to one Parliamentary staffer in correspondence to me:

“While the Committee does not rule out Australia acceding to ACTA, it has produced a report that is very critical of the treaty, citing many experts that gave eloquent and substantive evidence as to why ACTA is fatally flawed. The Committee has placed a number of qualifiers and preconditions in its recommendations that send a strongly critical signal.”

On the occasion of the release of the report, Professor Sean Flynn, Associate Director of the American University Washington College of Law Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property explained: