Philip Morris suing Australian gov

This appears to be the sort of thing we'd be looking at under the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP). The Australian gov has changed cigarette packaging to the plain same colour for all brands, with horrifying pictures of cigarette damage to humans along with warning labels, and locked them up behind barriers in shops so that they're not even visible behind the counter. Philip Morris, like any smoke company I guess, is suing the Australian gov for lost earnings. 

How is it doing this? Similar by the looks to what we would expect under the TPP agreement if we sign the thing. It's using a 1993 trade agreement that Australia has with Hong Kong, as corporations would do under a TPP.

Philip Morris Asia (PMA) has brought proceedings against the Australian Government under the 1993 Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of Hong Kong for the Promotion and Protection of Investments. PMA has made a number of arguments, including that plain packaging would expropriate its intellectual property, and that it has not been afforded fair and equitable treatment.

The Australian Government is defending the proceedings. It argues that PMA’s claim should be rejected as a matter of jurisdiction on the basis that it only acquired its 100% shareholding in PM Australia 10 months after the announcement that plain packaging would be introduced. In the event that the claim proceeds to a determination on the merits, the Australian Government argues that plain packaging does not deprive PMA of its investment, or subject PMA to measures that are equivalent to deprivation. It argues that ‘it is difficult to conceive of governmental action further removed from the unfair or inequitable treatment of an investor’, noting that ‘when PM Asia acquired its interest in PM Australia on 23 February 2011, it did so in full knowledge and with the expectation that the Australian Government would implement the plain packaging measure announced on 29 April 2010.’ more

What's more it was being done in secret. 

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said: "Despite Phillip Morris Asia's attempts to keep these proceedings under wraps, the tribunal's decision to publish these orders, as well as allowing parties to publish their own documents, reflects Australia’s efforts to increase transparency.

"We expect big tobacco to try to hide what they do from the public, but they can’t hide from the fact that smoking kills." Read more

George Monbiot relates the sort of thing happening under the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Interesting that the US in this "partnership" as well. This indeed looks like the capitalist nightmare the Pacific populations are fearing under the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, which until now has been negotiated in a hugely secretive manner. Thankfully it has been made public, not by our gov's but by Wikileaks. Folks, we're being sold a bloody lemon.

These companies (and hundreds of others) are using the investor-state dispute rules embedded in trade treaties signed by the countries they are suing. The rules are enforced by panels which have none of the safeguards we expect in our own courts(7,8). The hearings are held in secret. The judges are corporate lawyers, many of whom work for corporations of the kind whose cases they hear. Citizens and communities affected by their decisions have no legal standing. There is no right of appeal on the merits of the case. Yet they can overthrow the sovereignty of parliaments and the rulings of supreme courts. more

Finally, here's some of a report just out from Australia's ABC about the Wikileaks TPP leak, with some interesting analysis. It confirms that the US corporate maniacs are the ones behind the push to have this sort of thing included in the TPP:

"There are at least three or four examples of instances where Australia has proposed changes that are in the interests of public health that are being directly opposed by other countries, particularly the US," he said.

Professor Faunce says the document reveals Australia is opposing a patent court, and restrictions on generic pharmaceuticals.

Public Citizen, a Washington advocacy group critical of globalisation, charged that the Trans-Pacific Partnership marked a step backward and would lock consumers into high prices for medication.

"The Obama administration's shameful bullying on behalf of the giant drug companies would lead to preventable suffering and death in Asia-Pacific countries," Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's global access to medicines program, said in a statement. more

I do not want Australian sovereignty sacrificed for the sake of multi-national corporations. The US gov needs to get it through it's thick fuckin head, that life is about more than fuckin corporations and the mighty bloody dollar. If they want the US economy to grow, sueing other countries over lost profits isn't the way to go. How about giving people in the US a decent living wage so they can buy the stuff made there? How about health care that doesn't send people broke? How about giving the corporations encouragement to keep their manufacturing within the US along with the jobs for the middle class? Or how about making the 1% over there pay a decent amount of tax? Just because the US has fucked itself royally for the last thirty years doesn't mean it should seek money through international courts from countries that have managed their economies much better.

Fuck off US. Leave our PBS alone!