As the election draws near, The Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET) has analysed how the trade policies of our major political parties compare in relation to fair trade and free trade.

Both the Labor party and the Coalition are committed to trade liberalisation, but differ in their approach. Labor policy emphasises sharing the benefits of trade liberalisation both domestically and between countries. The policy recognises that short-term support is needed to assist some workers and sectors to adjust and that although trade is important, it is not always sufficient for developing countries. On the other hand, the Coalition focusses on increasing Australia’s exports through “fast tracking” Free Trade Agreements especially in Asia and particularly with China, Indonesia, Japan and India. The Coalition aims to increase Australia’s reputation as “a safe place to invest”. The Greens emphasise the importance of fairness and democracy in their approach to international trade and highlight the need to assist developing countries.

To compare the parties on key fair trade issues, we examined the policy documents of each party, as well as pre-election statements and publications on nine key issues. They are labour rights, the environment, health care and access to medicines, investor rights to sue governments (ISDS), intellectual property, Australia’s cultural industries, transparency, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Multilateral versus bilateral and regional agreements.

As you can see in our comparison table, Labor and the Greens have positive policies on all of the nine issues, whereas the Liberal National Coalition has a negative policy on Investor-State Dispute Settlement, and no explicit policies on seven of the others.