Plain-packs defense costly

The Australian Government spent nearly $39 million over six years defending its standardized-tobacco-packaging laws against Philip Morris Asia (PMA), according to a story in The Guardian quoting freedom of information documents.
The documents indicate the figure, $38,984,942.97, is the total amount invoiced to the Department of Health by ‘external service providers’, related to the bilateral-investment treaty dispute between Australia and PMA for the financial year 2011-12 through to October 2016.
The department was quoted as saying that some of that amount might not relate solely to the PMA dispute, because some service providers had worked on that dispute and other standardized-tobacco-packaging litigation matters, and invoices for their work had not been disaggregated.
However, that figure had been provided as the ‘grand total’ amount after a two-year freedom of information battle by former senator Nick Xenophon and his former staffer, now Centre Alliance senator, Rex Patrick.
Patrick was quoted as saying that he had been blown away by the “mammoth cost” to taxpayers of the legal fight.
“This is exactly why Australia must stop signing up to free trade agreements with these insidious ISDS [Investor-State Dispute Settlement] provisions in them,” he said.
“I accept the government had to defend the matter, but if we hadn’t signed up to the Hong Kong agreement with ISDS provisions in it then there would not have been a tribunal hearing. Imagine what health outcomes could have been achieved with that $39 million.”
The Guardian story said that Philip Morris had taken its case to the permanent court of arbitration in 2012, using an ISDS clause in a 1993 Hong Kong-Australia trade deal.
The Guardian story looks also at ISDS issues related to the 11-country (including Australia) Trans-Pacific Partnership.