The Australia Institute recently made a submission to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the Trade and Foreign Investment (Protecting the Public Interest) Act 2014 which seeks to protect Australian laws by banning investor-state dispute settlement provisions.

This submission looks not only at ISDS but also other elements of trade agreements which impact on these rights including the lack of information provided to citizens and their exclusion from the process of negotiation, the limited role of parliament, the sidelining of the courts by the establishment of an international investment dispute body which lacks transparency, does not act in the public interest, and does not provide appeal mechanisms, and potential stifling of public debate and media through use of extreme trade secret laws.