Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1694859988203.pdf (Australia)
ActionAid Australia submission to the Inquiry into Australia activating greater trade and investment with Pacific island countries March 2020 ActionAid Australia welcomes the Australian Government’s Inquiry into Australia activating greater trade and investment with Pacific Island countries as a global organisation working to achieve social justice, gender equality and poverty eradication in 45 countries.

This includes active partnerships with 13 civil society organisations in six countries in the Pacific.
Through this brief submission, ActionAid Australia would like to draw on its recommendations outlined in our more substantial submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) in its review of PACER Plus in 2018 after the agreement was signed and tabled in Parliament.
The Australian Government has committed to advancing equality and economic empowerment for women across all aspects of Australia’s foreign policy, trade, and aid programs,1 as per DFAT’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Strategy.

Supporting the empowerment of women and girls is a cornerstone of Australia’s engagement with the Pacific, including through our Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to the region.
Australia is also part of several international agreements that promote women’s rights and gender equality, including the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) and the Sustainable Development Goals (2015).

ActionAid Australia would like to see these commitments reflected in efforts to activate greater trade and investment in the region to ensure equitable benefits for women.
ActionAid is concerned that the current agreement, PACER Plus, has the potential to undermine development outcomes and pose significant risks to women’s rights in the Pacific region in its current form.

There is an opportunity in reviewing ways to strengthen trade and investment in the region to give due consideration to these issues in negotiating new arrangements.
Pacific Island countries have also shown their lack of support for the regional agreement with Papua New Guinea and Fiji, the two largest Pacific economies representing over 80% of combined output, refusing to sign the trade deal.

Only two Pacific countries, Samoa and Kiribati, have ratified the deal, along with Australia.

ActionAid Australia’s key recommendations to activate greater trade and investment with the Pacific: 1.
Australia should not proceed with implementation of PACER Plus and seek to renegotiate trading partnerships in the region that promote gender equality and positive environmental outcomes, alongside trade and investment objectives.

2.
2.

Australia should resource a full gender impact assessment in each of the Pacific Island countries that is party to an agreement, including formal consultation with national women’s organisations to ensure trading arrangements equitably benefit women and manage potential barriers and impediments facing women.

This assessment should be supported by the trade budget and not the existing official development assistance budget.
1 DFAT (2016), Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Strategy, accessed 17 March 2020: https://www.dfat.gov.au/about-us/publications/Pages/gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment-strategy 1 Inquiry into Australia activating greater trade and investment with Pacific island countriesSubmission 24 3.
Australia should ensure a reformed PACER Plus or alternative agreement includes clear and binding targets for emissions reductions in accordance with the Paris Agreement given the importance of climate change to the security of Pacific nations.

4.

The Australian Government is encouraged to strengthen its formal consultation mechanisms with civil society groups, especially Pacific women’s organisations throughout trade negotiations.
This can be a mechanism for strengthening the role and effectiveness of the sector in capturing trade and investment opportunities as well as identifying barriers and impediments that need to be addressed.

Australia should do this by introducing targeted strategies to ensure Pacific women’s organisations are represented in all regional trade negotiations and decision-making.

More detail on these recommendations is below.


Recommendation 1 Australia should not proceed with implementation of PACER Plus and seek to renegotiate trading partnerships in the region that promote gender equality and positive environmental outcomes, alongside trade and investment objectives.

• PACER Plus does not sufficiently consider the development needs of Pacific Island countries, fails to address their concerns over climate change, and has the potential to undermine gender equality.
• The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties Report on the PACER Plus trade deal raised concerns about the agreement, acknowledging those raised by ActionAid Australia, the Australian Fair Investment Trade Network, and the Public Health Association of Australia on Pacific Islands’ government revenue, health, and gender equality.2 • PACER Plus reduces tariffs, which are a significant source of revenue for Pacific Island countries.
A 2007 report found that eliminating tariffs could reduce total revenue for the Cook Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu by more than 10%.3 This could cause the erosion of public services that support gender equality, such as healthcare, education, transport, and justice services.
Recommendation 2 Australia should resource a full gender impact assessment in each of the Pacific Island countries that is party to an agreement, including formal consultation with national women’s organisations to ensure trading arrangements equitably benefit women and manage potential barriers and impediments facing women.

This assessment should be supported by the trade budget and not the existing official development assistance budget.
• PACER plus has the potential to threaten women’s livelihoods by increasing competition in sectors with the highest rate of women’s participation, such as small holder farming and industries in their infancy such as garment manufacturing and food processing.
One analyst is 2 Joint Standing Committee on Treaties Report on the PACER Plus Agreement, paras 3.61 and 3.62, accessed 17 March 2020: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Treaties/NuclearFuel- France/Report_179/section?id=committees%2freportjnt%2f024162%2f25858 3 Pacific Network on Globalisation (2016), Defending Pacific Ways of Life: A Peoples Social Impact Assessment of PACER-Plus, accessed 17 March 2020: http://dawnnet.org/wp- content/uploads/2017/11/defending_pacific_ways_of_life_full_report_final_2.pdf 2 Inquiry into Australia activating greater trade and investment with Pacific island countriesSubmission 24 projecting that 75 percent of manufacturing in the Pacific will be forced to close because of competition.4 • The provisions in Trade in Services in the agreement could also have the potential to undermine public services, which are critical in reducing and redistributing women’s unpaid care, which in turn is essential in enabling women to benefit equitably from trade and investment opportunities.
Providing greater access to private companies to provide these services, combined with protections granted under the agreement to foreign investors, could result in services such as health and education being increasingly deregulated and privatised.

This will not only impact the ability of women living in poverty to access services but could also create challenges if Pacific Island governments attempt to introduce new regulations in these areas.
The current clauses have the potential to increase disparities between privately and publicly provided services, thus deepening inequalities, including gender inequality.

Recommendation 3 Australia should ensure a reformed PACER Plus or alternative agreement includes clear and binding targets for emissions reductions in accordance with the Paris Agreement given the importance of climate change to the security of Pacific nations.
• ActionAid Australia works with women in Vanuatu and with a coalition of women’s organisations across the Pacific region.

It is clear from our work that the most pressing issue threatening gender equality and women’s livelihoods in the Pacific is climate change.
• Currently Australia and the world are failing to reduce carbon emissions in line with the 1.5 degree commitment made in the Paris Agreement, and funding committed to global climate finance falls well short of what is needed to ensure communities in the Pacific have the resources needed for adaptation and loss and damage.
• Pacific Island countries have identified climate change as the greatest security threat to the region and asked Australia for greater support in climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience.

• Australia can strengthen its partnership with Pacific Island countries by listening to this demand and including binding targets for reductions in fossil fuel emissions within the trade agreement in line with Paris commitments.
This is consistent with global best practice established by the European Union.

Binding targets should go beyond the promotion of largely untested, offset technologies to Pacific nations and include direct cuts to emissions.

Recommendation 4 The Australian Government is encouraged to strengthen its formal consultation mechanisms with civil society groups, especially Pacific women’s organisations throughout trade negotiations.
This can be a mechanism for strengthening the role and effectiveness of the sector in capturing trade and investment opportunities as well as identifying barriers and impediments that need to be addressed.

Australia should do this by introducing targeted strategies to ensure Pacific women’s organisations are represented in all regional trade negotiations and decision-making.

• PACER Plus trade negotiations were conducted largely in private between governments and multinational corporations.
ActionAid Australia is concerned that this lack of transparency has effectively excluded Pacific women’s voices from the negotiations given their low rate of representation in formal government structures.

4 Institute for International Trade (2008), Research Study on the Benefits, Challenges and Ways Forward for PACER-Plus.
3 Inquiry into Australia activating greater trade and investment with Pacific island countriesSubmission 24 • The Pacific has the lowest rates of representation of women in parliament and managerial positions of any region in the world.
As of April 2019, there were only three countries in the world with no women in their national legislatures, and all of them are in the Pacific: The Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, and Vanuatu.5 • The systemic exclusion of women from negotiations requires targeted strategies to ensure that any trade agreement is gender inclusive.
• Formal consultation mechanisms are essential to ensure civil society can play a productive role in supporting trade and investment outcomes, as well as mitigating any barriers and impediments.

About ActionAid Australia ActionAid is a global federation that supports women living in poverty and exclusion to understand their rights, reflect on the people and systems that affect them and act with others to change their lives and positions in society.
ActionAid Australia works with local partners in over 45 countries, and this work is supported by the Australian Aid Program and the Australian public in 10 of these countries.

Women’s economic justice is a core priority for ActionAid, and influencing more just and equitable trade policies is seen as an important strategy in this work.
In terms of our engagement in the Pacific, ActionAid Australia works in partnership with Pacific women’s organisations and other regional partners through the Shifting the Power Coalition.

This includes FemLINKPacific and Transcend Oceania in Fiji, Nazareth Centre in Bougainville, Talitha Project in Tonga, Vanuatu Young Women for Change in Vanuatu, Vois Blong Mere in the Solomon Islands, and the YWCAs of PNG and Samoa, along with regional organisations Pacific Disability Forum.
ActionAid also works directly in Vanuatu, supporting a network of over 4800 rural women, through the forum Women I Tok Tok Toketa.

Submitted by: Katherine Tu Head of Campaigns & Policy ActionAid Australia Suite 2 / Level 3, 25 Cooper Street, Surry Hills, NSW T: E: 5 Open Forum, accessed 17 March 2020: https://www.openforum.com.au/the-samoan-model-offers-hope-to- female-politicians-in-the-pacific/ 4 Inquiry into Australia activating greater trade and investment with Pacific island countriesSubmission 24