There's no way that parliament would care about Australia's trade problems or jobs. We know the fight is really about big world business, judged to be ripping off the poor. That's the basis of their 'righteous' anger. Let's face it we have come nowhere near establishing a real democracy in the first world. Party and faction politics dominate all, and money power breeds in the cracks.
Democracy means the denial of self interest as much as the trenches did.
Now, as David Kinley 1 points out, globalisation is invading more and more aspects of life and government. So, while economic imperatives urge 'the dark suits' of business to a world view, human rights activists are looking to world resources to achieve local outcomes. The fracas in Seattle USA at the new round of world trade talks to increase free trade is the shape of things to come. The pressure for freer trade comes from big business and finance, together with the need for developing nations to gain access to first world markets. Economic rationalisation is the cry of big business which is seeking to cope with the fierce competition from the third world, in primary products and cheap-labour manufactured products.