The way the wind is blowing in our brave new world is nicely encapsulated in the last paragraph. And especially in the last line which reads. "We should not put the power of corporations and profits ahead of the people."
By signing these free trade agreements, especially the big Trans-Pacific, are we ceding primary power to corporations? Our governments seem to be giving the game away. I suppose we will still have them posing and spruiking and generally big-noting themselves, but in economic matters, that is, in the engine room, national governments will no longer be in control of what remains of sovereignty.
I don't pretend to know if this well be good or bad in the overall picture, only that it is the way things seem to be heading. National flags will continue to fly at the Olympics and on days of remembrance, but perhaps not in the boardrooms.

A “national conversation about trade and free trade agreements.” Not much chance of that. Politicians do not discuss very much at all with the people they are supposed to serve, and they plunged right into free trade agreements without no discussion or “conversation” at all; just as they did with multiculturalism and removal of much of our freedom of speech.

Not that there is anything wrong with free trade. The problem is that our stupid politicians thought that other countries would play by the rules, which they have not done. And anytime this fact is mentioned, politicians go deaf. They are too arrogant on the one hand to admit they are clueless on free trade, and too frightened on the other hand to take other countries to task.

The imbalance we now have is just one more example of Australians being betrayed by their politicians.

To free trade or not to free trade, that is the question. Actually, it ain't. Re automotive - Asian nations can make cars cheaper than we can. Muscle jobs go where muscle labour is cheapest (Primary Colors).

2017 will certainly be a shocker for unemployment. Are we creating enough new jobs? Nope. Do we have any plans in place for the 10-20,000 automotive workers and their supply chain workers when they hit the streets? Nope.

One small but not unimportant aspect of the Federation is how long will the other states have to carry SA and Tasmania? That's a more realistic question.

When ever you see the word "fair" interspersed into a discussion about free trade you know that rent-seekers have entered the conversation.

How anyone can doubt the value of Australia's adoption of free trade principles and economic reform starting with the Hawke Government in 1983 defies belief.

When Rudd/Gillard wound back the industrial relations system 30 years to pre-1983 rules it was easy to see that unions would take their new found power and lift wage costs to unsustainable levels. It is come to pass and it will be even worse until the position is rectified.

It is sites where the unions are in control that will continue to close. It has nothing to do with Free Trade Agreements.

Peter WW is supposedly an economist who should understand the very basics of economics is that free trade always benefits both parties, and that messing with market via protectionism always comes back to bite everyone in the backside.

Protecting the car industry, has for decades provided jobs for thousands of workers, but increased the cost of transport for hundreds of thousand of businesses and many millions of consumers, increasing the cost of living, and of manufacturing pretty much every thing else.

The point of subsidies is to get a new industry with potential off the ground or protect an industry through a temporary glitch. When the industry needs tariffs and subsidies to survive day to day, it has become a parasite, and needs to be cut off.

In the Green Lexicography good old fashioned ‘protectionism’ is renamed as ‘fair trade’. Fair trade is translated as any commercial transaction that meets the current fashionable cause of the Green Party.