Just more insanity resulting from free trade.And now our fearless (as in stupid) leaders want a free trade agreement with China.

Roll on the meltdown when all this lunacy gets consigned to the scrap heap of history with it's perpetrators.

"Why would any Australian government want another trade deal with the US?"

The answer is that if all Australian citizens understood the implications of these BS trade agreements, they wouldn't want them at all, but unfortunately, most Aussies are too complacent to wake up to how our once great country is being sold down the gurgler to overseas interests.

On top of that, past Governments over the last few decades have become increasingly anti-democratic towards Australian citizens. It doesn't matter what we want, they'll just go their own way and sell us out to foreign powers no matter how much we protest because they realise that both major parties are only carbon copies of each other anyway, so no matter who's in power, they'll get what they want eventually and it's not generally in the interests of ordinary Australians.

I'm with Manorina on this one. I'm hoping to live long enough to see the mighty US empire come crashing to the ground.

Surely trade deals with the good old USA, must come second place to US news that has just come in.

The fact is that Silly Hillary as she is known by many social academics, has just lost her love for Netanyahu.

Might say that the over friendliness of both Hillary and Bill for years now has been much of the cause of Israel being the global danger she has become.

The danger still that Israel might drop an atomic rocket on Iran's growing nuclear facilities; when every academic historian is aware of Russian nuclear engineers supervising Iran's growing nuclearisation.

Certainly it is even more scary that just last week China gave warning that she favoured Iran.

Now would please ask our jolly OLO's to forget sniping each other and get onto something that really needs debating.

Australian Liberal Governments seem to have an obsession to cultivate US Governments, more often than not to Australia's disadvantage.
Right or wrong they seem to believe we must cozy up to the Yankees.
The so called free trade agreement negotiated by the Howard Government was a disaster from the Australian viewpoint. Australia gained almost nothing yet gave much away. The commodities we were already selling into the USA: Beef,Lamb,Mutton,Goatmeat,Sugar,other farm produce were all on restrictive trade quotas, yet these commodities were not included in the FTA.
Australia would do well to steer a more independent trade policy with the USA.
These so called free trade agreements with any country should be very publically debated both in and out of Parliament before any decision is reached.

To Bicton Jack.

Yes, it was an arranged US-Aussie Trade Agreement by John Howard around four years ago which allowed a Brazillian beef shipment into NSW suspected to be infected with Foot and Mouth.

George Negus first brought it up, but after our enquiries we were informed that Negus was officially informed to keep quiet about it.

We later found that the shipment had been just buried in a NSW rubbish dump, rather than chemically dissolved as is the law.

Certainly it was a case of a Prime Minister acting like an autocrat, able to steer the media the way he wanted simply to protect his future.

Of course, the real criminal offence was that the shonky Trade arrangements with Australia and the US, had very much lowered a trade reputation which had been the safest in the world.

"Surveys have consistently shown that most Australians consider the Free Trade Agreement the Howard government signed with the US in 2004 (the AUSFTA) was a bad deal. They’re right. In the period 2007-2008 DFAT statistics show imports from the US continued to increase more substantially than our exports. We didn’t get to export our sugar. Export of lamb and beef was delayed.."
It seems to me that US consumers were the ones who didn't receive benefits from AUSFTA because of restrictive actions by their government. The position of Australian exporters of these products was unchanged.
The fact that imports from the USA continued to increase more than Australian exports suggests Australian consumers and American producers gained while American consumers and perhaps Australian producers lost. Relying on aggregate export and import figures doesn't tell you much at all.

There are safeguards that could be put into this kind of international agreement. For example, a provision for the whole agreement to be renegotiated every 5 years, and for any party to withdraw from the agreement at the same time, would probably be enough.

But I think we all know that with the system of government we are now saddled with, no such safeguards will be included. Until we find a way of replacing our present system with one that responds to the wishes of we people of Australia rather than parties, lobbyists, the USA and Israel, we will continue to watch our interests stolen away until there are none left worth having.

A very sensible system you suggest "forkes" Why is it that trade deals such as are negotiated are in perpetuity? Those that later are proved to disadvantage to either party need to be dissolved or be renegotiated.
fluff