My submission made five recommendations. Firstly, that the Productivity Commission should examine the potential impact of the provisions of the proposed TPP on Australia’s intellectual property arrangements and also on developing countries, because it’s also an issue that we should be concerned about here in Australia, what effect these provisions are going to have on developing countries in our region. I also recommended that an independent impact assessment of the final TPP should be done. I’m certainly not the first person to make that recommendation, there have been a number of bodies that have recommended that. I think quite a big consensus that there’s definitely a need for independent scrutiny of these types of agreements and provisions. I also think there need to be changes to the treaty making process, to make the negotiation of bilateral and regional trade and investment agreements more transparent and accountable and to improve opportunities for scrutiny of proposed provisions by experts and the public. People like me were very reliant on leaked drafts of the TPP intellectual property chapter to see what the United States and other countries were proposing for the contents of that chapter and if we hadn’t had access to those leaked drafts we wouldn’t have even known what questions to ask of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Other chapters where we didn’t have leaked drafts we had a great deal of trouble even knowing what issues were under discussion and what we needed to be asking about. I also recommended that the Productivity Commission should consider the scope for implementing the recommendations of the Pharmaceutical Patents Review and I’m very happy to see that the Productivity Commission has really scrutinised those findings and recommendations and has picked up many of those in the draft report. I think the Pharmaceutical Patents Review made some very sound recommendations so it’s good to see those having a further life. I think the pharmaceutical industry is attempting, through a number of different means, to lengthen monopolies on pharmaceuticals and particularly to lengthen monopolies on biologic products. Longer monopolies on these products are definitely not in the public interest and efforts to do that should be resisted. So it’s good to see the direction of the Productivity Commission’s recommendations looking at winding back monopolies in some areas and not extending them any further. I also recommended that the Productivity Commission examine international initiatives to look at different ways of funding pharmaceutical research and development. There’s a widespread acknowledgement that intellectual property an patents don’t stimulate the
My submission made five recommendations. Firstly, that the Productivity Commission should examine the potential impact of the provisions of the proposed TPP on Australia’s intellectual property arrangements and also on developing countries, because it’s also an issue that we should be concerned about here in Australia, what effect these provisions are going to have on developing countries in our region. I also recommended that an independent impact assessment of the final TPP should be done. I’m certainly not the first person to make that recommendation, there have been a number of bodies that have recommended that. I think quite a big consensus that there’s definitely a need for independent scrutiny of these types of agreements and provisions. I also think there need to be changes to the treaty making process, to make the negotiation of bilateral and regional trade and investment agreements more transparent and accountable and to improve opportunities for scrutiny of proposed provisions by experts and the public. People like me were very reliant on leaked drafts of the TPP intellectual property chapter to see what the United States and other countries were proposing for the contents of that chapter and if we hadn’t had access to those leaked drafts we wouldn’t have even known what questions to ask of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Other chapters where we didn’t have leaked drafts we had a great deal of trouble even knowing what issues were under discussion and what we needed to be asking about. I also recommended that the Productivity Commission should consider the scope for implementing the recommendations of the Pharmaceutical Patents Review and I’m very happy to see that the Productivity Commission has really scrutinised those findings and recommendations and has picked up many of those in the draft report. I think the Pharmaceutical Patents Review made some very sound recommendations so it’s good to see those having a further life. I think the pharmaceutical industry is attempting, through a number of different means, to lengthen monopolies on pharmaceuticals and particularly to lengthen monopolies on biologic products. Longer monopolies on these products are definitely not in the public interest and efforts to do that should be resisted. So it’s good to see the direction of the Productivity Commission’s recommendations looking at winding back monopolies in some areas and not extending them any further. I also recommended that the Productivity Commission examine international initiatives to look at different ways of funding pharmaceutical research and development. There’s a widespread acknowledgement that intellectual property an patents don’t stimulate the