Good on our guys for doing some tough negotiating. Why sign up...

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    Good on our guys for doing some tough negotiating. Why sign up to anything that will disadvantage us, especially into the future.

    Re protection periods for patents, it's no wonder the US is resisting. If anything they would prefer to lengthen them. One trick the drug companies use is to make a small chemical change which has little or no effect on a drug's properties but it allows them to take out another patent on it. Then they stop producing the "old" drug so they have another 20 years or so on sky high prices. There is a word for it but it escapes me.

    The other thing is an overseas corporation being able to sue the Australian government for enacting laws which might affect their profits. An example is a tobacco company suing over plain packaging laws. We shouldn't sign anything that allows this except in the most extreme cases. We should preserve our right to enact our own laws.
 
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