In 2011 the Australia/U.S.A Free Trade agreement comes up for negotiation once again. Australian Foreign Minister Simon Crean is on record as saying in relation to the negotiation process that 'everything is on the table'. Two things in particular that I'd like to draw attention to are being eyed off in particular by the Yanks. The first one is the quotas that we have in place that our television stations are required to comply with. Without these quotas, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say there would be no Australian produced shows on the commercial networks due to the fact that buying a the rights to a show from the U.S is so much cheaper than producing local content. If these quotas were to go it would be yet another blow to the already eroding Australian culture and another boon for the cheap and nasty Yankee 'coca cola' culture pervading society. But more importantly, this means that the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) is up for negotiation. The multinational Yankee drug companies (Pfizer, Proctor and Gamble etc.) have long seen the PBS as a barrier to their full exploitation of a 'captive market', the subsidising of these essential drugs has been cutting into their profits for years and without doubt, the US government will be pushing hard in negotiations to have the PBS scrapped. We cannot allow this to happen.
I implore all progressive forces in Australia to mobilize on the streets next year to send the message out to Crean and the others in the rag-tag bunch of lackeys that calls itself the 'Labor' Party that under no circumstances are we willing to let them cede our Culture to the U.S, and that we especially will not let them take our PBS for the sake of their profit margin!
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