World trade has never been free of regulation. Australia has limitations and restrictions on the importation of goods ranging from illicit drugs and firearms to endangered species and goods produced by slave labour.
The question is en ethical one...not an economic one... The real issue is not whether we should support "free trade" or "fair trade"...Trade can lead to a race to the bottom, or a ratcheting up of labour and environmental standards in poor countries.
Which path we choose is up to all of us, not just the delegates to the World Economic Forum. [Richard Denniss, SMH, 11.9.00]

What is striking about the anti-global free-trade movement is its mood of moral seriousness, empowering and animating people to fight injustices that are to their economic advantage. The current movement... is not primarily about sixties-style self liberation. It is more akin to the Reformation, or the anti-slavery campaign of the early 1800s...Wired and branded by globalisation, the movement is, in the first instance, a giant "No" to being co-opted into the business plans of the major corporations that make up the Davos forum.

Its strategies and tactics adapted to the new world, whilst dinosaurs such as the IMF and the World Bank lumber along in old modes of corporate thinking... Whether the movement can move on from here remains to be seen. It will have to develop and circulate more comprehensive models of an alternative way of managing an international economy... [Guy Rundle, SMH 2.9.00]

The motley protestors...are not right in all their certainties. But they are right to draw attention to some of the deficiencies of an economic system that has widened global inequalities. They are right that multinational corporations have acted as vandals in some third world countries. BHP at its OK Tedi mine is a case in point. And venerable companies like Nike have exploited child labour. The IMF's wrong-headed policies have exacerbated hardship in the third world, and debt relief for poor countries is more urgent than ever.

Amazingly, MNCs almost succeeded in their efforts to put themselves above government regulation, national sovereignty and environmental laws through the implementation of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). It is the young generation which routed the MAI through an Internet campaign. They pressured Nike to reform and helped fuel corporate interest in being "socially responsible". [Adele Horin, SMH 2.9.00]

Professor Waldo Bello of Bangkok, who leads the Global South lobby group there, said the time was ripe to influence policy makers at the World Economic Forum in Melbourne. The three main institututions driving economic policies - the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation - were facing a crisis of legitimacy. He urged police to show restraint in Melbourne, saying that the riots had started at the WTO meeting in Seattle last year. [Mark Skulley and Nicole Lindsay, AFR 8.9.00]

Brian Tamberlin, a judge of the Federal Court of Australia, with a long standing interest in world trade issues, who has recently visited the W.T.O., said that there is often a clash between free trade, and environment and national interests when it enforces free trade commitments. It highlights questions as to how economic factors are reconciled when deciding whether trade obligations have been breached. The W.T.O. will increasingly have to directly confront the non-economic environmental consequences of its decisions. (AFR 8.9.00]

This was the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald (12.9.00). The article went on to note that although the protestors failed to shut down the meeting, many delegates and media representatives were prevented from entering, and proceedings were delayed. The Treasurer, Mr. Costello, arrived by helicopter, and opened his address by saying that policy makers should reach out to explain the benefits of globalisation and free trade. The Prime Minister arrived by boat to address the conference, and condemned the violence in the streets. He said the future of globalisation could be in doubt, unless benefits were sold properly, and its losers were helped.

Indian academic Dr. Vandana Shiva voiced the concern of developing nations about globalisation at the Forum. She said the location of the forum at the Crown Casino was fitting, because it symbolised "a casino economy with electronic money rather than real wealth". Mr. Bill Gates, chief of Microsoft, acknowledged that the anti-globalisation back-lash was a real threat, and reminded everyone that people outside the Casino were voters as well as protestors. [Paul Cleary, AFR 13.9.00]

There is little doubt that globalisation has increased wealth in developed and underdeveloped economies. However, the growing disparity of wealth within the OECD nations is increasingly becoming a political issue... the rich are getting hugely rich while middle income groups are just hanging on to their position on the economic ladder. Maybe democratic societies will tolerate this. If they don't, the economic arm of globalisation may be halted - just like a century ago - and without any causal connection to symbolic protests in London, Washington or Melbourne. [Gerard Henderson, SMH 5.9.00]

Much of what is presented to us as inevitable globalisation is really about enshrining pro-capitalist, neo-liberal policies on a world scale; it is about globalising corporate power. [ Andrew Scott, SMH 8.9.00]

Ross Gittins wrote: Whilst I believe that most of the world's poor have benefited from globalisation...it is also true that globalisation has progressed in ways that suit the vested interests of the US, Europe, and Japan. It has suited these countries to reduce the protection of their manufacturing industries, while continuing to protect their rural industries. This has robbed many of the poorest countries of the benefits of increased world trade...
The deregulation of financial markets...has produced a highly unstable global system that is prone to crisis... It is the losers... in the rich countries whose growing opposition is worrying the politicians. Government and others must do more to require the winners to compensate the losers... The irony of globalisation is that its survival calls for national governments to be bigger and more active than ever. [SMH 13.9.00]

The NSW Premier's labelling of obstructive World Economic Forum protestors as "bully boy fascists" provoked outrage from within the ALP. These remarks, said Damien O'Connor, assistant state secretary in NSW, had raised the hackles of a large section of the ALP. He asked whether globalisation was solely about freeing capital so that profits are maximised and the rich get richer. It should, he said, be about the redistribution of power and wealth to those who don't have it. That is people's globalisation, he thought, and political leaders ignore it at their peril.

"Carr's message could not be clearer", said Tom McLoughlin, from Friends of the Earth. "Under his administration, any person or group that dares to peacefully obstruct, Ghandi-style, unfettered corporate greed, will be punished with brutal, unlawful, unprovoked baton charges, and State-sanctioned cruelty and injury. [David Humphries, SMH 15.9.00]

As a serving member of the Queensland Police, and a former membetr of the Metropolitan Police in London, I consider the level of force used by police in Melbourne was an unacceptable and unprofessional display of orchestrated thuggery. While in London I was at the sharp end of several incidents... Never once did I witness police resort to the same level of sheer aggression as displayed at the Crown Casino... [Roger O'Malla, letter to the Editor, SMH, 16.9.00

Paul Kelly thinks that the captains of capital and the new Left will have to start talking to each other, because "we are all globalists now". He considers that the Melbourne protests were an effort by Australia's political left to find a new ideological position. The political movement is, he says, a broad coalition of the old and new Left, workers, greenies, students, Trotskyites, aid groups, students, feminists, anarchists, socialists and - significantly, the trade union movement. This is a highly organised grassroots movement that uses the internet as a tactical and polemical tool for collective action.

Anti-globalisation poses as a new civic religion. It appeals to adherents on the basis of idealism and morality... Its analysis is Marxist and it seeks to delegitimise the organs of authority - the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum. Its most effective spokespeople are strong emotional women, and two of them addressed the W.E.F. recently, Vandana Shiva, Indian activist, and A.C.T.U. president, Sharan Burrow.

The demonstrators want better labour and environmental standards, more global regulation, taxation of capital flows, UN action over Aboriginal rights, upholding of the deal on greenhouse gas emissions, and more pressure on Australia over mandatory sentencing and women's rights. The fight is over the sort of globalisation Australia chooses. John Howard, unlike the protestors is a globalist on economics, and a nationalist on social issues. [Paul Kelly, The Australian 16.9.00]

John Pym, president of Ausbuy, said that 85% of the goods in our shopping trolleys are from foreign-owned companies... 80% of foreign investment is to buy existing Australian owned business... The level of foreign ownership has doubled in the last decade to 21% of gross domestic product, and the money leaving Australia for foreign owners also doubled, reaching $12 billion. [Frank Walker, The Sun-Herald 17.9.00]

The protest attracted much attention. Dick Smith, the Australian entrepreneur, said that he disapproved of the violence, but sympathised with the protestors. "Globalisation has gone wrong", he said, "as it has no rules. Multinationals are almost above the law. They are so huge they are bigger than governments. Marx was right when he said capitalism would destroy itself... companies have no conscience - they are so big they can't go broke... they simply acquire everything... We will have to get world laws to break them up. People fear we have lost control of our destiny as foreign firms buy up Australian companies. People are very concerned and politicians had better start listening." [The Sun Herald 17.9.00]