Talk:Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Portal	Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement is within the scope of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.
B	This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.
Assessment comments This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

Can we remove the dots from 'U.S.' and replace the hyphen with an n dash, please? Tony 06:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Vide Manual of Style, especially National varieties of English and Dashes. It is generally frowned upon to change an article's existing style. Although abreviations are rarely punctuated in Australian English, Wikipedia goes by the convention that United States be abbreviated with dots, that is, U.S. It's up to you to choose whether you follow this convention, though I'd advise you to do so, lest you incur to wrath of touchy editors (this issue is pet peeve of many, particularly Americans).--Cyberjunkie | Talk 08:50, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

The dots should stay, but it should be moved to Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Heck, even the abbreviation is "AUSFTA", not "USAFTA"! Lupo 09:30, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree, although I think U.S. should be spelled out. I've never encountered "USAFTA". I meant to do this a while ago, but couldn't be bothered fixing all the redirects.--cj | talk 12:03, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 curious 2 Excessive focus on detail 3 Opposition 4 Iraq participation 5 American Perspective

[edit] curious

"The agreement requires legal enforcement of digital rights management systems, however an Australian legislative committee has issued a report[4] stating that this portion of the treaty has a "significant flaw". The report goes on to term it a "lamentable and inexcusable flaw", an "egregious flaw", and even a "flaw that verges on absurdity". The committee expressed the strong view that the Government must find a solution to the flaw before implementing this portion of the treaty."

now all i need to know is what the hell that flaw is :)

[edit] Excessive focus on detail

i think the provision by provision analysis is too much detail. we can just link to the fta text and be done with it. anyone care to take a crack at paring it down? todddc

No. We're trying to make an encyclopedia article here, not a blurb. DarkSideOfTheSpoon 02:57, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opposition

I feel the opposition section is somewhat lacking in the way it is written. By concentrating only on opposition based on certain sections, it doesn't really mention/consider operation to the agreement as a whole. While I'm a Kiwi not an Australian, the agreement was of interest to me because it was highlighted as a success of the Australian government but personally I don't consider it a success nor do quite a number of Australians from what I've read. While the agreement may be a net positive to Australian agriculture, in the eyes of many including many, it was only minimally a net positive, providing only very little to the Australian agriculture sector. Given that this was clearly the most important area for Australia by far, this is a key factor. Combined with what Australia has been forced to give up in the pharmeceutical area, IP, government ownership and several other areas, many people including me see the agreement as negative for Australia since it gives a lot to the US but gives little back to Australia. This idea, that the agreement as a whole is unfair to Australia or biased in favour of the US however isn't really discussed because we only concentrate on the issues Nil Einne 04:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Iraq participation

I think the article also needs to mention the perception by some parties that the FTA was a reward for Australia's participation in the Iraq war... Nil Einne 05:53, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

A pretty lousy reward.

Zing... Of course you're right, though. DarkSideOfTheSpoon 02:59, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American Perspective

This article seems to me to be written from an American perspective, particularly in the 'Background' section. Though I am no expert on the subject, is it possible to expand this section to incorporate an account of Australian attempts to orhcestrate an agreement rather than portraying the Australian government mainly as a responder to American bids?