How to kill a country? The US-Australia Free Trade Agreement, pharmaceuticals and intellectual property

The debate over the Free Trade Agreement with the United States has produced a book, How to Kill a Country, primarily concerned with intellectual property and related issues (Weiss, Thurbon and Matthews 2004). In arguing that Australia will be worse off, Weiss, Thurbon and Matthews examine four areas of policy: pharmaceuticals, quarantine, copyright and government procurement. The implications of the Agreement in these policy areas forms the remainder of this paper. Of the four issues, pharmaceuticals were the most controversial in the debate over the Agreement and raised the most difficult economic issues, and will therefore be the primary focus of attention