Melbourne Law School - Research Publications
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ItemTrade law and alcohol regulation: what role for a global Alcohol Marketing Code?(WILEY, 2017-01)BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Following calls for restrictions and bans on alcohol advertising, and in light of the tobacco industry's challenge to Australia's tobacco plain packaging measure, a tobacco control measure finding support in the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, this paper considers what role, if any, an international alcohol marketing code might have in preventing or reducing the risk of challenges to domestic alcohol marketing restrictions under trade rules. METHODS: Narrative review of international trade and health instruments and international trade court judgements regarding alcohol products and marketing restrictions. FINDINGS: The experience of European trade courts in the litigation of similar measures suggests that World Trade Organization rules have sufficient flexibility to support the implementation of alcohol marketing restrictions. However, the experience also highlights the possibility that public health measures have disproportionate and unjustifiable trade effects and that the ability of a public health measure to withstand a challenge under trade rules will turn on its particular design and implementation. CONCLUSION: Measures implemented pursuant to international public health instruments are not immune to trade law challenges. Close collaboration between health policymakers, trade officials and lawyers, from as early as the research stage in the development of a measure to ensure a robust evidence base, will ensure the best chance of regulatory survival for an international marketing code.
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ItemNo Retreat: An Emerging Principle of Non-Regression from Environmental Protections in International Investment Law(Georgetown University Law Center, 2019)A principle that host states not regress from existing environmental protections in their domestic legal systems to promote foreign investment has quietly begun to establish itself in international investment law in the last decade. With origins in the North American Free Trade Agreement, more than 130 countries now subscribe to this idea in at least one of their international investment agreements. The simplicity of the concept of non-regression and the evident legitimacy of environmental objectives mask deep complexities in measuring levels of environmental protection and identifying reductions in those levels. These complexities are exacerbated by the wide variety of drafting of non- regression clauses, with significant implications for their operation and potential enforcement through investment treaty disputes. Despite the increasing popularity of non-regression clauses as evidenced by an extensive survey of existing treaties, states’ current approaches to these clauses leave major questions unresolved, creating the potential for unintentionally increasing host state liability without necessarily enhancing environmental or economic goals.
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ItemOn the Bottle: Health Information, Alcohol Labelling and the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement(Queensland University of Technology, Faculty of Law, 2018)Since 2010, the World Health Organization has advocated the use of health information labelling to inform consumers of the health risks related to alcohol consumption. The alcohol industry oscillates between opposing and supporting alcohol labelling. This article reviews the minutes of the meetings of the World Trade Organization’s (‘WTO’s’) Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade (‘TBT’) (from 2010 to the present day) to garner unique insights into the specific features of alcohol health information labelling that are opposed by the alcohol industry. The article also identifies and analyses the trade law arguments that are made against these contested labelling measures. These arguments primarily come from the WTO’s TBT Agreement. Our view is that the TBT Agreement will provide little comfort to alcohol exporting members who seek to rely on it to challenge alcohol health labelling measures, such as those discussed in the TBT Committee.
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ItemAustralia and International Trade Law(Thomson Lawbook Co, 2017)
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ItemOPEN FOR BUSINESS? CHINA'S TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE MARKET AND THE WTO(OXFORD UNIV PRESS, 2010-06)