Along with many other countries, Australia is considering implementing a tax on digital services to try to capture more of the revenues of digital businesses, which may operate without a substantial physical presence in the country. Although traditional approaches to tax may need wholesale...

China joined the World Trade Organization (‘WTO’) in 2001 after almost 15 years of negotiations, making extensive commitments to open its markets to foreign investment and liberalise trade in goods and services. China represents a huge potential market for foreign telecommunications service...

In this paper, we first identify in Part II the benefits of a common telecommunications market in Australia and New Zealand, before explaining in Part III the extent to which these two countries are already subject to obligations to liberalise telecommunications and harmonise associated...

This chapter examines the so-called 'rule of necessary implication' in treaty interpretation by considering international judicial decisions in three different contexts: implied powers as reflected in decisions of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court; implied...

This short article addresses the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in the context of the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO), taking account of interactions between the two organisations and potential disputes between WTO members in...

This article provides an overview of the recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), a treaty the parties have described as comprehensive and ambitious, yet also representing a balance of competing interests. The article focuses on the TPP's chapters relating to investment,...

Several States have terminated international investment agreements ('IIAs') in recent years — some alarmed at unexpected outcomes in certain investor — State cases, and others simply updating their IIAs as they conclude wider economic partnership agreements. States' attempts to extinguish...

This chapter examines the prominent role that Australia has played in the multilateral trading system, with a specific focus on the WTO and Australia's preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Australia has been actively involved in the WTO, through GATT and WTO negotiations, WTO committee work,...

The relationship between the bilateral investment treaty (‘BIT') between Australia and China (1988) and the preferential trade agreement between those countries (‘ChAFTA') (2015) provides an interesting case study of the co-existence of successive treaties under public international law....