Tobacco, Health and Investor-State Dispute Settlement: Australia's Recent Treaty Practice

Abstract

The claim brought by Philip Morris Asia Ltd against Australia’s tobacco plain packaging scheme under Australia’s bilateral investment treaty (‘bit’) with Hong Kong was this country’s first experience as respondent in an investment treaty arbitration. Since then, Australia has faced two more claims, although they do not appear to be proceeding very far or very quickly (unsurprisingly, since they are brought pursuant to an international investment agreement (‘iia’) that contains no mechanism for investor–state dispute settlement (‘isds’)).