Permanent Representative of Australia to the World Trade Organization Permanent Representative of Australia to the World Trade Organization The Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Australia to the World Trade Organization is an officer of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the head of the Permanent Mission of the Commonwealth of Australia to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland. The position has the rank and status of an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and continues Australia's representation to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT; 1948–1995), as a charter member joining the WTO to replace the GATT on 1 January 1995. The Permanent Mission to
World Trade Organization Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement marks the first time since the organization opened in 1995 that WTO accords have been amended, and this change should secure for developing countries a legal pathway to access affordable remedies under WTO rules. Studies show that the WTO boosted trade, and that barriers to trade would be higher in the absence of the WTO. The WTO has highly influenced the text of trade agreements, as "nearly all recent [preferential trade agreements (PTAs)] reference the WTO explicitly, often dozens of times across multiple chapters... in many of these same PTAs we find that