Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Barker for his question. Obviously wine export is very important to his electorate as a major contributor to the export effort of Australian agricultural industries. For the information of members, particularly the member for Barker, there has been strong growth in the last 12 months. In the 12 months to July, we exported a record 743 million litres of wine from Australia. If you hark back about a decade, nowhere near that amount of export was going out of Australia. It is a great tribute to the great Australian wine industry that this has been achieved. Australia now exports $2.8 billion worth of wine each year. There has been an increase in value as well as volume, as far as wine exports are concerned, going out of the electorates of the member for Barker, the member for Riverina, the member for Mallee and the member for Forrest in Western Australia. Exports continue to grow.

We understand that, in the agricultural industry, there is pressure on some of the wine grape growers across Australia. I am aware that the member for Barker and the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry visited some of the growers in the member for Barker’s electorate recently to talk about this issue. One of the things that we can do to relieve the pressure on wine grape growers is to increase our exports, to increase the pull-through of the product internationally to markets across the world. We are doing that in multilateral and bilateral negotiations. Wine tariff reductions across the world have been a very important target in our government’s negotiations.

Of course, in the current WTO round there is the opportunity to eliminate all export subsidies in our competition in the international marketplace. That will make Australian wine more competitive in the international marketplace. We are also arguing to cut tariffs, on a multilateral basis, on our wine going into many markets across the world. We have already achieved that in a number of our free trade agreements that have concluded; for example, under the Australia-Thailand free trade agreement, we have seen significant and ongoing reductions in the tariffs on Australian wine going into that market. All importantly, one of the great supporters of the Australia-United States free trade agreement is the great Australian wine industry, because it has seen significant improvements in market access to that growing market in the United States. Australia almost dominates as an exporter into that US market.

One of our objectives in negotiations with China in the Australia-China free trade agreement is to further reduce tariffs on imported wine into China. We achieved a certain amount there. After China’s accession to the WTO, it came right down to about 16 per cent. Our target is to get that down even lower bilaterally in the interests of the great Australian wine industry. All those efforts—as well as the broader suite of reforms that the government is introducing, particularly workplace relations reforms—are helping to strengthen the ability of the Australian wine industry not only to grow at home but also to compete better in the international marketplace.

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