John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I know a lot about pillars, I am a civil engineer. Pillars are very important pieces of structural integrity and you can adorn them with esoteric decorations. You can have the Doric or the Corinthian at the base and at the apex. But pillars are absolutely useless without good, solid foundations; they would simply collapse. I want to see foundation. I use this opportunity to persuade the trade minister not to abandon the bilaterals. He can energise the multilateral and pull off Doha if he can, but do not abandon those bilateral arrangements. They are extremely important, given the progress the former government made, particularly in China, Japan and even Korea. We now have citrus fruits going into China—a challenge the people said would never happen—and it has now revitalised the citrus industry.

We all know that this government does not care about seniors and carers—we saw that in response to the previous ministerial statement—but I confirm tonight that exporters have been disregarded as well in this budget. I would go so far as to say that they have been betrayed by a bandaid budget that has not looked at the bigger picture and the significance of trade to this nation. We are going to be subjected to a lengthy review process. The government has not been prepared in this budget to provide at least a temporary footing for Australian exporting businesses to operate, and we have to wait and wait—and we continue to wait. Australia has punched above its weight. For the trade minister to come in here and allege and attempt to rewrite history about the record of the former government’s activity reflects poorly on him.

I will give a few examples of the inconsistency of the new government on this subject. On free trade agreements in February, the trade minister announced that bilateral agreements were a low priority. More recently, in March, in this chamber he said they were back in the mix. I issued a public statement that said I was pleased to see that. In 2006 the now Prime Minister described the Doha Round of world trade talks as ‘dead as a dodo’. Earlier this year in Europe, as the Prime Minister, he then told the world he had changed his mind and Doha was now doable and the way forward. Of course, the message lasted only as long as the media conference and the flight to the next destination and then the focus was back on free trade agreements with China and India. By slashing staff numbers within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, confirmed in the budget papers, this game of musical chairs continues. The Prime Minister has looked the leaders of the USA and Europe in the eye and told them he wants to engage with them, but he has proved just how shallow his words are by taking the axe to staff numbers in our international offices. To make things even worse is the fact that the government has been gunning to slash job numbers for ages.

Labor has been trumpeting its plan to fold Invest Australia into Austrade. Indeed, the minister’s statement here tonight confirms that and shows a complete lack of understanding about Invest Australia’s role in generating increased investment and therefore jobs here in Australia. Over the five years to June 2007, Invest Australia played a very important and significant role in attracting and facilitating 387 projects to Australia. These projects were valued at $56 billion with the potential to generate $12.6 billion in export earnings and the potential to create an additional 28,000 jobs. The value of this budget shows how committed this government is to employment when it acknowledges the slashing of 134,000 jobs! It beggars belief. Nonetheless, for the Australian export businesses and investors that the trade minister is supposed to be representing, he has repeated tonight that these numbers count. We will be holding him to the statement he has made here tonight about re-energising Australia’s role in the Doha Round. We just hope that he will put insurance in place and make sure that we do not lose the opportunity to continue to progress those bilaterals.

On behalf of the opposition, I wish Dr Gurry all the best in his new role and I am certain he will continue Australia’s strong tradition as an active participant in the international arena.

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