Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia’s trade performance has taken a battering, particularly over the last six years—it was the last six years of the coalition government. The Minister for Trade has said that the coalition government dropped the ball on trade, and they clearly did. They dropped the ball on a few other things too, not just trade, but all go to the heart of our economic policy in trade. They ignored the 20 warnings from the Reserve Bank on inflation. They seemed to ignore the 12 consecutive interest rate rises, and they ignored the fact that we needed an integrated trade policy with our economic policy. The impact of this lack of attention to fundamental trade and economic questions in a time of a prolific resources boom—a boom that made the coalition government fiscally lazy—has left Australia with an economic trade deficit and a deficit in trade policy.

I turn to the economic deficit first. The coalition government left us with a trade deficit for five consecutive years—nearly six years. The December 2007 trade deficit figure of $6.9 billion was the worst quarterly trade deficit on record. There were 69 consecutive months of goods and services trade deficit, there is a current account deficit at record levels of around six per cent GDP, there was soaring foreign debt in 2006-07 and net exports have made a contribution to Australia’s economic growth in only two of the past 11 years. When Labor were previously in government we made a positive contribution in exports, with growth in 10 of 13 years. The comparison is: coalition government, two out of 11; previous Labor government, 10 out of 13. They certainly did drop the ball. I think the figures speak for themselves.

But there is more. Manufacturing export growth collapsed, growing at three per cent in 2007 compared to 13 per cent since 1983. That is 13 per cent growth in 1983 and three per cent in 2007. Total export revenues grew at an annual average rate of only 5.8 per cent compared with 10.7 per cent in the 18 years following the float of the dollar in 1983, another Labor initiative. Goods exports grew at an average annual rate of 6.4 per cent compared with an average growth of 10.3 per cent since 1983. Services exports grew at about a third of their long-term average. I am surprised that no-one from the opposite side, particularly the National Party, raised these appalling and concerning trade performance figures either publicly or within their cabinet or caucus.

It is only now that they are in opposition that they have started to bleat about trade. I have listened with interest to the Leader of the National Party talking on the radio about trade. He said it was time the government—we have been in government for six months—put more resources into the Export Market Development Grants Scheme. They actually starved that scheme. When they were in government they changed the criteria yet they did not provide funds for the criteria to be fulfilled, so a lot of exporters were found wanting. It is a bit rich that they did it.

Minister Crean, the Minister for Trade, has said that they dudded us, and they did. It shows that the National Party are unable to have an impact either in government or out of government. Even the previous Leader of the Nationals, John Anderson, has publicly said that they were never listened to in Canberra. That is clearly the situation.

I will turn now to the approach that Labor is taking to trade. Labor has taken a fresh approach that is premised on the following: making Doha a key plank of advancing the trade agenda. Advancing the agenda and getting the outcomes is not easy. It is a difficult process, but it has to be at the heart of any trade initiative and any trade policy—along with the integration of the economic policy—to make sure that we get somewhere. The Rudd Labor approach is based on the twin pillars framework. The twin pillars framework approach is trade liberalisation at the border complemented by economic and trade reform behind the border. This is to advance sustainable economic growth, the driving force of trade policy.

On bilateral and regional agreements, we will continue to work to improve and enhance those that are consistent with our multinational and multilateral objectives. Whilst bilateral and regional agreements are important—and they are very important; I cannot but underscore that—they must be pursued consistent with multilateral or multinational outcomes. The ball was dropped in this area as well under the previous government. I pause here to say that trade policy has always been under the auspices, within the bailiwick, of the National Party. It is one area where they have been found very wanting.

Our major initiative in trade is a comprehensive review of trade policies and programs, called the Mortimer review, which will assess how we can improve our productivity and competitiveness to ensure we are ready—and, indeed, ahead of the game—to take up emerging trade opportunities. I recently had the opportunity, along with the parliamentary trade subcommittee, to meet with John Edwards and David Mortimer, who are heading up that review. I and everybody else felt quite confident about having them at the helm of that review and helping us with it.

I now want to turn to Page, the seat that I represent, where trade is clearly an important issue. Often we do not think about the Export Market Development Grants Scheme in regional and rural seats, but it is immensely important. I will give you some indicative figures that show why it is important and why this scheme will help in Page. There are caveats on these figures. I got some of these figures through research and through the Parliamentary Library, but they have the usual caveats on them. The main exporting industries—manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, wholesale trade and mining—account for 19.7 per cent of employment in Page. That is nearly 20 per cent, which is significant for employment in the area. Other industries export—and, of these dominant export industries, not all employees would work on exports—but this gives you the order of magnitude. In terms of the total employment, two of the main exporting categories are in the top 10 employing industries in Page.

The research states that an extrapolation would be that the total employment in Page in 2006 was around 50,279. With total employment in Australia at 10.2 million, that is about 0.5 per cent of the total. Looking at exports from Australia over the last 12 months, that amounts to about $1.09 billion in the Page electorate, which is significant. The Export Market Development Grants Scheme allows a lot more small- to medium-enterprise businesses, which are the backbone across Page, to take advantage of it. There are many businesses I know that want to get into the export market. In fact, quite a few are already in the export market, as those figures indicate.

A couple of weeks ago I opened an innovation conference in Ballina, in the electorate of Page, and three of the speakers were local businesspeople who were all exporting. Members may have heard of Byron Bay Cookie Company and Byron Bay muesli. The company is run by a local woman who is based in the Richmond electorate, which is close to my electorate. She was at the conference in Ballina and she exports to the United States. It took them a while to get used to the macadamias. They had to do some work to get people used to the macadamias in the muesli and the cookies and things like that, but that is a really big exporter in our region—a success story. There are many more like that.

The Export Market Development Grants Amendment Bill 2008 has about eight key purposes. I will recap them here. They are to increase the maximum grant by $50,000, up from $150,000 to $200,000—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

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