Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

You were lucky I was there. This country was fortunate that we did not have the trade minister from the other side there. The trade ministers from the other side, up until the present shadow minister, had always come from the National Party—a declining party, a party that the electorate is turning against, a party whose preoccupation is with agriculture, and broad agriculture at that. We say that the trade interests of this country require a diversified approach to trade policy, one that recognises the importance of agriculture, of resources, of manufactures, of services and of investment flows. That is what we will do; it is what they never did. As I was saying, in nine months we have concluded two free trade agreements. We have unfrozen the stalled talks with China after the previous geniuses went into the negotiations with China and gave them what they wanted without getting anything in return. They gave China market economy status and got nothing in return. They were inept negotiators. We have unfrozen those talks. There still has to be some hard bargaining, but the commitment that we have made to these negotiations with China has produced far more significant results than anything the previous government delivered. Likewise, we have an agreement to bring forward the conclusion of the feasibility study with India.

It is true that theirs was a government that started a lot of things, but it could never successfully complete many of them. Doha is a classic example. This government had carriage of Doha from beginning to end and was never able to get anywhere. Again, in the nine months that we have been in office, we have kick-started those talks and we have got Doha to the position of being 80 per cent agreed on. The problem with Doha is that 80 per cent, not being 100 per cent, will not conclude it at this point, but the fact is that there are significant gains already on the table, including for agriculture. If you do not believe me, speak to the NFF. Talk to them about how we were instrumental in the negotiations in Geneva in the middle of the year. Why? Because we were prepared to put the hard yards in. We were not prepared to just make speeches about these things. We were prepared to roll up our sleeves, to get involved in the negotiations and, most importantly, to understand what negotiation is about.

I have not given up on Doha even though the other side had. I believe that the other side had given up a long time ago. I remember a very senior member of the National Party—I will not name that person in this House—said to me, ‘You will never get Doha up,’ when we were walking through this building on the day we were sworn in. That was the attitude of the previous government, the political party that had carriage of our trade negotiations—they had given up on Doha. This government will not give up on Doha. This government will persist because, by far, the biggest opportunity for this country will come from a successful conclusion to the Doha Round.

It is not only Doha that we are engaged in. Doha is not as ambitious as we would like, even if we succeed. If we do get an outcome, it will provide a very important platform for the regional trade negotiations and for our ongoing bilateral trade negotiations. We never gave up on the importance of regional or bilateral negotiations. We simply said you had to recalibrate the focus—you had to start from the top down with the multilateral approach and keep building the platforms to argue for greater liberalisation and greater implementation, and that is what we have done with AANZFTA.

AANZFTA, the ASEAN free trade agreement, is the most comprehensive free trade agreement that ASEAN has ever entered into and the largest free trade agreement that this country has ever entered into, with $71 billion in two-way trade and a bigger market than China, Japan and the US. We have brought the previous timetable for trade liberalisation forward significantly. We will also do it with PACER, the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations—we are embarking on a strategy to develop that—and the ASEAN+6 set of negotiations, as well as APEC. And those opposite say we have not got a trade strategy. I will tell you what we got—we got left with a terrible mess. We have set about, in a short space of time, putting this in the right direction. In my view, if we persist with this approach, we will make significant gains.

As for the question of the Mortimer report, we will release it—of course we will release it. I always intended to release it. But I will tell you what we commissioned Mortimer for. It was to ask this fundamental question: why was it that Labor was able to get the trade performance right in this country during its term of office and the coalition were not, and what do we need to do in terms of the detail and the changing nature of trade to get it right? One of the things I already know the previous government failed to do was to understand the single most important development in terms of services as a basis for growing our export base. Services in this economy are 80 per cent of our economic base and yet they are only 23 per cent of our exports. When I talk services I also mean services that relate to our traditional industries, like agriculture and resources. I am not arguing that we move away from them; I am arguing that we do more with them, that we do not just value-add them but understand the intrinsic opportunity there is, with the strength we have in those sectors, to sell the services and the value-added products—not just the bulk commodities. I argued that and implemented it when I was previously primary industries minister. I believe in it and I want to do it again. But that is something the previous government never did.

The other thing that it failed to do was understand the difference of approach now in terms of the significance of capital flows and the importance of investment and ensuring that our trade policy picks up the very significant realisation that a lot of our exports are based on investment in other countries. We need the coordination of that mechanism. That is why Invest Australia’s global opportunities programs have been properly coordinated for the first time and put into the one portfolio.

As for the opposition’s argument about the EMDGS, we have put $50 million extra into it. This is something that they were never prepared to do. They changed the guidelines by saying that they recognised that they needed to support exporters more, but they did not put one red cent into it. They were the ones that deceived the exporters of this country and now they want us to pay for their mess. Well I tell you what, Mr Deputy Speaker: we will ensure that the EMDG Scheme is properly funded into the future. What we will not do is pay for their ineptitude and their sclerotic performance. We are about correcting it but we should not have to pay for their past sins. (Time expired)

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