Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas. Before I start my discussion of the Customs Amendment (Anti-dumping Measures) Bill 2011 I will just inform you that we had the Paniyiri Festival in Brisbane on the weekend and your name was mentioned, and I did mention you in my speech to the crowd—you and Maria Vamvakinou rated a mention.

I rise to speak in support of the Customs Amendment (Anti-dumping Measures) Bill 2011. As we have heard from other speakers, Australian manufacturers have been doing it tough lately. They have been copping it from all sides. We see the drop in demand for manufacturing exports as a result of the global financial crisis and flowing on from that the rising dollar making it harder for our manufacturers to compete because our wages and costs are that little bit higher. In my electorate of Moreton, manufacturers are just starting to get back on their feet after the January floods wiped out much of our industrial zones in Rocklea, Archerfield and Acacia Ridge and even in patches of my home suburb of Moorooka. Over 1,000 businesses had water over the floorboards and many of those were manufacturing businesses. Obviously it is relatively easy to move transport or even to move stock to higher parts with forklifts and the like but with some of the heavy engineering equipment it is different. There was a sad story of the business I visited with the Prime Minister and they had a $2 million piece of engineering equipment that they just could not physically move, even though they knew the waters were coming. Even with insurance paying, it takes six months or a year to bring out something like that from Germany as a replacement piece of equipment. So manufacturers in my patch and around Australia are doing it tough.

As this legislation has indicated, they are also particularly under threat from overseas firms who dump their products in the Australian market at short-term lower prices that undercut and damage Australian manufacturers. Previous speakers mentioned lots of examples but the most appropriate one when we are talking about dumping was the toilet paper that had been on the market at 40 per cent below the cost. I have spoken to unions about this, and particularly unions such as the AMWU, who say this has impacted particularly on the steel, aluminium, paper and paper products industries, and some of those are in my electorate.

By dumping products on the Australian market, overseas manufacturers are trying to gain market share and put Australian manufacturers out of business. Once they achieve this and claim the market share, they then bump the prices back up, and obviously in the long run Australian consumers lose out. Dumping presents a clear and present danger to Australian firms and Australian manufacturing employees. I would stack our Australian companies up against any manufacturer in the world. We can match them in terms of innovation and in terms of the sweat of employees. However, the reality is that dumping is an extra danger for them. The last thing our manufacturers need is to be undercut by overseas firms, especially those that have been propped up artificially by foreign government money. What we obviously need is a level playing field and that Australian can-do attitude and Australian initiative can come to the fore. It does Australia no good in the long run if our manufacturers are forced to shut down, to put their employees out of work merely to make way for cheaper overseas products in the short term, especially, as I said, if the prices go up once the Australian company is out of business. It is quite simple, really: we make it here or jobs disappear. That is why we need strong and effective antidumping measures in place. Obviously some people rather simplistically say that we can just impose duties on imports to get them back to a fair value with local products. But the Australian Labor Party see Australia as fundamentally a nation that believes in free trade, and that the tit-for-tat duties and levies help nobody in the long run. That way trading madness lies. This bill is urgently required to overcome the unintended consequences that have arisen as a result of the Federal Court decision in the Siam Polyethylene case. The court determined that, in the absence of a legislative test to determine an application to revoke dumping measures, the minister must revoke measures unless the dumping would cause material injury to the Australian industry. The problem with this ruling is that where dumping measures are in place there should be no material injury to Australian industry. Therefore, this commonsense bill before the chamber amends the Customs Act 1901 to clarify the circumstances in which the minister may revoke antidumping measures in light of a review of such measures. It introduces a new test where the Customs CEO must recommend that the minister revoke measures unless satisfied that the removal of the measures would lead, or be likely to lead, to a continuation of dumping and the material injury that the antidumping measures are intended to prevent.

As I said from the outset, Australian manufacturers and their employees face many threats. Who would have thought back in your younger days, Mr Deputy Speaker, when you might have been travelling around Europe, that we would have the dollar at $US1.05 or US$1.06. When I was backpacking in Europe in 1988 it was completely different. You used to have to work for a month just to be able to buy beer or something like that. Now the dollar has completely changed. While it is good if you are going on a holiday overseas or buying stuff from overseas on the web, it does not help our manufacturers or even our farmers or our miners in certain circumstances. Dumping is only one of the challenges that we face but it is a very significant threat to the manufacturing industry. That is the industry I am particularly keen to make sure that we look after as much as possible. There are other challenges of markets being rattled by the global financial crisis and, in my local area, the flood damaging so many businesses. Also we have got those circumstances where, since the floods and cyclones and the GFC, I think it is true that many Australians are knocking off their debt, which is a good thing; we see credit card debt coming down. But the problem for retailers, part of the chain that manufacturers supply to, is that people are not digging into their wallets and their pockets to spend money, which is a problem for many of our retailers. The amendments in this bill are separate to the government's consideration of the Productivity Commission's recommendations. That work is still ongoing but these amendments are urgently required in response to the Federal Court decision.

I have not had a tour of the factory yet but I have certainly had a meeting with one of the manufacturers in my electorate that makes doors. I cannot remember the name of the factory and I do apologise, but I have had a couple of meetings with them. Many of the doors in new estates come from this factory in Rocklea, but they were unfairly targeted, I would suggest, by something as close to dumping as you would get from the Thai industry. But for the intervention of the minister, it would have meant that this factory would have closed down and its jobs would have gone and so too the quite significant skills associated with carpenters, joiners, fitters and turners and the like to make these doors that then go out into people's homes. It is the case when something like this happens that you do not just set up a door assembly plant overnight; it is expensive equipment and costs a lot of money. If they are not able to turn over enough, Australian wages being what they are, it is hard to keep workers at a factory if they are not selling enough doors. We have already got enough problems with building downturns in Queensland at the moment and there is not a lot of money flying around. There will be some renovations that come with the flood recovery effort, but too many people in my electorate are having trouble waiting for the insurance companies to make a decision one way or the other. At least if they get a no they can then go off to the Queensland Premier's Flood Appeal and maybe get some money through there. If they get a yes then hopefully there will be more doors made from the factory in my electorate.

It has always been the way of the modern Labor Party that we need Australia to be much more than something that sells materials overseas that come back to us as manufactured products. We believe in skills, the high road. We believe in Australia being much more than just a quarry and a farm. We need to turn those things that we dig out of the ground into products that we can then send around the world, which is good for our balance of trade and is good not just in terms of skills but in terms of defence, where you need to have certain skills. I am sure that as a South Australian MP, Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas, you are aware of the important role that the car industry plays in terms of making sure there are sufficient skills that can then lead on to defence type skills. That is the smart road, the high road that the Labor Party believes Australia should go down. That is why the NBN is such a priority for us. We believe in services that can be sold around the world. I remember during the election campaign those on the opposite side laughing and asking how we could become a focus for money, banking services and the like. But now look at what we are doing in terms of the funds that have been administered and in terms of superannuation. Places like Sydney, and hopefully Brisbane as well, will have a rightful role in showing the rest of the world that we can look after and provide services to the banking industry and the like.

Before becoming a lawyer my background was in education. We have such a great story to tell in providing a great example around the world of how we educate people, not only at the school level but also at the university level and in between, in the TAFE sector. Australia has that proud role, going back to the Colombo Plan. So often we have been able to provide a great education to people who then go back around the world. We have some of the best universities in the world; certainly in my electorate of Moreton, Griffith University is well known throughout the world as a great leader in innovations in health and the environment. I commend the bill to the House.

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