Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As we know, Australia is a nation that relies by majority on exports for its economic wellbeing, but it also needs adequate anti-dumping legislation. As the member for Murray said, the Customs Amendment (Anti-dumping Improvements) Bill 2011 really is a work in progress. There is a lot more to be done.

We have a small domestic economy compared to our ability to produce commodities and goods, so we rely heavily on trade. In 2009, during the global financial crisis, our exports were worth $250 billion—or one-quarter of a trillion dollars. This was 10 per cent down on the previous year but still a formidable figure. Of this, 41 per cent came from the resources sector, especially iron ore and coal, but the parliament would do well to note the contribution made by Western Australia to the nation's resource exports, especially in oil and gas as well as iron ore. According to the Western Australian Department of Mines and Petroleum, WA produced 68 per cent of the country's mineral and energy exports. Given that the same report identifies that Western Australia holds 70 per cent of the nation's resource exploration and 62 per cent of its private new capital investment, the importance of the west to the nation's economy should not be underestimated, but neither should it be only seen as a cash cow for the Labor government. In addition to the resource sector, $27 billion, or 11 per cent, of Australian exports come from the rural sector, especially in wheat and meat.

This bill is one small part of the trade picture in Australia and the ambitions appear to be modest. It is definitely a work in progress, but I do wonder where the members of the Labor government are if they are genuinely committed to anti-dumping legislation. I note that there are a group of 20 Labor backbenchers from manufacturing electorates who are calling for additional assistance for the manufacturing sector. I would ask where they are while we are debating this bill here tonight. Anti-dumping is a very real issue for manufacturing right across the board. Where is the member for Throsby? Where are the members for Newcastle and Deakin? Where is the member for Wakefield and the member for Werriwa? I would have thought this anti-dumping legislation was critical in their electorates. If they are calling for manufacturing assistance, I would have thought speaking on anti-dumping should be very much a part of that.

This bill aims to put a 30-day time limit on the minister making a decision after receiving a report, which is a positive step. It also allows the minister to examine more fully the impact of imports on jobs and on domestic industry. I really think this is an important step to examine the impact on jobs and on domestic industry. It expands the definition of interested parties to a decision on trade dumping to include, amongst others, unions—something that we certainly would expect from the Labor government.

The bill also addresses issues relating to the WTO anti-dumping agreement and agreement on subsidies and countervailing measures. As we know, dumping is defined by Australian Customs as a form of price differentiation where goods are exported to Australia at a price below their normal value, which of course is to the detriment of the locally produced goods. It includes the use of export subsidies paid to the benefit of a foreign exporter of goods into Australia, be those subsidies direct or indirect. That gives a price advantage to the foreign entity causing or threatening material injury to an Australian industry, and we see this repeatedly.

Put simply, anti-dumping measures apply a temporary import duty. It is not about protection; it is about fair process. It is called an interim dumping duty on products that are sold below the cost of production and a countervailing duty for subsidised products in order to eliminate that cost advantage that would give the foreign supplier an unfair advantage and damage local production and manufacturing.

Many countries around the world provide a form of advantage for their industry and that can include, as I have said, subsidies and tariffs. It can include some low input and labour costs and low levels of necessary government compliance and regulation, which does have an impact on cost of production. These, in turn, provide cost and price advantages to their products in mature overseas markets where local producers often are inundated with compliance and cost issues. In this international marketplace, Australia produces, in spite of that, some of the world's best agricultural, food and manufactured products and extremely high quality manufactured goods.

The price disadvantage is unfortunately exacerbated by the Labor government consistently making compliance more onerous and more expensive for Australian businesses. In competing with cheaper foreign products, which are underpinned and underwritten by cheap labour, subsidies or even lower quality control, our producers and manufacturers have to rely on productivity, on efficiency, on quality, on safety and on a perception as well as genuine reputation to that effect. This reputation of quality in Australian products should not be put at risk or underestimated.

It should also be noted by the parliament that the Labor government has a poor record of defending Australia's borders and maintaining our customs, quarantine and biosecurity. Australian farmers and food producers rely on our clean and green image and the capacity to deliver top-quality products to find and maintain markets around the world. Agricultural production in this country drives $155 billion a year in economic production, over 12 per cent of GDP, generating around 1.6 million Australian jobs and $32 billion a year in farm exports.

Around the world Australian produced food is safe, clean and green, and it is essential that we maintain that reputation. A lot of that food comes from my electorate. However, this reputation is put at risk by the neglect of our biosecurity by Labor. The clean, disease-free status of Australian food and produce is paramount. That is why we cannot believe the way that this government is continually undermining border security and biosecurity.

It is incredible that the government would slash $35.8 million from the quarantine and biosecurity budget and $58 million from the Customs budget, leading to 4.7 million less air cargo consignments being inspected each year and 2,150 fewer vessels being boarded on arrival. Unfortunately, that neglect has set a trend that is continuing in the current budget, with another $32.8 million cut from the operational budget of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, which reduces the capacity of the department to deliver services to Australian agriculture.

The Beale quarantine and biosecurity review, commissioned by Labor, called for hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on AQIS and quarantine annually to provide proper real protection to our nation's borders. Instead of heeding this report, the government has failed to act, except to basically spend the last 2½ years and the last two budgets running down and stripping assets. This is particularly important in this debate because, without price advantage, Australian producers and manufacturers have to rely on quality, safety, productivity and efficiency to compete effectively in the marketplace, be it domestically or internationally, as reflected in this bill.

We saw only today the announcement by the government following on from the Prime Minister's personal decision to make an announcement in the New Zealand parliament that she would allow the importation of New Zealand apples into Australia. This means that Biosecurity Australia has been forced by the Prime Minister's statement to abandon the need for adequate protocols to prevent the incursion of serious diseases like fire blight with the importation of New Zealand apples. We saw the result of that today. Let us not be in any doubt: these proposals by Biosecurity Australia are an abandonment of the quarantine principles that have made us amongst the cleanest producers of high-quality food in the world.

As we know when we look at the anti-dumping measures in this bill, dumping affects like goods as well as those it affects directly. Consistently we have seen the minister hide behind Doha in dealing with these matters instead of producing the type of legislation that would make a difference. We heard previously from the member for Murray about the amount of fruit that is imported and that there is more fruit imported than exported. There are very real issues when we talk about anti-dumping and anti-dumping measures and how the government should be responding. There has been no greater acknowledgement of the lack of equity in trade than the failure of the government to deliver through any of the Doha talks.

Debate interrupted.

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