Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Capricornia for her question and for her continued strong advocacy for a region of Australia which is a great trading region whose prosperity depends very much on our capacity to maintain our export markets. Australia is a founding member of the global trading system, which has well established rules for the conduct of trade between member nations. Members are bound to comply with those rules. If they do not, other member countries can take retaliatory action against them. There are now 153 members of the World Trade Organization and more are trying to join up each year—that is, people want to be inside the World Trade Organization: inside those rules not outside. Yet the opposition leader would recklessly breach world trading rules and tear up trade agreements with our regional trading partners.

The shadow agriculture minister has introduced into parliament a bill on New Zealand apples that would violate the world trading rules and expose innocent farmers, including those in Capricornia, to retaliation. The coalition, in addition, is supporting a private member's bill on palm oil labelling, which risks provoking a trade war with Malaysia and Indonesia. Indeed, the opposition leader's antitrade agenda extends to his opposition to international trading in carbon permits.

The opposition leader has indicated his total opposition to trading in carbon permits. In doing so he shares the view of the one-world government conspiracy theorists that one tonne of carbon dioxide weighs—

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