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

We now have the capacity for me to be able to give a full answer on this, rather than jam it in with numerous questions. The answer is that, in the last couple of days, two new countries have been admitted into the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations: they are Mexico and Canada. With the addition of Mexico and Canada, there are now 11 parties to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations.

The concept here, I say to the member for Banks, is a very worthy one. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum was established by Australia on the initiative of, originally, Bob Hawke at the ministerial level, and then Paul Keating elevated it to the leadership level. It has been a very successful forum for trade liberalisation and economic policy cooperation across the Asia-Pacific. The aspiration is a free-trade area for Asia and the Pacific at some stage. Each of the nine parties to the trans-Pacific partnership negotiations is a member of APEC. So nine of the 21 economies are now involved in negotiation, which obviously is going to be a tough one in some areas, as every country has sensitive issues. If we can land this Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, we then have a very solid stepping stone towards a free-trade area for Asia and the Pacific. The addition of Canada and Mexico means that between them the TPP parties constitute 30 per cent of the world's gross domestic product, which is a big number.

The negotiations are going well in relation to what is called the text—that is, all of the legal work that needs to go in. But there will be very challenging negotiations about increased market access to each other's countries. I might even add, as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition asked if we were requesting duty-free access to markets, that we ask for duty-free access to markets wherever we can possibly achieve it. My view is that, even if that involves phasing down tariffs over time, getting to zero is a very worthy objective. That is set out in the trade ministers' trans-Pacific partnership declaration that was issued in Honolulu last year: we are looking for duty-free access to markets.

We are pragmatic about phasing down tariffs. Why wouldn't we be? In Australia that is exactly what we did previously. We had very high tariffs in the mid- to late-1980s which were inherited from previous coalition governments. Instead of going cold turkey and taking auto industry tariffs, for example, from 57.5 per cent to zero in one fell swoop, we phased them down. Whenever we have been involved in negotiations, such as in the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement, we have offered duty-free access to the Australian market. In the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement we offered duty-free access to the Australian market. We also have done it with other free trade agreements.

Our tariffs generally are around zero or five per cent. It is something we have done unilaterally over the years. Other countries have reduced their tariffs, and APEC has been a very effective forum, not so much for negotiations but for a sense of kindred spirit—that we know this is a community whose future path to prosperity and to a more decent society for people in poverty, so that they can be liberated from poverty, is to give them jobs through market access. Over the years, what has happened in APEC is that countries have voluntarily reduced their tariffs, not through negotiations but in the knowledge that other countries in the region were doing the same thing. So in regard to the Bogor goals, which were set out in 1994—there was a review recently—it is true that we not quite at zero, but tariffs have come down and, as a result, a lot of people who would not otherwise have jobs, including on the land, now have jobs. It has been a great success story. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement can take that further by providing this important stepping stone to a free-trade area for Asia and the Pacific.

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