Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

And then, on coming to office, Labor terminated the funding that had been allocated by the Howard government to continue trade negotiations with China. Labor ripped out the necessary negotiating resources not only from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade but from the Department of Agriculture, from immigration, from finance, from Treasury, from education, from Attorney-General's, from communications and from IP Australia. They took the necessary funding away so that our officials could not continue to negotiate the free trade agreement.

If Australians want to know why these vital free trade agreement negotiations went nowhere under Labor, why our competitors were given a head start in the Chinese market and why Labor is now stalling, they need look no further than Labor's double-dealing on this issue.

Labor fails to realise that we are at an economic juncture. Choose the free trade agreement, back the free trade agreement and Australia will prosper. There will be more jobs, more economic growth. Choose to stall and renegotiate, and the offer will no longer exist. Labor and the trade unions have done everything possible to prevent the finalisation of a free trade agreement with China, and that affects our prosperity and our jobs.

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