Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade and Investment) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

In doing so, I am pleased today to introduce the enabling legislation for our landmark China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. This is an outstanding agreement. It is the highest quality and most liberalising trade deal that China, the world's second biggest economy and our largest two-way trading partner, has done with any other developed country. It is by far the best free trade agreement Australia has done with any country from the perspective of goods, services and investment. There is a significant economic imperative to doing everything we can to bring this agreement into force before the end of this year—and I will come to that shortly.

The Customs Amendment (China-Australia Free Trade Agreement Implementation) Bill 2015 amends the Customs Act 1901 to implement Australia's obligations under chapter 3 of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA).

Chapter 3 sets out the rules of origin criteria and related documentary requirements for determining the eligibility of goods to obtain preferential tariff entry into Australia under the agreement.

The complementary Customs Tariff Amendment (China-Australia Free Trade Agreement Implementation) Bill 2015, will amend the Customs Tariff Act 1995 to set out Australia's tariff commitments under the agreement.

These quite modest bills represent the only legislative amendments that the parliament will need to pass to allow the government to bring ChAFTA into force. There is no need for amendments to any other bills, in particular the migration bills, because there is nothing in the agreement which requires a change to the protections and the standards of work that are required under the current legislation. This puts a lie to many of the actions that we have seen—the misrepresentations, the mistruths and the deliberate scaring of people across the community that has occurred, led by the CFMEU and the ETU, including others. We hope, certainly, that common sense will prevail and that, in due course, we will see a return to the traditional bipartisan position.

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