Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement enabling legislation. From the outset, I make it clear that I support freer trade and I will vote for this agreement, but I do so reluctantly and with open eyes. I do so reluctantly because the coalition government's record on negotiating trade agreements has been diabolical. Seriously, if I were the foreign negotiator and Andrew Robb came to me, I could issue him with anything and he would sign it. This guy would buy the Harbour Bridge. Nevertheless, after a concerted information campaign and strong negotiations led by Senator Penny Wong, the final agreement is sufficient and Labor will support it. I will go to some of my concerns around the FTA in a moment.

I want to inform the House of some of the previous very mixed record of those opposite on free trade agreements. The best place to start is the US free trade agreement—a trade agreement that promised so much but has delivered so little, a trade agreement where they trumpeted modelling that other reputable economic modellers said did not pass the laughter test, and a free trade agreement which has been in operation for around 10 years. Shiro Armstrong from the Crawford School at the ANU, a university and a research school profoundly in favour of trade liberalisation. A research paper by Mr Armstrong has found that not only has our trade balance with the United States not improved but two-way trade with the United States has fallen. Let me repeat that: since the free trade agreement, two-way trade with the United States has fallen. We have seen research from Dr McGovern at QUT which has found that our trade balance with the United States and Thailand has deteriorated since the FTAs were signed, and the Thai FTA is really symbolic of the coalition's very poor approach to trade agreements. They promised that this trade agreement would deliver bounties for the Australian automotive industry and it would deliver thousands and thousands of jobs. What happened is that the free trade agreement was implemented and tariffs fell, nominally allowing Australian cars to be imported into Thailand. What did the Thai government do? The same day, they whacked up duties on large cars, directly targeting the Commodore and the Ford Territory, which meant that our car industry was unable to penetrate the Thai market, and that led to not a single additional job in the automotive industry in Australia.

We had the member for North Sydney's valedictory today which capped off a 20-year contribution to politics, which I honour, but a very important point of his speech was the fact that he spoke positively about destroying the Australian car industry and thereby enabling the free trade agreements with Japan, Korea and China. That is a factual statement. Having witnessed subcommittee of cabinet discussions in the last government, one of the key stumbling blocks between signing the free trade agreements was the impact on the automotive industry in Australia. The member for North Sydney removed assistance to that industry and destroyed 250,000 direct and indirect jobs, enabling free trade agreements. Let's be frank about it: the free trade agreements we are debating now are only in place because the coalition government destroyed the Australian automotive industry. That is a factual statement that the member for North Sydney admitted to in his contribution to his valedictory today. We have a very torrid and mixed situation from the coalition government.

The original free trade agreement was a dog's breakfast. It was a dog's breakfast that led to an information campaign from the labour movement that pointed out the very significant flaws in the agreement, and they were confirmed by The Conversation and the ABC FactCheck unit. Both the FactCheck unit from The Conversation and the ABC confirmed that the claims made by the labour movement were factually correct.

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