Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and I welcome the position of compromise that has been reached between the government and ourselves on the questions that were important to us on the Chinese free trade agreement, what was in that agreement and how it would impact on Australian workers, in particular.

I want to start by pointing out that I live in the part of Australia that is closest to Asia—the Northern Territory. We have had contact with Chinese people and Chinese labour, in particular, since the 19th century. I do not think it is commonly known that by 1878 the South Australian government, which was then in control of the Northern Territory, had recruited so many Chinese labourers—or 'coolies', as they were then disparagingly known—that the Chinese were the largest non-Aboriginal group in the Northern Territory.

In 1888 there were 6,122 Chinese in the Northern Territory. There were few more than 3,000 people of European descent. So the Chinese population was double the European population. They were contracted to work on the goldfields. They sent money home and they spoke mainly Sze Yup or Hakka dialects. They worked hard and soon had their own gold claims. They established market gardens, most famously at Doctors Gully beside the Darwin Harbour, and engaged in general industry and commerce.

However, by the 1890s, as we know, sadly racism was alive and well and anti-Chinese feeling was particularly strong not only in the Northern Territory but across New South Wales and Victoria. Many Chinese people left the Territory but many also stayed on. Their family names are still strong in the Northern Territory community—Chin, Ah Toy, Lee, Chan and Fong Lim. These are some families that can trace their history back to this period. They settled permanently in the Territory and increased the extent of their commercial base, particularly in Darwin but also in Pine Creek and Katherine. So we in the Northern Territory are not new to this relationship with China or to Chinese workers coming to Australia and participating in work. At that point in history they were invited by the then government responsible for administering the Northern Territory, the South Australian government, to work on the goldfields.

But many things happened during the last century. One of which was the rise of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution and the impact that had on the world community. The White Australia policy still existed in Australia then. We still had anti-Chinese rhetoric. There was the concept of the 'yellow hordes' coming down from Asia and impacting upon Australia. There were very racist and xenophobic statements and assertions made about our Asian friends and neighbours.

It was not until 1961 that a very significant trip took place when the then Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, HC Coombs, visited China. He told his Chinese hosts that Australia would welcome Chinese visitors. The Chinese took his words seriously. The following year, the President of the People's Bank of China visited Australia and was interested in meeting people, obtaining information and generally promoting trade. Nugget Coombs maintained that the revolution had not impaired China's tradition and commercial code of absolute reliability.

Post 1961 up until 1971, there was not a lot of activity at least officially from government, except there was work being done by the then Wheat Board and the then Wool Board about trying to export Australian primary produce into the Chinese market.

Yesterday, as we know, was the first anniversary of the passing of the great Gough Whitlam. He was, without doubt, the first Australian leader to understand the need to engage and the importance of engaging with China. In 1971, as opposition leader, as part of the so-called doctrine of ping-pong diplomacy, he helped tear down the bamboo curtain and began the process of engagement between modern Australia and modern China. His meeting with the redoubtable Zhou Enlai began the process of building a modern relationship between the two nations, which he further developed when, as Prime Minister, he visited China in 1973—the first Australian Prime Minister to do so.

When Whitlam was breaking new ground with China, its economy was smaller than the Netherlands'. But he knew that this was a sleeper economy and that, given the right set of domestic and international circumstances, it would sleep no more. How right and how prescient Gough Whitlam was. Today, China's gross domestic product is nearly as large as that of the United States and seems likely to overtake it as the largest economy in the world within the near future. Whitlam understood the need to deal and trade with China.

Then we move on to the Hawke and Keating years, and then, from a Labor perspective, in the Gillard and Rudd years we introduced the Australia in the Asian century white paper. This guided the way that the Australian government engaged not only with China but with the rest of the region as well.

John Howard started the process of negotiating a free trade agreement with China. That was followed by the Labor governments of Rudd and Gillard, whose trade ministers Simon Crean, Craig Emerson and Richard Marles advanced these interests. There is no question that this has been an imperative of both sides of politics since the mid-1990s. But it is a legacy of the work which had been previously done by a Labor Prime Minister and Labor governments up until then.

Labor has always supported the principle of a China free trade agreement, as we well know, and as I know those members opposite also know. But we were blindfolded in our support for that agreement and for the negotiations. We had no participation. We did not see the content of the document. We did not know what was being negotiated until the final outcome was reached. Legitimately and quite properly, concerns were raised by interested people across this community about what might be in that document, and when the document was observed and seen and analysed, many people in the trade union movement rang alarm bells because they were interested and most concerned about protecting the interests of Australian working people. They were not xenophobic or racist, as they were called by the Abbott government, the government of the time.

I recall the denigrating way in which not only senior ministers in the current government but also ministers in the Abbott government stood at the dispatch box and described Labor members and trade union leaders in this country as xenophobic and racist. We know that those insults—and they were insults—showed the paucity of thinking or of any objective analysis by the government of the day, because Australian workers had every right to ask legitimate questions about what was in this agreement and how it would impact upon them. This is why, despite these descriptions of Labor and the unions as being xenophobic and racist, Labor has been able to achieve outcomes as a result of Labor negotiations. We do not have the same entrenched view that racism and xenophobia are part of the lexicon that the government uses to describe the opposition or the Labor movement.

We had the view that it was actually about time we sat down and had a yarn to work out what might be a reasonable outcome for Australian workers. That is why Labor argued for legal safeguards in three particular areas—safeguards which did not exist in the original agreement and which were highlighted by the trade unions. Such safeguards were denigrated by the government. Now, because we have reached this agreement at the behest of Labor, we have addressed the issues of labour market testing, protecting Australian wages and conditions, and upholding workplace skills and safety standards.

There are many who would argue those protections do not go far enough, and I understand their arguments. Had we been at the negotiating table, there would have been a different outcome. But we were not, and the best we could achieve, as a result of the fact that this was a done deal and that we were delivered with a fait accompli, was to deal with changes which would not impact directly on the agreement, and that is the outcome that what we have achieved has delivered.

I am pleased that we have finally been able to achieve this agreement with the government. It is important that we acknowledge Andrew Robb, Penny Wong and the Leader of the Opposition for the work they have put in to negotiating an outcome. But let it not be said that because we have achieved this outcome that somehow or other we are xenophobic or racist. It is simply an insult which is wrong, disparaging and beneath contempt. Yet it is something which the government was pleased to advance across this dispatch box and in the public arena for the months leading up to the recent discussions between the trade minister and the shadow trade minister, Penny Wong.

I am pleased that we have been able to achieve this outcome. It may not go far enough. We need to do more, and I look forward to working with the government to achieve the best outcomes we possibly can for Chinese investment in Australia and for jobs for Australians. Whether they are as a result of trade into China—beef from my own part of the Northern Territory, horticulture from the Northern Territory, mining produce from the Northern Territory, tourism from the Northern Territory are all very important things—I will look forward to getting those benefits and making sure that Australian workers' interests are properly protected, as are those of workers who are on 457 visas when they come to this country.

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