Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth, I wish to make a statement concerning the committee's inquiry into the trade system and the digital economy. Trade drives economic growth and is now being done in different ways. The digital economy is an important part of how our business will operate into the future, yet Australia is losing digital innovators to overseas.

The new economy poses new challenges for market access restrictions, intellectual property rights, cybersecurity and data privacy. Australians now live and trade in a digital world and a global economy. This means that our trade system needs to both enable and protect Australians online in a way that it did not need to 10 years ago.

Industry is also turning to digital solutions to modernise their supply chain. For example, blockchain tools are digitising shipping, providing end-to-end supply-chain transparency, and our trade systems need to be forward-thinking enough to cope with these new technologies. It is a paddock-to-the-plate approach to trade.

This inquiry will look at whether our trade system is meeting the needs of the digital economy and if there are any changes we need to make and how we are to undertake trade negotiations to make sure we drive growth in this sector. We are keen to hear from digital innovators—from start-ups and digital disrupters to established online platforms. We want to hear what the barriers to trade are that the government needs to address. What are the challenges they face and how can we keep them working for Australia? We also want to hear from the business sector on cyber-resilience and what more needs to be done to support them.

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