Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I read the motion and I listened to the mover's speech. No wonder he ran away—he made his speech and then ran out the door: this is completely absurd. We're debating a motion and the proposed benefits of a trade agreement that no-one has seen. We need to get that fact clear at the outset. No-one has seen this agreement.

We've got speculation and we've got random facts in the motion. I don't know what the assumptions are. We don't know who the winners and losers are. There are always winners and there are always losers in a trade deal. So table it. If the government were serious about wanting us to understand and evaluate the benefits of this trade deal, they'd come in here and put it on table. But it's a complete load of nonsense to have a self-congratulatory motion on a secret deal. Now, it may be the world's best deal; it may be the world's best deal and it will blow you out of the water. It may be the world's worst deal, but no-one would know. But, 'Trust us; we're the government,' says the government member. 'We'll just put a few little facts in the motion and then run out of the room.' He's probably gone to edit or check his Wikipedia page and check that this motion never appears in it!

Labor support an open economy; we do. Trade is good for Australia, and one-fifth of Australia's workers are in jobs that are linked to trade. Trade creates jobs and prosperity for us; that's the structure of our economy. But we hear this complete nonsense over and over again that Labor opposes trade deals: 'Labor, you oppose trade deals.' Then we hear we've betrayed the Hawke and Keating legacy. They are getting very jealous of the Hawke and Keating legacy because they can't point to much that John Howard did in 11 years, except replace a bunch of sales taxes with the GST and sit back for 10 years. The truth is that Labor in opposition have never opposed a trade deal. So despite all the rubbish we hear—'You're blocking the trade deal; you're all terrible'—we've never opposed or blocked a trade deal once we'd seen the detail and gone through it.

We hear about CHAFTA. Apparently we stopped the China free trade agreement, which is complete nonsense. We asked a bunch of questions and we forced some improvements to that deal before it was signed. That is our job as an opposition and, indeed, it's the job of every member in this place who takes their responsibilities seriously—to actually look at the detail. So what we're being asked to do here is: 'Let's go by the vibe of the deal. It's a really cool deal, man. Toke on this deal; it's going to be really awesome!'

Let me bombard you with a few random facts. What is the government scared of and what are they hiding? There will be, as I said, winners and losers. There were through the Hawke and Keating era. Overall, undoubtedly, Australia's economy grew, and our prosperity and national wealth grew as a result of the economic reforms. But there were losers. There were people who lost their jobs and there were businesses that closed and were forced out of business because they couldn't compete. And so we've said that a proper, principled position is to expose trade deals to independent scrutiny and independent economic modelling, for two key reasons.

The first is that this is good practice. At the moment, we have a situation where the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade bureaucrats who run around and negotiate these deals are then marking their own homework. They go and negotiate the deal and say: 'This is the best we can get. Now we'll run some figures and say, "Look what a good deal it is."' That's not good public policy and not good practice. You expose the assumptions underpinning the deal to independent scrutiny so you can form a view.

The second reason, of course, is to build community confidence. There's enormous scepticism and concern about trade deals, particularly as the nature of the media and human psychology is to focus on loss. So we focus on the losers without giving a balanced perspective too often. Independent economic modelling and scrutiny would, I believe, help build community confidence and help the government understand where it needs to help out and assist people to transition. Of course, it's not just Labor that's saying this but the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Interestingly, the Treasurer's own Harper review said:

Trade negotiations should be informed by an independent and transparent analysis of the costs and benefits …

Indeed, repeatedly, Liberal MPs who examined the original TPP recommended:

… the Australian Government consider implementing a process through which independent modelling and analysis of a proposed trade agreement is undertaken by the Productivity Commission …

That's Labor's policy. The member for Warringah, when Prime Minister, commissioned independent modelling of Australia's agreement with Korea, and that was supported and people felt confident. So I do not understand what the government has to hide, and it's a complete nonsense to bring this motion in prematurely.

The ideal trade agreement is with the Asia-Pacific, and it would include India, China, the US and others. We'd see increased growth and interdependence, and that, of course, would contribute to regional peace and stability. But in the meantime we should get some independent economic modelling and be honest and up-front about it, and when this deal is released and we go through it, then we'll back it. Our record does support that. We have backed, ultimately, the trade deals put forward, but only when we've seen the detail. No-one would accept the complete nonsense that's thrown at us that, somehow, we should sign up to something we haven't seen. That would not be doing our job well by the Australian people.

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