Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's my pleasure to rise and speak on the strong and deepening relationship that Australia has had with Indonesia, one of our nearest neighbours, over the past 30 or 40 years as we've built trade relationships across the Asian region. It would be fair to say that those relationships with Indonesia in that space have been rather overlooked. Whilst plenty of Australians go there for holidays, I think the broader context of what Indonesia represents as one of our near neighbours is underappreciated.

In that vein, it was pleasing to see that after only a week of being Prime Minister, and within 24 hours of being sworn in as trade minister, Prime Minister Morrison and Minister Birmingham flew to Indonesia to engage in economic and security negotiations. These talks saw the Indo-Australia security ties elevated to a comprehensive strategic partnership that was formalised by Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Prime Minister Morrison at a signing ceremony at the presidential palace at Bogor. This reflects the increasing need for partnership and cooperation to strengthen the security of our region and keep Australia and those in our region safe. The Prime Minister said in his statement:

Our partnership reflects our vision of a region in which the Association of Southeast Asian nations, ASEAN, is central, the rights of all states are respected, and countries behave in accordance with international rules and norms.

Bilateral trade negotiations were also made, and I'm pleased to say they were substantially concluded on an Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. This partnership, as with many of the other trade agreements we've put in place, will be a win-win for both nations, and it's importance can't be underestimated.

We see here in Australia, in our 27th year of economic growth, that that growth has been underpinned by an open economy that trades and welcomes foreign investment with appropriate safeguards. We can't, though, take this growth for granted. Our trade partnerships have created jobs and increased household incomes, allowed small to medium businesses to grow, and opened new markets for farming and horticulture, construction, mining, energy tourism, telecommunications and more. This is why it's vital to strengthen our trading partnerships and deepen our relations with one of our closest and largest economic neighbours—Indonesia. The government understands this and is proving that it is getting on with the job of ensuring that our nation has the relationships necessary in our region to build a strong economy both domestically and, importantly, internationally. The importance of this being done internationally is that if we work with the Indonesian government to build their economic capacity as well as our own, both countries benefit.

They have a population of some 300 million people who want to move up to a standard of living that we have here in this country. It provides an enormous opportunity for our businesses and our economy to provide that support. But it's not just economic support, maybe in terms of manufactured products. We already see the enormous relationships we have in the agricultural sector, particularly for northern Australia with our beef cattle and our live cattle exports to Indonesia, which many years ago, under those opposite, were impacted through the live cattle ban but have been or are being restored.

We saw the importance of that market to our agricultural sector in northern Australia with the damage done at that point in time. It was not only the damage done to our agricultural sector; it was also the damage done to the relationship with Indonesia. Therefore it's pleasing that we now see that we have restored or are restoring the foundation of that relationship for the mutual benefit of both countries, because we know that, if we can grow our economies across South-East Asia, all countries benefit as a result. The agreement will mean that over 99 per cent of Australian goods to Indonesia will be either duty free or— (Time expired)

Debate adjourned.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:31

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