Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to follow members on this side of the House in support of the Customs Amendment (Growing Australian Export Opportunities Across the Asia-Pacific) Bill 2019 and related bill and the amendment moved by the member for Brand. This is a really important time for the House to consider new trade deals with Indonesia, with Hong Kong and with Peru. Nobody in here needs reminding about the very serious challenges in the global economy, particularly as they relate to trade, with trade tensions between the Chinese and the Americans and trade tensions between the Japanese and the South Koreans. Of course, there's also Brexit, and a fairly robust debate going on about the relevance and the rules of the World Trade Organization.

Ideally, the region and the world could get together and make high-quality multilateral agreements, to the ultimate benefit of all the economies of the world. Ideally, we could seek common ground for the common good when it comes to trade arrangements, and those arrangements would have as many nations involved as possible. Unfortunately, progress on the multilateral front has been slow in recent times; so we are left with bilateral deals, like the ones we are debating in the parliament today. They are, frankly, better than nothing when it comes to finding new ways and new markets for our goods, and new jobs and opportunities for our people. When economic growth is not exactly thick on the ground in Australia at the moment, we look for and we take the growth where we can get it—because growth means jobs, which means opportunities for people. These agreements, though imperfect—they always are—do give Australia and Australians an opportunity to reach out to some important neighbours, especially Indonesia, to ensure that we are trading more and that we can become mutually more prosperous.

As the House is aware, the bills implement the tariff cuts agreed to by the government as part of the Hong Kong agreement, the Indonesia agreement and the Peru agreement. All we in this House are being asked to do is vote on the tariff arrangements rather than the full deals struck between governments. As the Leader of the Opposition outlined in his contribution, we don't debate the deal in this place; we debate and vote on the accompanying tariff reductions—and that is what we are doing.

From our point of view, the most strategically and economically important one of the three agreements—not to diminish the others—is obviously the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. It has five core areas: goods, electronic commerce, skills development, investment and services. If you are looking for a summary of the nature of the change to the Indonesian trading arrangements it is that over 99 per cent of Australian goods exports to Indonesia will enter duty free or under significantly improved or preferential arrangements. In particular, the components of the Indonesian agreement around steel, agriculture and technical and vocational education really stand out as the big opportunities for Australia.

It is worth acknowledging that, when it comes to agreements like these, they are always on-balance calls. There is always an obligation for us on this side of the House to weigh up all of the pros and cons and come to an on-balance call. After lots of consultation and lots of discussion, we decided to support these deals for four reasons that I want to run through this afternoon.

Firstly, we support these deals because bigger markets mean more jobs for our people. We back our workers to do well out of the new opportunities created by the changing nature of these markets and these agreements. We want bigger markets because we want more and better jobs. In a nutshell, that's one of the reasons that we are supporting these deals. There are also big benefits for agriculture, mining and education. As other members have pointed out, a very interesting stat is that, on average, Australian businesses that export hire 23 per cent more staff and pay 11 per cent higher wages, with their labour productivity 13 per cent higher than non-exporters. I think that says something about the businesses which can grasp these opportunities afforded by new deals.

One in five Australians is employed in trade related employment. Australian household incomes are something like $8,500 higher, on average, as a result of opening up new markets through trade. Again, as other members on this side have pointed out in their contributions today, Labor is the party of trade. Labor is the party of seeking out and benefiting from new markets. I was very pleased to hear the member for Gellibrand talk about Ben Chifley's contribution in the postwar years—such an important role for an Australian at the time, in being part of the discussions that led to the general agreement, as part of his engagement, really, right across the board when it came to the new postwar institutions of international engagement. We on this side do have a lot to be proud of when it comes to trade.

I also wanted to touch on what these bills don't do. I think it's easy to make assumptions about debates and agreements like this. It's important to very clearly understand that none of these agreements include provisions that require the privatisation of any public services. None of them include provisions that undermine the PBS. All of them preserve our WTO antidumping rights. None of them include provisions that will limit the right of the Commonwealth to regulate in the interests of public welfare or safe products. The agreements don't require any legislative change with respect to our procurement arrangements. None of them explicitly exempt any category of people from Australian laws and regulations. They do not lower Australia's standards to facilitate the entry of foreign workers. And—I think very importantly for our considerations—all three agreements improve on the level of investment protections and public interest safeguards, when you compare them to the older arrangements that they replace. I think those are very important things for the House to remember.

We support the agreements because bigger markets mean more and better jobs. Secondly, we support them because we want to deepen our relationship with Indonesia—our closest neighbour, a massive country, with massive economic potential, which is set to move from the 16th-biggest economy now to the fourth-biggest in 2050, with about US$1 trillion in GDP, growing at a rate of over five per cent, with 135 million people in the consumer class, the largest growth in customers outside of China and India—and the list goes on and on. The opportunities for us in the Indonesian market are absolutely extraordinary. The obvious conclusion is that we are not serious about engaging with Asia unless we are serious about engaging with Indonesia.

It is not acceptable for Indonesia—such a big country, so close to us—to represent only two per cent of Australia's trade. As the member for Grayndler, the Leader of the Opposition, pointed out in his contribution, no pair of contiguous countries in the G20 have lower trade volumes than us and Indonesia. That is clearly not acceptable. That is something that was recognised by the Rudd and Gillard governments, which started down this path of the Indonesian agreement. There have been missteps since then, but it is now on track and ready to be supported by this place.

The third reason we support these agreements before us in the House is because we did recognise that there were some shortcomings and we've gone to the government and negotiated some good improvements in the deals and the way that they've been struck. I think it's important to acknowledge and recognise that without some of the, frankly, robust engagement with stakeholders, including the labour movement, we wouldn't have had as well informed a view about what to push for when it came to negotiations with the trade minister, Simon Birmingham. He has come back and agreed to the proposals that we have put forward. I think that's a very good thing. There have been changes made when it comes to replacing the older, bilateral investment treaties: issues around the ISDS clauses, issues around labour market testing, issues around privatisation—all of these things that we have raised in good faith have been addressed by the response from the trade minister, and I wanted to acknowledge that. But I also wanted to acknowledge the many conversations that we have had with the labour movement and with other important groups around Australia to make sure that we have come to the best possible decision that we could when it came to these bills before us today.

The fourth reason why it's important that the House support these bills—I alluded to this at the very beginning—is that these are uncertain times and we do have weak economic growth in this country. When times are uncertain, when Australian economic growth is well below what we expect of it, we need more engagement with the world and with Asia, not less. We want to see more engagement, not less, with our neighbours and with the countries beyond, because in uncertain times, when we need the economy to grow faster, trade negotiations and agreements do give us the potential to address both of those shortcomings.

I think it's important to acknowledge, or at least to not let pass, some of the language of negative globalism from the Prime Minister in recent weeks. We had the member for Mackellar, I think, try to pretend that the IMF was some far-Left organisation. All of these sorts of things damage our ability to engage with the world. These bills are about engagement with the world, for good economic and strategic reasons. At the same time, we have these dangerous messages from the Prime Minister and down on that side of the House, which compromises our ability to deal with the world on good terms. When the Prime Minister gets up at the Lowy Institute speech, as he did in the last fortnight, and talks about negative globalism and runs down the global institutions which Australia has done so well from, recognising that it is in our national interest to have a voice and to have a say in the conduct of the world's affairs—to have a Prime Minister try and diminish that is troubling, I think. It's concerning. It's damaging. We need a Prime Minister who is not just chasing headlines; we need a Prime Minister who is chasing good outcomes for Australia. Good outcomes for Australia means engaging, seeking common ground, seeking common good, looking for ways to advance our national interest in the way that these bills do, frankly. He shouldn't be engaging with this far-Right, crazy language about global institutions. Global institutions do serve Australia well, and we should continue to engage with them, as we should continue to engage with the nations of our neighbourhood and beyond.

It's true, I think, that weakening global cooperation is now one of the big economic risks that we face as a country and as a region. It's true that Asia's growth and potential is making up a bigger proportion of the global economy. But it's also true that when cooperation falls down and the impact of that is felt disproportionately, Asia—and Australia within Asia—has a great deal to lose across trade, investment, finance, immigration and regional cooperation. Growth in Asia is very interconnected. When cooperation fails or when countries put up walls, it is susceptible to a lot of damage when that path is followed. That clearly has implications for Australia and for our economy.

Finishing up, I would summarise by saying that these deals may not be exactly as we would have struck them had we concluded these deals. We do not necessarily think every sentence in the deals is perfect. But, on balance, I think they are worth supporting. They are good for Australian workers. They are good for our relationship with Indonesia. We have been able to secure key improvements to the text of the agreements. In that light and for those reasons, I support these new agreements and I urge the House to do so as well.

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