Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wentworth for his question and I acknowledge the outstanding contribution he made to relations between Australia and Israel—and one of the things this government would like to see more of is a deepening of the economic relationship between Israel and Australia.

The approach that this government is going to take to trade policy, going forward, is a proactive one. It's going to be a principled one. And, where we need to, we're going to be patient. The reason why we're going to be proactive when it comes to trade policy is that jobs are dependent on it, jobs right across this nation are dependent on it, and we want to make sure that we are focusing on Australian jobs. This year and in the lead-up to next year, that will be our focus: jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs. We're doing this because one in five jobs are dependent on trade, and in regional and rural areas it's one in four jobs.

We want to make sure that we're continuing to back Australian communities by expanding the number of trade agreements that we have. We've already got an outstanding track record when it comes to trade agreements. We've put in place eight FTAs since we came to office. But we want to make sure that we do more. That's why we're in negotiations currently with the United Kingdom and with the European Union. What those FTAs will do is open up opportunities for Australian exporters to 550 million additional consumers—550 million additional consumers. Our exporters will get preferential access to those markets. That'll help our farmers, it'll help those in the resources sector and it'll help those in the services sector to create more opportunities, and with those opportunities will come jobs.

There are other opportunities for us also. For instance, because of COVID-19, APEC have had to go to virtual meetings, but we will be working with New Zealand to see what we can do towards the end of this year to make sure that we can get meetings taking place again within APEC because that will bring countries from across the Asia-Pacific together to create extra opportunities for our exporters. This Friday I'll be having my first bilateral meeting with New Zealand, where we'll be discussing how we can work together to enhance the Australia-New Zealand trade relationship—another key partner when it comes to trade liberalisation and when it comes to investment. Then of course there is the World Trade Organization. Everyone across the globe wants to see the World Trade Organization operating, as it used to 20 to 30 years ago, as a key driver of trade liberalisation, because that will create jobs as well.

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