Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) under the previous Government, Australia finalised 11 trade agreements; and

(b) the previous Government's ambitious trade agenda lifted the share of Australia's trade covered by free trade agreements from 27 per cent under Labor in 2013 to almost 80 per cent by 2022;

(2) acknowledges that expanding and diversifying market access has delivered significant benefits to our nation's economy, particularly businesses, industries and communities in regional and rural Australia; and

(3) calls on the Government to:

(a) ensure that the benefits from trade can continue by immediately acting to ensure that the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement and the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement are entered into force this year; and

(b) prioritise the negotiation, and economically successful delivery of, the Australia-European Free Trade Agreement.

I think the coalition government from 2013 to 2022—and I think you'd agree with me, Deputy Speaker Buchholz—will go down as one of the great governments since Federation. What an economy! What a thing we handed over to the new Labor government! Economically, we had low unemployment rates. The now Prime Minister didn't know the unemployment rate, but the unemployment rate that we handed over to them had a big number 3 in front of it, which hadn't been seen for 50 years. We'd done taxation reform, lowering taxes both for individuals and for small business. We managed a pandemic such as we hadn't seen for 100 years. Australia, by every measure during that pandemic—whether you look at it economically or you look at the low fatalities compared to other countries throughout the world—was a great, stellar performer. We also had high vaccination rates. How would you mark the previous government from '13 to '22? You'd give them very high marks on most of the important ways that you judge a government.

The other one, the one that we want to talk about today, is trade. Deputy Speaker Buchholz, you know about this; you're a regional MP as well. We all know how important trade is to the health of our economy. I just want to go through some of the amazing statistics that we as a government achieved in the trade area through the last nine years. You may know, Deputy Speaker, that Australia has made 16 bilateral trade agreements with other countries. Do you know how many of them were put into force by a coalition government? Thirteen of them, and there are multilateral agreements as well.

So what does that mean in a practical sense? In a practical sense, it means this. When we came to government in 2013, around 27 per cent of the goods and services that we export were covered by a free trade agreement. Do you know what it is now, Deputy Speaker? You might be surprised to hear--no, you wouldn't be surprised, because you'd be all over this. It's now nearly 80 per cent. That's what we did in the last nine years of government. You want good access to markets for your goods and services, and we instituted free trade agreements that increased the proportion of our goods and services covered by free trade agreements from just over 20 per cent to 80 per cent, an amazing legacy that we've left the new government.

With which countries did we do that? During that time, we signed free trade agreements with Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Peru and Indonesia, as well as regional agreements across the Indo-Pacific, including the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations Plus; the CPTP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership; and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Again, this is a wonderful legacy that the previous government has left the new government.

We also made two very important agreements just before the election. One was with the UK, and this is very exciting. The UK historically, way back, used to be our biggest trading partner. It hasn't been for a while, obviously, with its relationship with the European Union. But the agreement that we've signed with it is exceptionally comprehensive, and we think it's going to be a very strong trading partner with us. Last week I had the enjoyment of meeting the UK trade minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, and she is looking forward to our trade relationship growing over the next few years. The other very important one that we signed is the economic cooperation and trade agreement with India. I know a lot of countries were surprised when we pulled that one off. It is another very exciting agreement.

The onus is now on the new government. Those two agreements, the UK and India ones, haven't been brought into force yet. They need to go through committee work, in our treaties committee. So the new government needs to get a move on with both of those. If they get those put in force before January, that means we'll get tariff reductions when they come into force, and we'll get another tariff reduction when 1 January comes around, because that's often when that kicks in. They have some work to do there. The one big one left, which we we're already working on, is a free trade agreement with the European Union. This is a test for the new government. They haven't got a good record, compared to us, with free trade agreements, so the EU is a big test for this new government. I certainly encourage them not to use New Zealand as a template for the agreement. New Zealand just made an agreement with the EU, and they gave up many concessions with geographic indicators—that is, you can't use geographical names in products. There's always a lot of grey area, too, around sanctions, or what that free trade agreement might mean for New Zealand if they don't meet certain international obligations. It is very important that the new government be very careful around those things. We expect a liberalised deal, a thorough deal, so it's a big challenge for the government.

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