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

I get up with great pleasure to speak on these five bills, the Customs Amendment (India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement Implementation) Bill 2022 and related bills. These bills, together, implement Australia's tariff obligations under the Australia-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement and the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement.

Before I start, I want to acknowledge that these bills here before the parliament today represent the great work that we, as the previous government, did while in government. Just a little bit of a history lesson here: over the course of the time we were in government from 2013 to 2022, we implemented a number of free trade agreements. Goods and services covered by free trade agreements when we came into government covered around 20 to 25 per cent of goods and services that we exported. With the implementation of both these agreements, it will get to 80 per cent. That is a wonderful statistic of the previous government in getting extra markets and extra customers for people in Australia who export both goods and services. He is not here—I wish he was, but he will be here soon—but I want to acknowledge the previous trade minister in the previous government, Dan Tehan, the member for Wannon, who did a wonderful job in negotiating both deals. I also acknowledge the trade minister before him, Senator Simon Birmingham, who kicked off negotiations with the India agreement. Both of them, especially Dan, did a great job. We will come to it in more detail, but the deal with the UK is probably the most comprehensive, most liberalised free trade agreement we've ever done, bar maybe the one with New Zealand. So great efforts by those ministers and great efforts by the previous government. Because of that, there are a lot of extra customers for our exporters in Australia.

On entry into force, just to go back to the UK deal: tariffs on over 99 per cent of Australian goods exports to the UK will be eliminated. That's valued at around $9.2 billion, to get your head around some of those figures. I will go through some examples here: $43 million in annual customs duty will be removed from Australian wine when the UK agreement enters into force; for beef, a tariff free quota of 35,000 tonnes at entry into force will expand to 110,000 tonnes in year 10 and tariffs on beefs will be eliminated after 10 years—so a completely liberalised market after 10 years for our beef producers; for sheepmeat, a tariff free quota of 25,000 tonnes at entry into force will expand to 75,000 tonnes in year 10 and will be completely liberalised after 10 years; and for sugar, a tariff free quota of 80,000 tonnes at entry into force will expand to 220,000 tonnes in year 8 and will then be completely eliminated after that. You get the feel here that, while there's a graduation process for all these markets, it's a completely liberalised market after that period, which is wonderful for all those producers. Young people will also have more time to travel in the UK for working holidays, with the eligibility to participate in working holiday opportunities raised from 30 to 35 years of age, with stays allowed for up to three years in each country. There are a lot of other examples there. It is a great deal. As I said earlier, bar New Zealand, this is the most liberalised trade deal we've ever done—so a great job done by the previous trade minister.

In 2020 India was Australia's seventh-largest trading partner, a two-way trade valued at $24.3 billion, and the sixth-largest goods and services exports market, valued at $17 billion. Tariffs will be eliminated on more than 85 per cent of Australian goods and exports to India valued at over $12 billion a year, rising to 91 per cent valued at $13.4 billion over 10 years. Again, I will give some examples. Sheepmeat tariffs are 30 per cent at the moment; they'll be eliminated on entry into force of the agreement. So, basically, straightaway there is a completely liberalised market for sheepmeat into India. You can imagine the size of that market, with the size of that country and the number of people in that country who have a great love for that product. So that's very exciting for our sheepmeat producers. Wool will have tariffs eliminated on entry into force as well. Australian wool producers will suddenly have a completely liberalised market into the whole of India once this comes into force. So that is very exciting. Tariffs on wine will be reduced. Tariffs of 30 per cent on avocados and tariffs on other agricultural products, including almonds, will be eliminated over seven years. On entry into force, the resources sector will benefit from the elimination of tariffs on coal; alumina; metallic ores including manganese, copper and nickel; and critical minerals including titanium and zirconium. There will also be tariff reductions on pharmaceutical medical products. Very importantly, there will be new access for young Indians to participate in working holidays in Australia, with a thousand places per year in Australia's Working Holiday Maker program.

We have been very encouraging of the new government to get passage of these bills. One of these deals was done late last year; the other one was done earlier this year. With both of these deals there needs to be an exchange of letters between the governments, and there are domestic processes we need to undertake. We really need that to happen by the end of November, because 30 days post that the deals come into force. So we were a little bit disappointed that the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, who have evaluated these deals, were set to sit quite late. They sat last week and have since reported back, which is why we're dealing with the legislation now. We're still hopeful that both of these deals will come into force before 31 December, which means we'd get these tariff reductions to first hit on that day, and then, on 1 January, we'd get the second hit. We had been working with the government to encourage them to do this a little bit earlier. We're optimistic about the deal with India, but obviously the UK deal may not come into force, which would be disappointing.

I do note that the previous trade minister is now here. I will just repeat what I said earlier about what a great job he did on both of these deals. I thank the previous trade minister, the member for Wannon, Dan Tehan. As I said, the UK deal is probably the most liberalised deal, behind that with New Zealand, that we have ever done. There will be great new markets for our exporters of goods and services. The Indian deal holds a lot of promise; there are a lot of good things in that as well. So I thank the previous minister and I repeat the stat that he would know, because it's a stat that he told me: when we came into government 20-odd per cent of goods and services were covered by free trade agreements; by the time we left government, that figure was nearly 80 per cent. So I thank him for his work when he was the trade minister.

In conclusion, I'm very proud of the work the coalition did in the whole nine years it was in government, for the great deals and the extra customers we have for our trade exporters in the goods and services area. I am a little bit frustrated with the new government in relation to the processes. I know there's a lot on their agenda, but I'm a little frustrated with the treaties committee process that we had to go through to get these agreements adjusted, but I hope they still come into force.

I know the member for Kennedy is shortly going to move some amendments. I want to touch on that for a moment. One of the reasons we were happy with the backpacker deal with the UK, when they came here not having to undertake the regional work program, was that we were working on the ag visa to supplement that. The ag visa involved working with countries in South-East Asia and making specific arrangements with them to increase our workforce, to help the agricultural sector. I'm sure all the crossbenchers speaking to this amendment today are exceptionally frustrated about the fact that the new government has abandoned the ag visa. While the deal we'd done with Vietnam will be honoured, we had plans to extend that through the whole of the South-East Asian network, and the new Labor government have abandoned that, which is exceptionally disappointing.

In relation to the crossbench amendment, I make the point that the ag sector needs a skilled workforce. There are unskilled roles in the sector, but a lot of the workforce they need is actually a skilled workforce. There's a side letter as part of this deal—and the previous minister may talk more to this—about getting skilled workers into the agricultural sector, which was a very important part of it.

There is also an element of this that we want to speed up, the visa processing ability for people who are skilled to come between the UK and Australia to also work in this sector. So I acknowledge the intention of what the member for Kennedy is saying in his amendment, but it was very specific for us that when this free trade agreement with the UK was done the ag visa was going to overcompensate for that. So again, it's very disappointing that the new government has abandoned the ag visa that we had implemented and started to implement in south-east Asia. Also, don't forget that the ag sector needs a lot of skilled workforce, which that the backpacker provision didn't adhere to.

Just to wind up, this is a really good day for parliament with these bills being here. It's a really good acknowledgement of the record of the previous comment and an acknowledgement of the previous trade ministers that we've had over nine years that got goods and services exported from this country up from 20-odd per cent covered by a free trade agreement to 80 per cent, of which these two deals were significant. That's more customers—billions more customers for our exporters. They're great deals from the great record that the previous government had in free trade agreements.

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