Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Fremantle for his contribution to this debate. It's incredibly important that we as a parliament are debating these bills today, the Customs Amendment (India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement Implementation) Bill 2022 and associated bills, because free trade is under threat right across the globe and we have to be doing everything we can as a parliament to ensure that we continue to defend free trade principles. One of the unique things about these two agreements, the India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement and the Australia-UK FTA, is that they were both negotiated and concluded in an environment where protectionist pressures because of the pandemic were alive and building, and, also, where the global push was to be looking at more protectionist pressures rather than moving on further liberalisation.

I want to start by thanking the ministers that negotiated these agreements. With the Indian agreement, my very good friend Piyush Goyal was absolutely determined to negotiate the first major free trade agreement that India had done with a developed country in over a decade, and he was prepared to put in the time and the effort to see that through. At a time when India was dealing with the pandemic and with enormous other challenges, he wanted to strengthen the relationship with Australia. For the time and effort he put in to make sure we reached agreement, all of Australia should thank him. We owe him a great deal of gratitude. He had to negotiate and navigate the Indian bureaucracy to get us to the point where we could sign the agreement. And he had great support from Prime Minister Modi, who is a huge fan of Australia. It was that combination of Prime Minister Modi and trade minister Piyush Goyal that got us, from the Indian side, where we are today. We need to thank them but we also have to understand and make sure that we continue to grow that important relationship, which, strategically, is going to be crucial to us going forward. There are many more things that we're going to be able to do with India over the coming decades to enhance and strengthen the relationship. I'll go into some of the details of what we achieved with India through that agreement in a moment.

I also need to thank Liz Truss and Anne-Marie Trevelyan on the UK side. Having come out of the EU, they were absolutely determined, with the support of Prime Minister Johnson, to make sure that they negotiated free trade agreements which set a benchmark for the United Kingdom—and they absolutely did that. Liz Truss, in particular, had a passion and an understanding of the importance of free trade and it was her stewardship, on the UK side, which got us to the point where we can say in this parliament today that that agreement is the best free trade agreement that Australia has done outside of the one that we've done with New Zealand. It fits perfectly with the closeness of the relationship that we have with the United Kingdom. Once again, it was done at a time when strategic headwinds were blowing in very different ways compared to a decade ago. Yet they ensured that we got a free trade agreement that will benefit both economies and both peoples in the years to come.

When it comes to the India free trade agreement, one of the things which is incredibly important is how it enabled us to diversify our exports where we were particularly vulnerable to those who might seek to use coercion against us to force us to change our policy approach. It enabled us to strengthen our exports when it came to areas like coal; to seafood, in particular lobster; and to wine where we had seen economic coercion used against Australia. I know that there has been some criticism about what we were able to achieve on wine when it comes to India. But the most important thing is, it has given us a foothold into the Indian market that no other country has. We get preferential access into the Indian market that no other wine producing country has, so it enables us to build Australian wine into the Indian market. Hopefully, over time, we'll be able to do that and then we will be able to argue the case for getting greater preferential treatment. It enables us to get those critical minerals and rare earths into the Indian market and that will enable us to diversify supply chains in those key areas. As we all know, at the moment those supply chains are dominated by China and it is very, very important for the globe that we are able to diversify those key supply chains in critical minerals and rare earths into the future. This agreement with India will enable us to do it and that should never be underestimated.

When it comes to LNG, we've got a bound tariff of zero per cent. Tariffs on pharmaceutical products and certain medical devices will be eliminated over five and seven years. On sheepmeat the tariff goes on entry into force. When it comes to avocados, onions, broad and kidney beans, cherries, shelled pistachios, macadamias, cashews in shell, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries all tariffs will be eliminated over a period of seven years. We have to understand that this is giving us preferential access to a market of 1.4 billion people. It is the largest country in the world, by head of population, and it is the fastest growing large economy in the world.

The opportunities and potential of this agreement are enormous. It sits in the background of what we've been able to achieve with India through the Quad, and it now backs that up with a strengthening of the economic relationship. I can't wait for the day that this agreement goes through the parliament and enters into force because it will tick the box on something that Australia has been trying to achieve with India for over a decade. As I discussed on the phone recently, with my good friend, Piyush Goyal, we look forward to, when this agreement goes through the parliament and the deal comes into force, having a quiet celebratory virtual drink so that we can acknowledge the hard work that has been done by both sides to get this agreement to where it is.

I want to conclude on the Australia-India FTA by thanking the hardworking officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and right across the Australian bureaucracy who put countless hours of work—days and months—into this agreement, but Frances Lisson in particular: the way she led the team at DFAT through the last six months of this negotiation, where we were working long into the night, night after night after night, to ensure that we got this agreement, being prepared to travel to India through the pandemic, making sure that we left no stone unturned in ensuring that we got an agreement that was very much in Australia's national interest. To Frances and her team, I thank you very, very much.

When it comes to the UK FTA, this is something that, once again, personally, I was very keen to achieve, because this agreement rights a wrong that occurred in 1973. I remember clearly, as a young boy growing up on a farm in Australia—it's one of my earliest memories—the time when the UK turned their back on Australian agriculture. They headed to the European Union and left Australian agriculture high and dry. The UK had been our major market and was where we'd sent most of our agricultural produce. When the UK headed to the EU they left Australia high and dry. So, to be able to get an agreement now that rights that wrong is incredibly important for Australian agriculture. What were we able to achieve? Tariffs on Australian wine are reduced. They are removed when the agreement enters into force. That is a $43 million benefit to the Australian wine industry. For beef, we have a tariff-free quota of 35,000 tonnes on the agreement's entry into force and, over time, that goes to free trade. For sheepmeat, there is a tariff-free quota of 25,000 tonnes, which over time goes to free trade. For sugar there is a tariff-free quota of 80,000 tonnes, which then goes to free trade. Dairy tariffs are eliminated over five years.

Right across the agriculture sector we see benefits: short- and medium-grain rice, olive oil, honey, nuts, wheat, barley and other cereals, fruit and vegetables. All are beneficiaries. Also, the UK benefits from access to the Australian market, which also means that our consumers benefit when it comes to cars, whiskey and machinery parts. We all benefit, because we get cheaper access to those very high-quality products from the UK, which is important.

This agreement also helps build the bonds between Australia and the UK by ensuring that young people in both countries are able to travel and work in each other's countries. This is incredibly important, because we've got to make sure that young Australians and young Brits know and understand the importance of the relationship between our two countries. Being able to travel, work and holiday for up to three years, for those under 35—it's been lifted from 30 to 35 and from two to three years—means that young Australians will get to know and understand the importance of these agreements, and that should not be underestimated.

This agreement will also help the UK as it looks to trade more with the Indo-Pacific, and it opens up the enormous opportunity for them of joining CPTPP, obviously the gold-standard agreement of the Indo-Pacific. The UK will, through what it's been able to do with us, be able to ensure that it gets access to the CPTPP, which mean it will be able to trade more freely into the Indo-Pacific.

I conclude by saying these bills are important because they set our economy up with two major global economies: the Indian economy and the UK economy. They also strengthen the bonds between Australia and India and between Australia and the UK, and they build on incredibly important relationships which have been developed at the personal level, between Prime Minister Morrison and Prime Minister Modi and, before that, Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Abbott. I hope that Prime Minister Albanese and Prime Minister Modi will be able to build a similar relationship. Similarly, when it came to the UK-Australia FTA, that close personal relationship between Prime Minister Morrison and Prime Minister Johnson helped us to be able to get this outcome. Once again I hope that Prime Minister Albanese and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will be able to build a similarly close relationship, because in the current geostrategic climate our relationships with India and the UK are incredibly important.

I'll finish on this note. One of the things that I would love to see our government build on going forward—and when I say 'our government' I mean the Australian government, because I've always seen trade very much through a bipartisan lens—is for us to look at where we go next. One of the things that I would like to see us begin to sow the seeds of is developing a free trade agreement between Australia, India, the US and Japan. A Quad free trade agreement, I think, is the next big picture in our trade policy going forward.

See this speech in context