Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great pleasure to be able to speak to the Customs Amendment (India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement Implementation) Bill 2022 on behalf of the electorate of Kooyong. India is the world's largest democracy, and it has the world's fastest-growing major economy. In 2020, India was Australia's seventh-largest trading partner, with two-way trade valued at over $24 billion.

Victoria contains more Australians of Indian origin than any other state—almost 277,000 in the 2021 census. Kooyong includes many families in which one or both parents were born in India, and it has a large number of students and single people hoping or planning to make their permanent homes in this country. Many have told me that greater closeness and cooperation between our countries would give them a stronger sense of inclusion and acceptance in our community and, ideally, facilitate their own trade relationships and business dealings with India. They have also, though, described real challenges with paperwork and regulation in trying to establish businesses in India from Australia.

This legislation will strengthen our relationship with India, while making Australian exports to India cheaper and creating new opportunities for workers and for businesses. The legislation will eliminate tariffs on more than 85 per cent of Australian goods exported to India. Conversely, 96 per cent of Indian goods imported to Australia will be rendered duty free by this legislation. The bill will reduce tariffs on products such as Australian wine, sheepmeat, fruit and vegetables. This is clearly an advantage for primary producers.

Before the pandemic, India was Australia's second-largest source of international students, with Indian students contributing about $6 billion to our export market. The Australian Group of Eight member universities have welcomed this trade agreement, given the exciting opportunity to facilitate educational exchange opportunities with Indian students. The legislation includes provision for a $25 million project to deepen space cooperation with India, which is particularly pertinent to my electorate, and $28 million to launch a centre for Australia-India relations.

The research relationship between our two countries is strong. Between 2017 and 2021, there were more than 14,500 Australian-Indian research co-publications. Important areas of research collaboration between India and Australia include medicine, engineering and social science. Swinburne, a university located in my electorate, has multiple student exchanges with India and accepts many Indian students, particularly to its robotics and space programs. Extension of these Australia-India research collaborations should include innovations to expand these research pipelines.

Under this legislation, both countries will facilitate local recognition of professional qualifications and their registration. Having heard my Kooyong constituents describe the paperwork and administrative challenges in trying to register their overseas businesses, and having personally experienced at first hand the challenges in trying to register overseas trained doctors in my previous career, I'm able to testify to the frustration and delays inherent in that process.

The resources sector will benefit from the elimination of tariffs on critical minerals and metallic ores in this trade agreement. We have reserves in Australia of at least 21 of the 49 critical minerals identified by the Indian government as being necessary for its industries: cobalt, zircon, antimony, lithium and rare earth elements as well as tantalum. In the southern Indian states such as Tamil Nadu, which is well known for automotive manufacturing as well as its renewable energy capacity, these critical Australian minerals could pave the way for the transition towards electric vehicle manufacturing and clean energy production respectively.

I have to say, though, that one area of concern is how this legislation will affect our fossil fuel exports. Australia's fossil fuel energy exports in 2021 included $63 billion worth of coal, $10 billion worth of oil and $50 billion worth of gas, with India accounting for $14 billion of our coal exports. This represents 11 per cent of Australia's total fossil energy exports and 22 per cent of Australia's coal exports. Under this new legislation, liquid-gas tariffs will stay at zero per cent upon entry into force. The 25 per cent tariff on coal will also drop to zero. Under this free trade agreement, the prospect of zero tariffs on coal and gas, and no tariffs for five years on oil, will likely increase our exports of coal and gas from Australia to meet increased energy demand in India.

In recent years, we've seen that the effects of climate change in India have included extreme events such as heatwaves and floods. These have caused several Indian states to experience power outages in recent years. Depending on the weather and on the availability of alternative energy sources, demand for imported thermal coal may well rise too. We have a responsibility here. Emissions from coal mined in Australia but exported and burnt overseas were almost double our domestic greenhouse gas footprint in 2020. While that might work for the purposes of dodgy accounting, we all end up breathing the same atmosphere. We need to take responsibility for the climate impact of our exports. The only reference to climate in the 111-page explanatory memorandum of this bill said:

Both countries committed to continue to collaborate on climate change.

There are no references to climate impact in the bill itself. This is grossly inadequate. The details of trade agreements like this one have to be examined with a climate filter—a climate trigger—in the same way that we look at their compatibility with human rights.

The Australian-India energy partnership can play a larger role in a low-carbon world. To meet its growing energy requirements, India has set ambitious clean-energy targets, including meeting 50 per cent of its energy requirements through renewable energy and the rapid expansion of electric mobility to 30 per cent of all its vehicles by 2030. Those targets, we can note, are more ambitious than our own. Australia is in a prime position to assist India to achieve its clean energy goals through the supply of critical minerals. Renewable energy investments, particularly in solar, wind and green hydrogen, are expected to grow and gain traction in India in the coming years. Australia should help meet this demand.

Our relationship with India needs to be built on trust, common interest and mutual benefit. This legislation is a move in the right direction towards a stronger and more cohesive relationship with one of our most important trade partners. But we need to look actively for ways to accelerate India's development of a clean energy infrastructure to meet its growing energy demands in the short term and to prepare in the long term for a transition that does the right thing by both countries and for our climate.

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