Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, service exports. Tourism and higher education—service exports. The value of the joint initiative is in reinforcing the importance of consistency, transparency and predictability in the services regulations. While many of the world's largest service markets, such as the United States, the European Union and Japan, have well-established processes for facilitating trade in services, the committee agreed there would be value in harmonising the processes that exist in emerging markets, including in our region.

Because the nature of a joint initiative is to be formed outside but alongside the WTO, there's a view that negotiations of this kind could undermine the need to resolve long-stalled negotiations in the WTO itself. But the committee is of the view that the joint initiative is a worthy agreement and on balance likely to reinforce the centrality of the World Trade Organization while creating momentum in multilateral rule making. Accordingly, the committee agreed that binding treaty action should be taken. I thank all the committee members, the deputy chair and the secretariat for their assistance in getting these reports and the inquiries beneath them done. I commend these reports to the House.

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