James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Customs Legislation Amendment (Controlled Trials and Other Measures) Bill 2022. I will to make a brief contribution with two points. Firstly, I really hope that the adoption of this legislation, and the flexibility that it creates for the department to look at a whole range of trials within the prescribed format of this legislation, leads to broader change around the administration of export regulations within our government. Hopefully, it will provide a good opportunity to show that we can simplify things, make things more straightforward for our exporters and, in particular, look for ways to digitise processes and make things as smooth as possible.

I have a lot of experience in export documentation. Regrettably, most of it does not evoke pleasant memories. We understand the need for a very robust framework, particularly around things like biosecurity, and we want to make sure that all of our compliance is where it needs to be. Certainly, in my experience, all of the general bureaucratic processes around exporting tend to lag way behind technology. This is an opportunity for the department to proactively take opportunities suggested to it and undertake trials within the sandbox that the legislation envisages.

I hope that we see this driving broader change in the way in which the bureaucracy operates. We're here as a government to make it as easy as possible for people to export from our country. I really urge the government and the department to take any opportunity we have to learn from this and make exporting easier for everyone.

Secondly, because I have the opportunity in this debate, I want to make sure that we're always remembering how common it is for other nations—I won't name any of them—to use bureaucracy and administration to frustrate market access. This is something that happens very regularly. From a policy point of view, we think we have free trade agreements in place. We think we have World Trade Organization rules and frameworks that mean there's certain market access.

However, both in my previous career and since being a member here, I've dealt with many examples where this is not the case. In some of the markets that Australian businesses are exporting to, their governments and bureaucracies take every opportunity they can to frustrate and limit opportunities for good Australian exporting businesses, which are legally entitled to access their markets under the international trade frameworks we're all part of.

One of the most ridiculous examples was the changing of species definition of seafood from the original Latin designations to a vernacular designation; the exact same product was suddenly held at the border. Seafood in a cold chain storage environment was held at the border and and/or not released into a freight corridor because of that kind of a change. It was absolutely designed to attempt to destroy that business that was succeeding in that market. I think that that government absolutely did what they could to punitively make an administrative change that could have meant—thankfully it didn't—that that business was going to go to the wall. They were going to implement some protectionism around their domestic producers through that underhanded way.

Because this really talks about export measures, in conclusion I would also ask the government, when we are negotiating free trade agreements and doing the important work we do at the World Trade Organization at a multilateral level, to reflect and think about and pull together these examples of the frustrations that are put in place at the border, at the points of entry, by certain nations that are not playing within the spirit of the agreements we've got. That's relevant to this legislation because, obviously, we are looking for opportunities to make it easier and streamline processes for our exporters, and there are absolutely opportunities to put some stronger and more robust frameworks in place and some consequences for our partners in these agreements to make sure that they are purporting to want to provide market access to certain producers, like we do in return.

We are never guilty of this in our country, I might add, despite some of the outrageous claims about our important, strong biosecurity framework. We absolutely have a very clear, transparent set of rules and procedures around that. But I think we should be looking for ways of putting a bit more pressure on some of these markets that are using that sort of trickery like the example that I have just outlined to frustrate market access. We all want to play by the same rules. We all want it to be a fair, open competition. Australia has never been frightened of a fair contest when it comes to the industries that are so successfully exported from our nation. All we want to do is play by the rules. With those comments, I commend the bill to the House.

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