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

I'm rising to support the Customs Tariff Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Expansion) Bill 2024. I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that the opposition will be supporting this bill. The context of this, Deputy Speaker, as I'm sure you're aware and as I'm sure most people in the chamber would be aware, is that this reflects a lot of the work being done in this space by the UK since Brexit. Since Brexit the UK itself has been doing bilateral free trade agreements with a number of countries. We did a bilateral deal with the UK when we were still in government. The minister at the time, Dan Tehan, did a wonderful bilateral free trade agreement with the UK that's now been brought into force by the present government.

The UK is the 12th country to join the CPTPP. The CPTPP is known as a comprehensive, progressive transpacific partnership agreement. It's a multilateral trade agreement. Eleven countries were members before the UK joined. Those countries are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. The UK will be the 12th country to join the transpacific partnership. This is obviously the first country that will be joining that isn't actually part of the Pacific, but we welcome them anyway because the more people involved in this the better it is for all countries involved. All 11 countries have to agree to the accession of the UK to the multilateral free trade agreement and to the changes in our Customs Tariff Act. This bill is to do what we need to do domestically. I think it's a good day for the CPTPP, for the current members and obviously for the UK as well.

I'll go to some broader trade issues. Global trade as a total figure has gone from something like US$6 trillion a year to over US$30 trillion a year over the last 20 years. Interestingly enough, at the same time, global poverty as a percentage of the world's total population has gone from 30 per cent of the world's population to 10 per cent. Now, let's get a reality on that figure. We're saying that 20 per cent of the world's population over the last 20 years has come out of poverty, as measured by a number of agencies. That is an enormous statistic. That means there are literally over a billion people throughout the world who have a much better lifestyle and quality of life than they did 20 years ago. I'm happy to have the debate, but I would tie the growth in global trade intrinsically to that outcome.

What does that mean? It means that anyone who wants to improve the economic outcomes for the poor throughout the world should be a vehement trade advocate. I think that's counterintuitive for some of those people, but I would argue that quite strongly, and the economic statistics over the last few years back that up. It's interesting that countries still have the debate. It's never unhealthy to have a debate on anything.

I'm an avid history person and, since I became a politician, I've been a very engaged and active reader of Australian political history, as well as the political history of other countries. The Labor Party wasn't big when we became a nation at Federation in 1901—with all due respect to my colleagues opposite. The National Party didn't exist. The forerunner of the National Party was the Country Party, which didn't exist until the 1920s.

There were two major themes at that time. One major political theme that carried on for quite a while was the free traders versus the protectionists. That was the hot political debate in this country for many, many years. In fact, political parties and political operators were defined by that issue. I think that over time Australia has gone from more protectionist to less protectionist. Again, I would say that, like the global stats, our trade stats have greatly enhanced because we are now very much an open trading economy. I think we are much wealthier, and our quality of life is much better and higher because of that.

I know that there'll be a TV show about the Labor Party when they lose and leave government—hopefully soon, with all due respect. When we had lost government, from 2013 to 2022, a show was done about that—Nemesis; members opposite might have watched it.

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