Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Trade. Will the minister advise the House of the need for consistent trade and economic policies for Australia's international trade reputation. What are the issues with these and what is the government's response?

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Capricornia for her question and for her continued strong advocacy for a region of Australia which is a great trading region whose prosperity depends very much on our capacity to maintain our export markets. Australia is a founding member of the global trading system, which has well established rules for the conduct of trade between member nations. Members are bound to comply with those rules. If they do not, other member countries can take retaliatory action against them. There are now 153 members of the World Trade Organization and more are trying to join up each year—that is, people want to be inside the World Trade Organization: inside those rules not outside. Yet the opposition leader would recklessly breach world trading rules and tear up trade agreements with our regional trading partners.

The shadow agriculture minister has introduced into parliament a bill on New Zealand apples that would violate the world trading rules and expose innocent farmers, including those in Capricornia, to retaliation. The coalition, in addition, is supporting a private member's bill on palm oil labelling, which risks provoking a trade war with Malaysia and Indonesia. Indeed, the opposition leader's antitrade agenda extends to his opposition to international trading in carbon permits.

The opposition leader has indicated his total opposition to trading in carbon permits. In doing so he shares the view of the one-world government conspiracy theorists that one tonne of carbon dioxide weighs—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The members for Mayo and Wakefield will leave the chamber for one hour under standing order 94(a) to continue whatever conversation they were having when the minister had the call.

The members for Mayo and Wakefield then left the chamber.

Opposition members interjecting—

The interjectors should cease or talk to themselves sotto voce.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was making the point that the opposition leader's opposition to international trade extends to trading internationally in carbon permits, because in fact he believes, almost uniquely within this parliament—the member for Ryan probably agrees with him—that one tonne of carbon weighs, wait for it, nothing. This is the alternative Prime Minister of Australia. He says:

See, one of the things that people haven't quite twigged to is that carbon dioxide is invisible, it's weightless and it's odourless. How are we going to police these emissions…

It is weightless, yet he has promised to cut emissions of a gas, that he describes as weightless, by 140 million tonnes. A 140 million tonnes of weightless gas! He is going to be going pretty hard to do that, isn't he? He is going to cut emissions by 140 million tonnes of weightless gas! I do not always agree with the member for Wentworth but I agree with this statement of his. He said:

Carbon dioxide does obviously have a weight, and if you drop a large lump of dry ice on your foot, you'll find that out very quickly.

He is right. I think he would like to drop a large tonne of dry ice somewhere else—perhaps on the opposition leader's head.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The minister will return to the question.

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition leader's antitrade policy has been topped off with the opposition associating itself with the failed 'convoy of no confidence'—or was it the 'convoy of no consequence'?

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The gallery will come to order!

Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If there is anyone in whom we should lack confidence it is the opposition leader, a recklessly, relentlessly negative opposition leader who has dug for himself a $70 billion budget black hole, whose antitrade policies are putting at risk the livelihoods of ordinary working Australians. Undeterred by that relentlessness we will press ahead in implementing the necessary economic reforms to create more jobs and more security in this country.