Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on a wonderful development for this nation—the signing of the free trade agreement between Australia and China. This agreement is going to have a long lasting legacy for our nation, a long lasting legacy for our agricultural sector and a long lasting legacy for our services sector. It is an incredibly important document.

I want to start by congratulating the Minister for Trade and Investment, Andrew Robb, for the wonderful job that he has done in bringing this negotiation to a conclusion. Others tried over a sustained period of time and failed, yet within 12 months Australia's trade minister delivered not only this agreement but an historic agreement with Japan and also an historic agreement with South Korea. However, it is the China agreement that I want to focus on—although, I also would not mind focusing on the agreement we are going to make with India and the 12-month time frame that we have set for it. This agreement will also set us up for the future.

But let us concentrate on China. It has delivered for our agricultural sector. It has delivered for our dairy sector. It has delivered for our beef sector. It has delivered for our wool industry. It has delivered for mutton and lamb. It has delivered for our wine industry. It has delivered in all those key sectors of our agriculture constituency. There can be no complaints about how this agreement has set up our farmers to capitalise on the huge growth that we are seeing and will continue to see when it comes to demand for our agricultural exports.

It is not just our agricultural exporters who are going to benefit from this agreement; it is also our services sector. As all those in this chamber will know, it is the services part of our economy which is the growing part of our economy. This is where our future lies, whether it be in health services, education services, age care services, legal services or financial services—these are the growth areas of our economy. Why? Because these are the key growth areas in our urban centres and, whether we like it or not, it is the urban population that is growing in Australia and it is where the majority of our population is going to continue to grow.

This agreement delivers for the two key sectors of our economy—the agricultural sector and the services sector. It will also enable stability for our mining industries, because they now have surety of access into that Chinese market. So it is a win also for them. But how are we going to capitalise on this agreement? We have now paved the way for our exporters to get access to this Chinese market. But does that mean we rest on our laurels? No, it does not. It means that we now have to focus on making Australia and our industries as competitive as we possibly can. I say to those opposite: you need to get out of the way and enable us to do this. What we now have to focus on is making sure that we have an efficient and effective tax system. We have to make sure that we have a workplace relations system which will enable our employment to grow and especially our young people to get jobs. We have to make sure that our economy is as competitive as possible, because if we do that then we will be able to get the job growth and the prosperity that we need to make this country great into the future. It is great now, but we have to make sure it continues. It also means that we will be able to finance a world-class education system and a world-class health system, which our people want us to be able to deliver.

This government is creating the pathway to our future prosperity. We are creating pathways to Asia which were unimaginable, even 12 months ago; but we have to make sure that our nation can capitalise on this. The job has begun, but we will make sure that as a government we finish it.