Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The CFMEU, for some reason, has attacked the federal government through my offices in Gladstone and Emerald over the Chinese FTA agreement, which was signed last week by our Minister for Trade and Investment, Mr Andrew Robb. This is a bit hard to explain. I cannot see where they are coming from. They say that the agreement is an attack on Australian jobs and on Australian standards and quality of imports from China. There have been no changes under an FTA to our Standards Australia agreement with any nation. That has not changed. We still have the high-quality quarantine restrictions on faulty products or impure products coming into Australia. That has not changed. It is not part of the FTA. But for some reason the CFMEU think that our standards have dropped because of the signing of the FTA.

The CFMEU put out a robocall to a lot of people in my electorate. I know it was not the local CFMEU. It had to be a southern CFMEU group who orchestrated these phone calls because they put them out on State of Origin night. This is sacrilege. No self-respecting unionist in my area would ever dream of putting a robocall out to people in my electorate and want to talk about FTAs on State of Origin football might. That is the first lesson they should remember. Do not do that in future. The second lesson is that they should check their facts before bringing on such a leaflet drop in my area and making these robocalls, especially when they are not right. They had the audacity to put it in writing. That makes it even worse. But I could tell by the number of phone calls we got in both our offices in Emerald and Gladstone that no-one took much notice of them. That was a good thing. Sensible people indeed!

The free trade agreement with China has been going on for 10 years. It started back in the Howard years. Then the Labor Party had it for six years. It took Andrew Robb 18 months to finally get around to signing it. This is a bipartisan agreement. Both sides of the House are in favour of free trade. Overall it does bring benefits to our nation—job wise, investment wise. So why would the CFMEU knock their own people, who will benefit from jobs and investment in Australia?