Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to rise and speak about the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. This is an incredibly important agreement not just for Corangamite, a great dairying and agricultural region, but for our nation. Under the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, more than 95 per cent of our exports to China—wine tariffs of up to 30 per cent, beef tariffs up to 25 per cent, seafood to 15 per cent, dairy tariffs of 20 per cent, our lamb, our cheese and our services as well as our resources—will be entirely duty-free. This is a once-in-a-generation game-changer of a trade agreement, which will open up thousands of jobs. The independent modelling has shown that over the next 20 years some 178,000 new jobs will be created.

It gives me no joy to raise what is perhaps the most reckless campaign we have seen in the life of this government from those opposite. It is a deceptive and dishonest campaign against this agreement that Labor members know deep in their hearts is going to deliver great opportunity, particularly for our exporters, our farmers and our small businesses. I call on Bill Shorten, members opposite and even the Labor candidate in Corangamite, who is working hand in glove with the CFMEU, the most discredited union in our country, to end the damaging campaign against this agreement.

With more and more Labor leaders coming out to support this once-in-a-generation trade deal, members opposite need to get a grip. They need to start telling the truth. They need to start telling the truth about this agreement.

Mr Champion interjecting—

We hear from one of the members opposite who—

Mr Champion interjecting—

I do not even want to acknowledge who he is, actually, with all of his interjections. He spends far too much time outside the chamber than inside.

We have a situation again today where Bill Shorten has been caught out peddling CFMEU lies about the investment facilitation arrangement linked to our landmark free trade agreement. Mr Shorten said on ABC's AM program:

Currently it's proposed that for projects of over $150 million it's not mandatory that the jobs market in Australia has to be tested so that Australians get first crack.

This is completely and utterly false, and Mr Shorten knows it. During yesterday's Joint Standing Committee on Treaties hearing on the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement it was again made crystal clear that under the IFA, Australian workers must have been provided with first opportunity for jobs through labour market testing.

I make this very clear: proponents must provide evidence of their domestic recruitment efforts for each requested occupation, including advertising undertaken within the past six months. Senior immigration officer David Wilden told the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties that under an IFA proponents must:

… absolutely, mandatorily, have to test the labour market.

These requirements are outlined in black and white in the guidelines under which the IFA will be implemented. The IFA was modelled on Labor's enterprise migration agreement, except the IFA has far more stringent safeguards to ensure Australians have the first opportunity at jobs available under projects covered. Under the EMA, the only thing required was labour market analysis, whereas under the IFA both labour market analysis and then labour market testing are required before any workers are permitted to enter Australia.

Instead of continuing to peddle CFMEU lies, the Leader of the Opposition and every member opposite, and Labor candidates, including in Corangamite, need to start telling the truth. They need to stand up for jobs. They need to stand up for this game-changing trade agreement that will fundamentally transform our economy.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a pathetic display from the member for Corangamite. What an outrageous slur against the people in this parliament who are standing up for working people, not like the people on that side of the parliament. Let us not forget the party of Work Choices, the party of dividing and conquering the Australian workforce, the party responsible for the slowest wages growth that we are now seeing since the wages price index started being kept in the 1990s. What an utter disgrace for them to lecture us for our decision, for our responsibility, for our obligation, for our moral obligation to stand up for the rights of working people in this country because we are the only party that will do that.

You people on that side carry on against the union movement of this country, the hardworking union movement of this country, with slurs against the CFMEU. The CFMEU have more integrity in every single officer of the CFMEU than anyone on that side of this parliament. Every official of the CFMEU spends their life standing up for working people, standing up for pay and conditions, standing up for the rights of working people to organise for safety. Anybody who has ever been to a work site immediately after a worker was killed on that work site with the CFMEU, with the officials who have to go and talk to the widow of that worker, know exactly what it means to be a CFMEU official or a CFMEU delegate.

Those silver-spooners on that side of the parliament do not care about working people. They would rather stand in here and abuse the hardworking officials who represent the interests of working people every day than actually look at the national interest. They should be ashamed of themselves, and I know that they are going to be because the people of this country will not put up with their rubbish. I think the member for Corangamite is going to find out pretty soon that the people of Corangamite are not going to put up with this sort of behaviour.

Look at them. What do they want to do? They want to cut penalty rates. They want to weaken collective bargaining in this country. Look at WorkChoices. What was that but the privileging of individual bargaining—so-called—ahead of collective bargaining. It was a disgrace then and it is a disgrace now.

Fancy this ridiculous campaign against us for having the temerity, as we have the right to do, as we have the responsibility to do, to stand up and say: when it comes to free-trade agreements, we want to see free-trade agreements, we want to see trade liberalisation but we want to do it in a way that ensures that the benefits of that liberalisation are shared by everyone in this community and that means standing up for Australian jobs. No-one on this side of this House is ashamed of standing up for Australian jobs. No-one this side of the House is ashamed of standing up for skills, qualifications and safety. In fact it is our obligation.

Those people on that side of the House, on the government side of the House, should take a good hard look at themselves when they criticise us for doing our jobs, for asking questions about the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. To call us racist, to carry on as though somehow the party of the initial visit to China—the visit that occurred before Kissinger's visit—the party of the introduction of the integration of the Chinese iron markets for example, the increase in 1984-85 in the export market to China under Bob Hawke, the party of Paul Keating, the party of Kevin Rudd and the party of Julia Gillard and her Australia in the Asian Century white paper is racist is as ridiculous and insulting as it is irresponsible because we are not xenophobic and racist merely because we stand up for Australian jobs. We will always stand up for Australian jobs.

If you want to look at an example of a ridiculous approach to China, just look at the government's dithering on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Those opposite could not work out what to do with it. They were utterly hopeless and embarrassed us in front of the entire world. They finally saw the light and did what Labor had been suggesting for many months, which was to sign up to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, not before time.

Why were those opposite behaving that way? Perhaps it was because they are the party that is from the intellectual tradition of Billy McMahon, who thought that our support for the relationship with China was an asset to the Liberal Party because the Australian people would not want to see a relationship with China. It is utterly ridiculous to criticise us for doing nothing more than our job, which is to look after Australian jobs. We actually make sure that in this country—one of the richest, one of the wealthiest countries in the world—we do something about the increasing income inequality, the increasing accumulation of capital, about the fact that wages growth is slow, about the fact that there are 800,000 unemployed country in this country for the first time in about 20 years and about the fact that unemployment has had a six in front of it since their first appalling budget from May 2014. Those are things from which we do not resile. Those are things from which we will never resile. We will always stand up for working people. We will always stand up for a strong economy and nothing that the people, those craven people from the Liberal Party will ever stop us from doing it.