Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health. Will the minister outline the benefits and opportunities that the export agreement with China will bring to Australia's health industry? Are there any threats to these opportunities?

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to take a question from the member for Longman about the important issues around health and services generally in the free-trade agreement. I want to congratulate the Minister for Trade on his outstanding effort at negotiating this outstanding agreement. Nine visits to China in 12 months, compare that with previous Labor ministers criss-crossing the globe but not achieving anything at all. This agreement absolutely will mean more jobs for Australians.

Here is a bit of an economics lesson for the opposition because they laugh when we talk about exporters. Australia's prosperity depends on our terms of trade, which is the relationship between our exports and our imports. The more exports we have, the higher our terms of trade and the better our standard of living and, most importantly, the more jobs we have for Australians because that is what this agreement is about; it is about jobs.

Interestingly enough, people often think of these jobs in primary production, in agriculture. In fact the Minister for Agriculture may like to know I was at the bar of the Royal Hotel in Wentworth talking about this agreement and a goat producer in the Far West said to me, '40c a kilo on goat meat starting next month because of this free-trade agreement'.

Health and the opportunities we have in health in this agreement are enormous and in fact unlimited because what the Chinese have done is give us access to build health, education and aged care facilities in China in an unprecedented way. I would have thought that the Labor Party, with so many union members in the health sector, would have been interested in the opportunities for health under this agreement. But in fact they are not interested at all. We have done in one year what they had not done in six.

It is now clear why these negotiations have stalled. Remember, this was an agreement that was started under the Howard government, stalled under Labor, finished under the Abbott government. We have done in one year what they could not do in six. We know why the negotiations have stalled; they have stalled because Labor is too frightened, too scared, too lacking in courage to negotiate an agreement that does good things for Australian jobs and Australia's future. They are not interested in prosperity. They are not interested in investment. They are not interested in future growth. The Leader of the Opposition has in fact trashed those future job opportunities for the young people in rural Australia because of the relationship that this opposition has with its union puppet masters—no courage, no imagination and the Australian people will have no interest in their policy.

Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.