Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Trade and Investment. Will the minister advise the House on the importance of Australia's competitive position when our China-Australia free trade agreement is brought into force? What risks are there to this?

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade and Investment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Macarthur. As formerly a sergeant for 25 years in the New South Wales police and as a councillor on the Campbelltown City Council for 16 years, this member knows his patch as well as anyone in this place. He understands the enormous opportunities and the jobs that will flow in his electorate from the China deal.

Yesterday we introduced the enabling legislation for the China deal. From a competitive point of view, there is an enormous amount at stake in seeing this thing pass, and pass quickly. It will be transformational for our economy. The opportunities and investment that will come to help us produce world-class goods in greater qualities, our ability to provide services into that country across dozens and dozens of different services—many in the electorate of Macarthur—and the capital that flows will be transformational in our economy.

If the deal passes before the end of the year, we will see a double-whammy of two tariff cuts—one in the last fortnight of the year and the second-year one in the first fortnight of 2016. This will be another great aid to our competitive position. That is why today the Australian Food and Grocery Council CEO, Gary Dawson, said:

If the China-Australia FTA is not signed and implemented in 2015, the Australian agriculture and food sector stands to lose more than $5.5 billion a year in food export opportunities by 2018.

It would be the death of the dining boom.

We have sought to structure these free trade agreements to be the bridge from the mining boom—which created prosperity and lots of jobs—to beyond the mining boom, to open up opportunities for services, goods and other sectors across our economy; other things that we are good at. One of the things that we are very good at is agriculture and all the products that are possible. If this deal does not go through, the dining boom that will fill much of the gap of the mining boom will not materialise.

This was confirmed yesterday in the comments of the New Zealand Prime Minister, as our foreign minister said. He said that while Australia should do the deal— because it will deliver 11 times what people estimate on their experience—it would be in New Zealand's competitive interests if it was to falter. They would very much like to see the unions— (Time expired)