Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm rising to support the Customs Tariff Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Expansion) Bill 2024. I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that the opposition will be supporting this bill. The context of this, Deputy Speaker, as I'm sure you're aware and as I'm sure most people in the chamber would be aware, is that this reflects a lot of the work being done in this space by the UK since Brexit. Since Brexit the UK itself has been doing bilateral free trade agreements with a number of countries. We did a bilateral deal with the UK when we were still in government. The minister at the time, Dan Tehan, did a wonderful bilateral free trade agreement with the UK that's now been brought into force by the present government.

The UK is the 12th country to join the CPTPP. The CPTPP is known as a comprehensive, progressive transpacific partnership agreement. It's a multilateral trade agreement. Eleven countries were members before the UK joined. Those countries are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. The UK will be the 12th country to join the transpacific partnership. This is obviously the first country that will be joining that isn't actually part of the Pacific, but we welcome them anyway because the more people involved in this the better it is for all countries involved. All 11 countries have to agree to the accession of the UK to the multilateral free trade agreement and to the changes in our Customs Tariff Act. This bill is to do what we need to do domestically. I think it's a good day for the CPTPP, for the current members and obviously for the UK as well.

I'll go to some broader trade issues. Global trade as a total figure has gone from something like US$6 trillion a year to over US$30 trillion a year over the last 20 years. Interestingly enough, at the same time, global poverty as a percentage of the world's total population has gone from 30 per cent of the world's population to 10 per cent. Now, let's get a reality on that figure. We're saying that 20 per cent of the world's population over the last 20 years has come out of poverty, as measured by a number of agencies. That is an enormous statistic. That means there are literally over a billion people throughout the world who have a much better lifestyle and quality of life than they did 20 years ago. I'm happy to have the debate, but I would tie the growth in global trade intrinsically to that outcome.

What does that mean? It means that anyone who wants to improve the economic outcomes for the poor throughout the world should be a vehement trade advocate. I think that's counterintuitive for some of those people, but I would argue that quite strongly, and the economic statistics over the last few years back that up. It's interesting that countries still have the debate. It's never unhealthy to have a debate on anything.

I'm an avid history person and, since I became a politician, I've been a very engaged and active reader of Australian political history, as well as the political history of other countries. The Labor Party wasn't big when we became a nation at Federation in 1901—with all due respect to my colleagues opposite. The National Party didn't exist. The forerunner of the National Party was the Country Party, which didn't exist until the 1920s.

There were two major themes at that time. One major political theme that carried on for quite a while was the free traders versus the protectionists. That was the hot political debate in this country for many, many years. In fact, political parties and political operators were defined by that issue. I think that over time Australia has gone from more protectionist to less protectionist. Again, I would say that, like the global stats, our trade stats have greatly enhanced because we are now very much an open trading economy. I think we are much wealthier, and our quality of life is much better and higher because of that.

I know that there'll be a TV show about the Labor Party when they lose and leave government—hopefully soon, with all due respect. When we had lost government, from 2013 to 2022, a show was done about that—Nemesis; members opposite might have watched it.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've got a quote sheet if you think that will help.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't need it. Those programs always look at the drama of what happened when people were in government. But one thing that I think was a great achievement of the coalition government between 2013 and 2022 and which I always remind people of was in the area of trade. We did five or six bilateral agreements and a number of other agreements, including joining the CPTPP. That meant that in 2013 about 25 per cent of the goods and services that we exported were covered by a free trade agreement. By the time we left, the last two agreements we made in government were the bilateral agreement with the UK and the agreement with India. The percentage was at 80 per cent of goods and services by then, so those free trade agreements were great achievements of the coalition government between 2013 and 2022. We're the party of free trade and the party of trade which has increased the wealth of our country. We're exceptionally proud of that.

Why do I say that's been great for our country? When a country is selling stuff, wealth basically gets generated on what they sell. So exports are an exceptionally important part of generating wealth in our country. When we get markets for our food, for our mining, for education and for our services, we are better off. In my local community, people will sometimes come to me and mention the biggest employer in their area. It might be health or a big base hospital. Someone came to me the other day in my local community and said, 'The NDIS providers are a big employer and a big provider of jobs in our community.' That's true, but, before that, you need to be making money from the sector or an industry you collect tax from. That money then filters through to those public or government jobs. The biggest, most important employer in my area, is the Casino Food Co-op, which is a meat processing facility in my region. They're the biggest by a long way. They were here last night as part of the Parliamentary Friends of Red Meat group. They employ over 1,000 people. At any time, they have up to 1,200 employees. They have a facility in Casino predominantly for beef, and they have another facility in Booyong, not far from where I live, which is a pig processor. They are the biggest private employer in our region, and that makes them very important to me and to our region. Why have I brought them up when I'm talking about the CPTPP and trade? It's because they export 70 per cent of what they process. Again, that is why free trade agreements and the CPTPP are really important. Part of the bilateral deal we did with the UK and the UK joining the CPTPP means that I—I'm a very modest beef producer myself—and all our beef farmers and the people that work within that processing facility have more markets to sell to.

I see my colleague the member for Nicholls over there. I always get lost on the previous name of the member for Nicholls. We regional MPs very much know, understand and respect how important trade is. If I were to go through the four major trading items and group them, food ag is a big one of them. I think we're approaching around $70 billion. The other big three exports that fund our country, jobs, effectively the NDIS, our health system and a whole lot of stuff—because they're private jobs that we collect taxes from to pay for those public services—are iron ore, coal and gas, each of which we sell a lot of. Those three, combined with food and the ag sector, are the four export sectors that fund our country. Where are all those sectors? The member for Nicholls knows that those four sectors are all in regional Australia. You don't see, with all due respect to our city cousins, a lot of farms in our cities. You don't see a lot of coal mines in the cities. You don't see a lot of iron ore mines in the cities. And you don't see a lot of gas wells in the cities either. We in the regions understand that. We in the regions respect that those four commodities are very important in our trade world and our trade life and fund very much of what we do.

I know, Deputy Speaker, that you understand that, because you're a Western Australian. As the shadow trade minister, I had the great privilege to go to the Pilbara. To get there, obviously, I had to go to Perth Airport. I was at the Perth Airport. I'm sure you've been there many times, Deputy Speaker. It was about 5.30 am. It is packed at that time with wall-to-wall high vis. You didn't mess around going through security. Everyone had their high vis on. Everyone was getting on a plane. They did this very regularly. Everyone was just going, 'ching, ching, ching,' as they went through security. Everyone knew what to do. You didn't hesitate, because it was like a filing system. Then we got on the plane, shut the windows and put the Air Pods in, and off we flew. I'd encourage anyone to look at that. It's a great eye-opener and reminder, if anyone is ever in Western Australia, to go to Perth Airport and look at that. It is a great reminder of those important sectors. Those mining jobs that those people are going to are very important. They're well-paying jobs. One of four jobs in this country is dependent on trade and on what we sell, and they're higher-paying jobs. If you work for a company that exports, that is a trading company selling things overseas, you are higher paid, on average, than if you were in a company that is not involved in the trade industry. Again, it really accentuates how important trade and those jobs are to our region.

To close, one of the great achievements of the coalition government from 2013 to 2022 were the free trade agreements that we did. In 2013, 25 per cent of goods and services we exported were covered by a trade agreement; by 2022, that had gone to 80 per cent. That has grown markets across a whole lot of sectors—many more sectors than the ones I just mentioned. There is a whole lot of wonderful health providers, education providers and other services and goods as well; I have just really focused on the major ones and the big-volume ones. The CPTPP is an important part of our trading relationships with countries around the Pacific. It's great to see the UK join that. It's going to strengthen the CPTPP. As I said at the beginning, I am very happy to support this bill.

Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Customs Tariff Amendment (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership Expansion) Bill 2024, and I thank the member for Page for his contribution and his commitment to this bill. As he said, we in regional Australia understand the importance of trade. It is such a key to our economy.

Not one hour ago, I was in my office making a contribution to a publication called the Locky News, which is a small community newspaper for a town called Lockington. In the contribution that I made, I spoke about Lockington, a town of 800 people in a small region and what impact it has around the world. It has a great dairy industry, and a lot of the milk that is produced in Lockington finds its way to Fonterra in Stanhope. Fonterra is Australia's largest producer of mozzarella cheese, and that gets exported all around the world. I said this to make sure the people of Lockington understand how important they are: there is a good chance that if you are having a pizza somewhere in South-East Asia that the mozzarella started life as milk produced in the Lockington region. Also it is a great producer of processing tomatoes that go to Kagome or over to Shepparton for SPC, so there is also a chance that, if someone is making the pasta sauce somewhere around the world, the tomatoes were grown in this rich agricultural area. Trade has facilitated that.

If you go a bit further east in my electorate, the Goulburn Valley that surrounds the city of Shepparton really is built on trade. Obviously people will know my passion for a company called SPC. Everyone in this place is welcome to go and get a snack pack of Australian peaches from my office. Not only do we grow the peaches and manufacture them in the Shepparton factory—long may that continue; there is new ownership of SPC that is doing some great things in that space—but a lot of that fruit gets sent overseas for people to enjoy. There is nothing like some clean, green Australian fruit on the table. Fresh fruit also gets exported. The apple industry has massively increased in the Shepparton and Goulburn Valley region as a result of being able to trade apples overseas. The dairy industry and the fruit industry in my part of the world indicate how important trade is.

The accession of the United Kingdom to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership—we call it the CPTPP—is something we're very pleased with. The United Kingdom are a great trading nation within a rules based multilateral trade system, and they possess a strong track record of compliance with trade commitments that all CPTPP members must have. The CPTPP, to recap, is a free trade agreement between Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. The UK is the first member to be added to the agreement and the first European country to join.

Entry builds on that Australia-UK free trade agreement which entered into force on 31 May 2023. The free trade agreement between Australia and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was the first to be negotiated post-Brexit. Australia and the UK have a long and fruitful relationship, and the FTA is an extension of the ties that bind our two nations. There's nothing like walking through a Sainsbury's or a Tesco or any of the other supermarkets in the UK and seeing Australian produce whether it be fresh fruit from my electorate, processed fruit from my electorate or cheese or infant formula products that have the Australian flag in those supermarkets. It's wonderful to see. It's good for us, it's good for our farmers and it's good for the people who we trade with because they are getting the benefit of our fantastic agricultural produce.

In trade terms overall, the UK impact assessment suggested the agreement could increase bilateral trade in the long run by 10.4 billion pounds—more than A$18 billion—assuming a 53 per cent increase in trade resulting from reductions in regulatory restrictions to goods and services, trade tariff reductions, income and supply chain effects and UK economic growth. Almost all the Australian goods exported, by value, now enter the UK without tariffs, and this agreement really does put the 'free' in free trade. This continues the coalition's really strong track record on free trade agreements. Of Australia's 16 free trade agreements, 13 of them entered into force under coalition governments. One in five Australian jobs is trade related. On average, businesses that export employ more staff, pay higher wages and achieve higher productivity compared to non-exporters, and nowhere is that more true than in the electorate of Nicholls.

I'd just like to give some credit to various areas. Firstly, I'll go back to the eighties and the Hawke-Keating government that focused on tariff reduction and opened up Australia to more trade. I think that was a good thing for Australia to do in the eighties. It was a business-friendly government, and I'd like to see this Labor government be a little bit more business friendly in its aspirations. Be that as it may, between 2013 and 2022, the Liberals and Nationals in government finalised 11 trade agreements, including the FTA with the UK and the economic cooperation and trade agreement with India. We raised the share of trade covered by FTAs from 27 per cent in 2013 to over 70 per cent, and we actively supported our exporters to diversify export markets and create jobs and economic activity in regional, rural and remote communities, and I'll say especially in that great food bowl, the Goulburn Valley, which is in the electorate of Nicholls.

I also want to give a lot of credit to some of the former trade ministers who were involved in those free trade agreements. I've seen that the member for Wannon has just walked in. I want to congratulate the member for Wannon for his fine efforts as trade minister in helping to negotiate a number of those free trade agreements. The people of Nicholls, whose economic future relies on our ability to trade, thank him for that. I also want to thank the former member for Goldstein Andrew Robb who was also a trade minister and very effective in the area of free trade agreements.

The upshot is that the coalition believes in free and fair trade, and it's got to be fair. Some of the trade around the world isn't, and that's why some of these free trade agreements are so important. The rules based multilateral trade system underpins the global economy, and it's critical to regional economies, including the people I represent. The CPTPP membership will enhance the United Kingdom's engagement in the Indo-Pacific in support of shared prosperity, security and regional stability. This is critically important. We want people in the Indo-Pacific to be trading with us because if we're having trade relationships, we can have other relationships. We can have defence relationships. We can have cultural relationships. It's all built on trade, and trade is a critical part of global security—a lot more than people think. People think global security is about who's got the biggest weapons or who's projecting force. While those things are important, if we trade with each other, we reduce the chance of regional conflict. So I commend this bill to the House, and I support a bipartisan approach to trade agreements into the future.

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Nicholls for his fine speech, and I say to the member, I know that your constituents appreciate the focus you have on trade, on making sure they can grow and produce what this country needs as well as what the world needs and on making sure we can effectively and efficiently get that produce out to the rest of the world. I know your passion for making sure that what's grown in your area can also be exported and can be exported efficiently and effectively. And I commend you for the work you do on behalf of the industries in your electorate.

It's incredibly important that we continue to develop and grow the membership of the CPTPP, because it is a truly foundational trade agreement, especially in terms of setting the rules when it comes to how countries should trade in the Indo-Pacific. It is particularly important that we grow and enhance the CPTPP in such a way that we bring countries onboard that know and understand how important the rules based trading order is and that any country that joins a multilateral trade agreement or a regional trade agreement knows and understands that it brings obligations to live within those rules.

That's why it's incredibly important that we've got the United Kingdom acceding to the CPTPP as the first country outside of those that negotiated it. The UK understands how important the rules based trading order is. Having negotiated the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement with Liz Truss and then with the trade minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, we know and understand how important it is that the UK not only get its membership of the CPTPP but also know and understand that with that comes proper trade liberalisation and that they know and understand the trading rules. In negotiating the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement, one of the things I discussed with Liz Truss—and it was very pleasing to see her in the chamber here yesterday—was how important it was that the UK and Australia negotiate a truly groundbreaking free trade agreement, because that would then help UK accession to the CPTPP. And that's exactly what happened.

We have, in the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement, the best free trade agreement undertaken by this country in terms of trade liberalisation outside the one that was negotiated with New Zealand. And I must congratulate the UK, because going to zero tariffs after a period of time—for beef, for lamb, for dairy, for sugar—is not easy. But they were prepared to negotiate in good faith, and we were able to get a world-class agreement. That world-class agreement means we're now here with comprehensive UK accession to the CPTPP, which is incredibly important.

These negotiations are tough, and they require a little bit of dialogue here and there, and testing of the metal of either side to see where you get to. People might talk about uncomfortable chairs and they might talk about other things, but the most important thing is that you get the outcome you want, and that is what we got with the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement. I will say this: having free trade agreements is fantastic because that's an efficient and effective way to get your goods overseas, but you also need to be able to deliver your goods to market within Australia. You have to do that through your ports, and you've got to make sure that your infrastructure is up to it.

What is happening to the infrastructure in this nation—particularly in Victoria, and particularly in western Victoria, under the federal Labor Government and the Victorian state Labor government—is nothing short of a disgrace. What we are seeing is the result of maintenance budgets being cut at the state and federal level. We're seeing that infrastructure degrade at a rate that I and many of my constituents—and I know I speak for the member for Nicholls as well—haven't seen before. This needs to be addressed. It's all very well having free trade agreements, but, if you can't efficiently and effectively get your goods to markets, that impacts on your ability to compete with those overseas.

One of the prime things that needs looking at in this regard is what has happened to the $60 million that the federal coalition government gave to the state Labor government to invest in the Princes Highway between Warrnambool and Port Fairy. In the last two years the road has continued to deteriorate. It's impossible to see what happened to that $60 million. My constituents worry that all of that money has somehow been funnelled off to the Suburban Rail Loop and hasn't been put towards the Princes Highway between Warrnambool and Port Fairy. We need the Victorian state Labor government to come clean and say what has happened to that money. At the moment, all we're seeing from the federal government and the state government is maintenance funding deteriorating. It used to be that the federal government provided 80c for every $1 that went into the Princes Highway. That has now been cut back to 50c. Not only that; we've now seen the Victorian state government cut their maintenance budget by two-thirds. You will never ever get your goods to market efficiently and effectively unless you have the proper infrastructure: the road infrastructure and the rail infrastructure. You also need to make sure that your airports are continuing to grow and develop. The failure on infrastructure from both the Albanese Labor government and the state Labor government is nothing short of shameful.

We've got free trade agreements, which are wonderful because they help you efficiently get your goods and services to market overseas, but you've got to make sure that your domestic market is also working efficiently and effectively. That is where my great concern is at the moment as to what is happening in this nation. If you can't do that efficiently and effectively, it doesn't matter how good your free trade agreements are; it will still, in the end, handcuff your exporters. We don't need that occurring at the moment, because people are doing it really tough, whether it be our farmers or our export businesses. We've seen the latest data as to what is happening to small business across this country. It's collapsing. Yet they're the engine room of the exports that we deliver right across the globe.

Adding the UK into the CPTPP is a welcome development. I will say it was the coalition government that did the hard yards, the lifting in negotiating the Australia-UK FTA, that has led us here. It is great to see those opposite recognise the wonderful work that the coalition government did with the Australia-UK FTA. I know that the trade minister, Don Farrell, sings from the rafters every time he talks about the Australia-UK FTA, in making sure that he recognises and acknowledges that it was the coalition that negotiated and signed the agreement. I know that he's singing from the rafters about that having led to the UK acceding to the CPTPP, which is also wonderful, but—I'll go back to that other point—we should not lose sight of how important it is to make sure the domestic environment enables our exporters to do their job and go on and export. We all know how many jobs are created with regard to us exporting to the rest of the world. If we get our free trade agreements right and get our domestic infrastructure environment right, we can make sure that we will continue to be a great exporting nation.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.