Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation Amendment Bill 2009 and indicate the coalition will be supporting it. To provide some background to the bill, in 2003 Australia and the United States each challenged the EU’s rules regarding geographical indications, GIs, for agricultural products and foodstuffs such as cheese and processed meat. In April 2005 a WTO panel ruled that Australia and other countries have the same rights to protect product names within the EU as are available to EU producers.

Australia’s key concern was that EU rules required Australia to protect all their EU GIs before any Australian GIs could be protected within the EU. The panel found the EU’s approach to be inconsistent with its WTO obligations. Australia and the United States agreed that the EU had until 3 April 2006 to implement the panel’s findings. By this stage the EU had adopted the new framework legislation and the new procedures. Australia considered that some of the minor aspects of the new framework legislation were likely to be inconsistent with the EC’s WTO obligations and raised these with the EU. Wine and spirits were not part of this dispute as they are covered by separate rules.

On 1 December 2008, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, formally signed the Australia-European Community Agreement on Trade in Wine. The EU signatory was the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mariann Fischer Boel. That agreement was formally initialled in Canberra in June 2007 and replaced the first of such agreements signed in 1994.

The agreement ensures that winemakers have continued access to Australia’s largest export market. During 2007-08, Australia exported 397 million litres of wine to the EU, worth $1.3 billion, and imported 1.8 million litres from Europe, valued at $212 million. The EC accounted for just over half of all Australian wine exports in 2007-08. The main benefits of this measure to Australian wine producers are the European recognition of an additional 16 winemaking techniques, simpler arrangements for approving winemaking techniques that may be developed in the future, simplified labelling requirements, protection within Europe for Australia’s 112 registered GIs and capacity for wholesalers and retailers to sell down their stock under the old terms.

Australia has agreed to protect more than 2,500 registered European GIs—including from member states who have joined the EC since 1994—to protect 12 sensitive European GIs that have previously been used to describe Australian wines and to prevent Australian producers from using a range of European TEs in the language specified in the agreement, one of which is to phase out use of the term ‘tokay’ to describe Australian fortified wines within 10 years. The coalition, which has obviously been a part of the development of this program, is happy to support this legislation.