Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian government has done an absolutely fantastic job in relation to trade. It is a bit like debt, you know: people talk about trade, and they think, 'Trade's something governments do; it doesn't really impact upon us.' It is a bit like that with debt: 'Debt's just something the government will fix up; it doesn't really affect us.' Of course, what we really need is for Australians to understand that debt—and the $7 billion of debt that the Labor Party ran up—does in fact impact upon them very, very seriously. As with people's own household budget, when you borrow from a lender, some day you have to pay it back. And until you pay it back, you have to pay interest on it. But people say, 'That's the government.' Well, sorry, but the government does not have any money. The government only uses the money of taxpayers. So, it is the taxpayers who will have to pay off Labor's debt, which will approach $700 billion. And it is the taxpayers who will have to pay the $30 million a day that we are paying in interest on the Labor Party's debt—the Labor Party supported by the Greens political party. Imagine how many schools, imagine how many hospitals we could build every day with the amount we are now paying to foreign lenders on the debt run up by the Labor-Greens government.

And it is the same with trade. People think, 'Oh, trade—that's something governments do; that's good, but it doesn't really impact upon us.' Sorry: trade is very important to Australia. We are a country that is blessed with natural resources. We are blessed with fine educational institutions. We are blessed with a very energetic and innovative population. But we need to trade to be able to use those assets we have, and that means more jobs for Australians. And these free trade agreements that Andrew Robb has brilliantly concluded, in a very short period of time, mean jobs and wealth for all Australians.

I know Senator Milne is talking about how the corporate giants are ripping off all the poor people in the world. I would just remind Senator Milne that she is part of the one per cent of the world population earning a very, very high income. Yet that never seems to worry Senator Milne. It is okay for her to blame the US corporate giants and the wealthy people everywhere around the world, but I would just remind people that Senator Milne is one of those who is in the one per cent of highest-income earners in the world. And we never seem to get that recognition when we hear Senator Milne viciously attacking corporate investors into our country and indeed other countries.

Trade is important. The free trade agreements have considerably assisted Australians in their lifestyle, in their way of living and, more importantly, in their ability to be fully employed. Those free trade agreements and other trade agreements we have made with people in many instances do have these investor-state dispute settlement arrangements. They have been in place for ages. The Labor Party has entered into agreements where those conditions do apply. They apply for a reason, and that is that they are fair and they treat people equally. It does mean to say that if Australian companies invest somewhere else then those other countries will not confiscate Australian assets without the sort of compensation they would apply to their own nationals.

The Greens political party would have you believe that this means that corporations from around the world—not just America, although they are the only ones you hear about from the Greens—can dictate to Australia how Australia should legislate internally. The agreements we enter into do actually provide that matters relating to health and the environment—and Senator Canavan went into this in some detail—are not impacted by these investor-state dispute settlement arrangements. So, Australia is free to provide whatever it believes is the right legislation in relation to many issues that are clearly set out in these agreements. What they do say, though, is that if the Australian government, for all the right reasons, does confiscate property then the people whose property is confiscated, no matter which country they come from, will be treated the same way as Australian companies and Australian individuals. That is, if, for the right reasons, the government of the day confiscates property, people will be properly compensated for that confiscation. Now, what is wrong with that? I ask the Greens political party: what is wrong with that? Countries that invest in Australia and whose property is confiscated would be treated the same as Australians.

Unfortunately time has escaped me. I was going to raise the stupidity of the ban by the Labor Party and the Greens political on live cattle exports to Indonesia. That is a very good case in point, and, unfortunately, as I said, time is not going to allow me to elaborate on that. But Indonesian companies who had invested in Australia on the basis of a trade arrangement in live cattle that had been in place for decades and whose property was made worthless by a stupid decision of an Australian government should have been in some way compensated for that. But unfortunately time is not going to allow me to continue in that vein—perhaps some other time—but I would urge the Senate to reject this bill. (Time expired)