John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. That makes it a lot better now. I know Senator Cameron really wants to listen to what I have to say. Let's look at those tariff reductions. Dairy: tariffs of up to 20 per cent eliminated within four to 11 years. Let's look at the dairy industry. We produce around nine billion litres of milk a year. We only consume about 4½ billion litres here in Australia, so half our milk production relies on exports. Here is a huge market. Already now, Norco in northern New South Wales are flying fresh milk into China, retailing for around $8 a litre. They are prepared to pay it because they know it is good—the quality is perfect and it is safe. That is to start with, the dairy industry. The beef industry: tariffs of 12 to 25 per cent eliminated over nine years. This will make us even more competitive. As Senator Heffernan said, perhaps, hopefully, China will float their exchange rate one day and make us even more competitive.

Removing the barriers, and the lower Australian dollar, is good for exporters. Wine tariffs of 14 to 20 per cent will be eliminated over four years, giving us that edge over other countries. I notice that China was not part of the recent agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, so when it comes to exporting we have an edge into China that that those other countries do not have. It gives us a price edge, a quality edge and a marketing edge. That is why the demand is so good and prices are heading in the right direction.

Wool will have a new Australia-only duty-free quota in addition to continued access to China's WTO quota. The wool industry has been terrible since the early 1990s. I know it pretty well and I have not forgotten about it. At last we have seen an indicator of over 1,200 cents. The price is getting up there. The volume of wool has decreased enormously. We used to run 180 million sheep in Australia, in the late 1980s, during the wool boom. We are down to around 70 million now. Of course, a lot of those are meat sheep with poor quality wool—cross-bred sheep, first-cross ewes et cetera. The wool industry is looking much better as a result of this agreement.

ChAFTA will not allow unrestricted access to the Australian labour market by Chinese workers. I want to make that point very clear. It will not allow Australian employment laws or conditions to be undermined, nor will it allow companies to avoid paying Australian wages by using foreign workers. That is very clear. We have seen the wrongdoings in the Four Corners story by my good friend Adele Ferguson about the disgraceful treatment of workers by 7-Eleven. The situation is that those on 457 or 417 visas come here to Australia and, under the visa, the students are not allowed to work more than 20 hours a week. What did 7-Eleven do? They said, 'You will work 40 hours week, we will pay $8 or $10 an hour, and if you dob us in we will dob you in to the immigration department for breaching your visa and you will get kicked out of the country.' What a terrible blackmailing situation that is. I am glad that we are catching up with those who are not treating our workers properly. A fair day's work for a fair day's pay is something that I have always believed in.

As a result of this agreement we will see more demand, especially for our rural products. We will see more jobs in those industries and more processing. The growth in exports will see more money coming back into our regional communities. I have seen too many towns now that have not grown, with too many empty shops in the main street and high unemployment levels. Bringing wealth into rural Australia is a good thing for our nation, and it is an especially good thing for people who live in those regions. That is what this agreement does.

Without speaking for my full 20 minutes, I want to say that I support this agreement. I congratulate Minister Andrew Robb. I think he has done an excellent job in his portfolio with South Korea, Japan, China and now with the 12 countries involved in the TPP, which no doubt has to be finetuned or finalised.

I am simply amazed that the Greens would oppose this agreement, which brings more wealth into our nation, creates more jobs, brings certainty and brings more money back to the farm gate in rural Australia. Yet the Greens oppose it. There are some crazy things going on around here and I think that is one of the craziest. I suppose we will hear why in the near future.