Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do wish my good friends Senator Lambie, Senator Williams, Senator Birmingham and the other senators here today a very merry Christmas as well. But I digress.

These free trade agreements need to be assessed on their own merits. They need to be looked in their parts, and no individual agreement is good or bad. I strongly urge that, when we have the opportunity to look at these agreements in the new year, we make sure we are bringing the community with us. I think there were a lot of community concerns over the powers and integrity, and what has been given up by people in their bids to reach these types of agreements.

I would suggest to the government, when we are looking at these sorts of agreements, that we cannot do it in the vacuum of parliament, in the vacuum of bureaucrats and others. I think sometimes we are a little bit closed off from the reality of what is going on on the ground. If we want these trade deals to be successful, it is going to be about winning community support, and that is about making sure that powers that people do not want to give up are not given up and that community expectations are rationally and reasonably met in how we deal with these agreements. With that, Mr Acting Deputy President Back, I say to you in Italian, 'Buon natale.'