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

I'll just be brief on the TPP and what's going on with it. My brother, Peter, and I set up a large piggery in the late eighties. In the early nineties, the then Hawke Labor government allowed the importing of pig meat because it would be cheaper bringing hams in at Christmas time when it's freezing cold in Canada and there's not much call for ham then. I thought this was crazy. We didn't have a decent labelling system, and people were getting confused about whether they were buying Australian ham or ham processed here and coming from Denmark or Canada. They hurt us farmers. Where I live, in the Inverell area, there were some five or six large piggeries. Today there are none.

We've gone past that. We've moved on to other things. I thought it was crazy. Australia led the world in reducing tariffs and quotas and removed all barriers, but the rest of the world was not doing it. I thought, 'We're suckers; we're leading the way, and it's costing us dearly with jobs.' However, since then things have changed. We've got the free trade agreements. There are many of them, from Thailand to Korea, to Japan, to China and so on. Now the benefit is flowing through. We're seeing the benefit in agriculture. There are record prices in wool, mainly because we run 70 million sheep now instead of 180 million sheep during the boom times. There are record cattle prices, lamb prices and mutton prices. There are record grain prices, of course, due to the drought and the huge demand and lack of supply there. But we've moved past it. It did hurt us. Now we're benefiting from these extra markets and a demand on Australian food as far as farmers go.

It is likewise with the TPP-11, which will remove barriers and give us access to their markets. They've got access to ours. There are no hurdles to bring anything into Australia as long as they are FSANZ standard of foods or whatever. Of course, we import so much in the way of manufacturing goods and whitegoods et cetera. But this allows us access to more markets, and that is only good. We've seen it from what we've done with the other free trade agreements. Sure, it's not always perfect, but it's better than what it was when these countries kept their barriers in place, restricted us from exporting into there and were being uncompetitive. Those barriers being removed adds trillions of dollars worth of economies and is worth billions of dollars to Australian industries, especially the agriculture industry. It's only a good thing. Some people mightn't like it, but the last five years have proved that free trade agreements allowing us access to these markets and getting that competitive edge like we did with Korea, Japan and China in relation to America have only been a good thing. We've seen the price in the cattle yards, in the sheep yards and at the farm gate. Things are looking very bright for agriculture, except for the rain—hopefully that will come soon. But I welcome the TPP-11 because it will provide access to more markets, better prices and more demand, and that's only good for rural Australia.