Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

Are you? That's very good. We'll be very quick then, won't we, because there's not much that can be said about it. This is a customs bill to streamline product-specific rules of origin for four of the free trade agreements: the Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement, the Agreement Establishing the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area, the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement and the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. The changes made by the bill are minor and technical in nature, and you would have expected it, as I said, to be non-controversial. The product-specific rules of origin are obviously important for free trade agreements, so they must be met by importers seeking preferential tariff treatment for goods that include materials not originating in the countries and territories covered by the agreement. If the goods meet the requirements, they essentially are deemed to have originated in the country that is party to the FTA and are entitled to preferential treatment with customs duty on imports to Australia.

The specific rules of origin are based on the harmonised commodity description, coding systems and international naming system for the classification of trade products, covering thousands of groups and used in over 200 economies. Each trade agreement has particular annexes which are implemented domestically for each of the free trade agreements.

The five-yearly revisions of these harmonised systems usually require the free trade parties to update their specific rules-of-origin amendments, and the bill, of course, applies to these annexes with regard to chemical rules not included in the amendments to the Customs Act and implemented in the Singapore-Australia Free Trade Agreement. The bill makes minor amendments to existing free trade agreements and the Customs Act. As I said, these are minor amendments ensuring consistency between our legislation and the various texts of the agreements between Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and ASEAN. Labor supports the bill.