Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed, we are working hard to ensure that small and medium businesses can take advantage of our free trade agreements and be at the forefront of this export growth that we're seeing across so much of Australian industry. Ashgrove, for example, in Senator Bushby's home state of Tasmania—one of Australia's largest, family-owned dairy operations—have welcomed the fact that our trade agreements allow them to access new markets with lower prices, in terms of what they can sell or higher margins, because they no longer face the types of tariff barriers that were there.

We're giving practical assistance to small and medium businesses too. In this year's budget, we announced the $20 million Small and Medium Enterprises Export Hubs to assist small businesses in breaking down barriers to export markets. We've continued to ensure that the Export Market Development Grants Scheme, which had funding savaged by those opposite, has been supported by over $60 million of additional funding by our government—all of it helping to fuel our farmers and our businesses to sell more Australian goods to the world.