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

The type of preferential access that our trade agreements have opened up has enabled the types of records that I talked about before and, in doing so, seen benefits flow through. Nearly 52,000 Australian businesses were exporting in 2016-17. That number was up more than 16 per cent from just a few years earlier. That was a more than 16 per cent growth in the number of businesses exporting, and that's estimated to have contributed around 240,000 additional trade related jobs. All of that is partly accountable to the increased market access those businesses have. The Liberal and National parties know what we stand for when it comes to providing more market access and more opportunities for Australian farmers and businesses to export. That's why we'll continue to pursue the expansion of our free trade agreement networks, why we want to make sure that we ratify and bring into force agreements with Peru, Hong Kong and Indonesia and why we're determined to pursue opportunities with the European Union and our regional partners through the RCEP process as well.