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

Our government has always recognised that the more Australian farmers and businesses are able to access choice and diversity across the globe, the better it is for them to build their resilience, particularly in some of the challenging times that we face at present. That's why, as a government, we aggressively pursued trade opportunities with Japan, Korea, China and the implementation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In line with the passage of the Indonesia agreement through this parliament, we welcomed the passage of the Hong Kong free trade agreement, which entered into force last month, on 17 January, which was acknowledged as being important for the insurance, banking and fintech sectors. I'm pleased to inform the Senate that the Peru agreement will come into force tomorrow, 11 February, and that has been recognised as opening up a level playing field for Australian mining, engineering and technological services companies and providing excellent opportunities across other services industries as well as in goods, wines, sheepmeat, kangaroo meat and other sectors which will all benefit from that diversification.