Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Can I thank Senator Canavan for his question and acknowledge the extraordinary contribution he's made in demonstrating the incredible economic support and contribution that these two sectors make to the Australian economy, and noting that these two sectors that he refers to are in rural and regional Australia. Now, more than ever, it is absolutely important that our resources and our agricultural sectors are part of the road to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, because, despite the challenges that we have been seeing over the last couple of months, it is very pleasing to be able to report that Australia has achieved, once again, record trade surpluses of $10.6 billion. That means that we have now had 27 consecutive months of trade surpluses, and I acknowledge the extraordinary work of Senator Birmingham as the trade minister, and his predecessors, in making sure that our trade continues to support our Australian economy, even through these really tough times. We understand as a government the importance of our international markets and market access, to make sure that we support our agricultural producers and other exporters. Hugely important to areas are agriculture, fisheries and our forestry sectors, which do continue to remain strong despite the crises that we have been confronting, not just the coronavirus but the drought that has been part of the Australian landscape for so long.

This has been largely achieved through the amazing efforts of the free trade agreements that have been put in place, because they do provide extraordinary benefits to agriculture, fisheries and forestry. They provide new market opportunities by reducing tariffs and making sure that our price competitiveness and our efficiency and innovation levels the playing field for Australian producers in the international marketplace. Only last week, we saw Indonesia complete its ratification process for our closer economic partnership agreement with that country.