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

I thank Senator Griff for his question. I know he has a strong interest—as do I, and I suspect this is an interest shared by all South Australian senators and by senators from all wine-producing states across Australia—in the concern we have around the imposition by China of a provision on antidumping measures of between 107 per cent and 212 per cent on Australian wine imported into China. Our government reiterates that we are not aware of any evidence that Australian wine exporters have dumped their product in the Chinese market. Indeed, to the contrary, our exporters have worked hard to establish themselves as reliable suppliers of premium wine to the China market. They've done so selling at, on average, the second-highest price point in the China market. China is, for Australian exports of wine, the highest-price-point large market, demonstrating that, far from dumping, we absolutely send premium product at premium prices into that market.

We are working closely, in response to these issues, with the Australian wine industry to respond, using the 10-day window provided by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce for a response to their findings, and to support the Australian industry in their response to these investigations. We also continue to work closely with industry to seek to pursue every other opportunity for Australian exporters to be able to tap into the rest of the world. Under our network of trade agreements that our government has negotiated, Australian exporters have opportunities in countries like Korea, Vietnam and the United States under previous FTAs, and in Japan as of next year, to be able to export wine duty free and tariff free into those markets. We want to support them to grow those markets, as we aspire to do in other markets around the world too.