Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank all honourable members for their contributions to this debate on the Customs Amendment (Product Specific Rule Modernisation) Bill 2019. The bill will amend the Customs Act to simplify the way in which the product specific rules of origin annexes six of Australia's free trade agreements implemented domestically. The Customs Act will refer directly to the annexes, enabling future changes to the annexes to be recognised in the Customs Act. This will remove the need to proscribe the product-specific rules of origin in regulations and to amend them where annexes are updated. It's my understanding that these regulations have never been disallowed. In fact, this chamber, this parliament, has already passed into law, over the past two years, four bills containing the same automatic incorporation mechanism for PSRs.

The changes to the Customs Act proposed by the bill are technical in nature. They do not change the benefits available under any of the FTAs. However, these amendments will streamline the implementation of updates to FTAs that relate to goods; help facilitate smoother trade between Australia and our FTA partners; and reduce the administrative burden on importers. Further, and I think very significantly, it's expected that the size of the regulations for the six affected FTAs will be significantly reduced from over 3,000 pages to about 90 pages, lowering the cost of administering the FTAs and removing unnecessary red tape.

In the debate on this bill here today in the chamber we've had many red herrings and a lot of shadowboxing going on from those opposite about what is and isn't included in this bill. We've heard about this being unprecedented, how we haven't done this before and how it's about foreign workers or antidumping, but I can confirm for this chamber and for you, Senator Lambie, that this is about none of that. In fact, this bill streamlines the technical processes of updating product specific rules of origin for six of Australia's current 15 FTA agreements—that is, Thailand, Malaysia, the United States, Korea, Chile and New Zealand. This aligns these six FTAs with the practice that has already been adopted for all nine of Australia's other FTAs. This chamber and, in fact, the opposition and those opposite have previously voted for exactly the same bill for these other free trade agreements as we are considering here today. The first bill of this kind in 2018 passed with the support of the opposition. It applied to FTAs for China, Japan, ASEAN, New Zealand and Singapore. Again, I reiterate, this bill only affects the final technical step in this process.

A question that comes from some of the debate from those on opposite is: has this parliament, this chamber, passed other FTAs with the same modernised, updated practice? Yes, we have. The parliament has adopted the modernisation approach that is exactly identical to that contained in this bill for the FTAs for Peru, Hong Kong, Indonesia plus the Pacific Island countries and for the CPTPP. This parliament and those opposite passed this already. They're talking about consistency and a fair go for workers, but where is the fairness or the consistency in their position that they've taken here today? Despite what those opposite have said, this bill does not introduce a new process for amending Australia's FTAs. This bill is the second of its kind to be considered by this chamber. Therefore, that is not the case. For all of those reasons, I very strongly commend this bill to the chamber.