Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise to speak on the enabling legislation for these two agreements, the Customs Amendment (India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement Implementation) Bill 2022 and related bills. Indeed, the Albanese government is pursuing an ambitious and purposeful approach to trade policy and trade liberalisation. Minister Farrell, in particular, has worked very hard to secure passage of both the India and the United Kingdom agreements through the parliamentary processes to enable entry into force as soon as possible. This enabling legislation being worked through today is the final part of that picture.

I have two responses, really, from listening to the shadow minister Senator Birmingham's outline of the coalition's response to the bill.

Firstly, I'm pleased to hear that the opposition will be voting for the bill. That's a good thing. It'd be pretty inconsistent if they didn't. But mostly I'm overwhelmed by the hypocrisy of the opposition. They're in here talking about bipartisanship on trade policy, but their commitment to bipartisanship on trade policy is paper thin. I was astonished to read an article by Rosie Lewis in The Australian on 16 September 2022, entitled 'Labor "dragging its feet" on trade deals, says Dan Tehan'. The previous government signed off on these agreements with no plan to get them through the parliament, pulled up stumps and then started complaining about the slowness of the parliamentary process. I suppose that's okay. I suppose that's politics business-as-usual for this lot. But what really matters is when they do it in a way that undermines the national interest. That article quoted the former trade minister Dan Tehan in India:

The Coalition has accused the Albanese government of "dragging its feet" on ratifying free-trade agreements with Britain and India … Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan, a former trade minister who has recently returned from the Australia-India Leadership Dialogue in New Delhi, said no one there could understand why Australia had not implemented the agreement.

There was no plan to work this through the parliament, and no urgency from the previous government to get these agreements through the parliament, but then they want to whinge in New Delhi and undermine the confidence of our partners in whether or not the deal is going to get done. What a disgrace!

He went on to say:

"(The AI-ECTA) is signed and ready to go. The only hold up is the new Labor government dragging its feet," Mr Tehan writes in The Australian. "Now Labor is in power and a free-trade deal that will eliminate tariffs on 85 per cent of Australian goods exports to India—valued at more than $12.6bn a year—is gathering dust. Every day that goes by costs our exporters millions of dollars. It is the same for the UK FTA—signed but gathering dust."

What hypocrisy! What dishonesty! What utter partisanship! There's no capacity to see the national interest. They're very happy to come in here and wring their hands and carry on about bipartisanship, but the moment they go over to New Delhi, the moment they are in Mumbai, they are undermining the confidence of customers and of overseas governments that these deals are going to work their way through the parliament—and why? To score a few little points in The Australian, to play to their conservative base and to pretend that somehow the new government isn't going to be as focused on these issues as it should be. What underhand, weak politics! What an illustration of how craven this new opposition are! What an illustration of their incapacity to be able to focus on what's in the interests of Australian exporters and of national interest! If you get between them and a few column inches in The Australian, you have to be careful, because there is nothing they won't say and nothing they won't do in their own partisan political interest.

I tell you what, if this is going to be the character of Mr Dutton and Mr Tehan and this new opposition—I know that the first few years of opposition are difficult, and there's nothing more of an empty vessel than a new opposition making policy. I've seen it, I've been on the wrong side of it and I understand it. Plato said, 'Empty vessels make the most noise,' and he was right. But what you can't do is damage the national interest when you do it. What you can't do is undermine our exporters and our firms. What you can't do is rat out the Australian interest overseas when you're over there on the public purse and you're supposed to be making a contribution in the national interest. Now, rather than an orgy of self-congratulations on the Labor side, I listened to shadow minister Birmingham congratulating himself. This is a very good development, and delivering these agreements through the parliament this side of Christmas does mean significant progress on tariff reduction and significant progress for exporters and importers. It's a good thing to get it through, but there is more work to be done. We're ready to commence the second wave, the more substantial wave of negotiations with India over the more substantial round of bargaining that needs to occur to establish the second wave India agreement.

I know that Minister Farrell is really looking forward to leading those discussions, and he's been in constant communication with his Indian counterparts, particularly Minister Piyush Goyal, who'll be leading those negotiations on the Indian side. We've got to progress negotiations for the Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement. We've got to work, rather than do the ribbon cutting that the other side always did—the ribbon cutting and then nicking off. We've got to work to deliver on both this agreement and the UK FTA to make sure it delivers on the promise. And there's a series of other very significant bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral challenges for the Australian government that we're going to work through. What we're not going to do is engage in an orgy of self-congratulations and what we're not going to do is play hyper-partisan politics. We're just going to do it in the national interest. We're going to do it carefully and methodically in the interests of Australian businesses and workers for a more purposeful and less political approach to trade policy.