Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

I'm not sure if the jury was out before Shadow Minister Birmingham's question to Minister Farrell about whether Minister Farrell was the worst trade minister ever, but now the jury is certainly in. We had the global president and chief executive officer of INPEX, Takayuki Ueda-san, addressing a private function in Parliament House about the damage the Labor government has done to our trade relationship with Japan, and Minister Farrell just blows it off. He just acts as though that speech never happened. That is an extraordinary performance by a minister who is meant to be championing and defending the trading relationships of this country.

Our relationship with the nation of Japan is not just one of our most important trade relationships; it's one of our most important relationships in a geopolitical sense. We have the global CEO of a major corporation coming to this place and saying:

Certainty in policy direction and a stable regulatory framework will continue to encourage strong investment in Australia.

Unfortunately, the investment climate in Australia appears to be deteriorating.

I think everyone in this place would agree that the Japanese, in cultural terms, when they're speaking diplomatically, consider every single word they say extraordinarily carefully—every single word they say. For the global CEO of a Japanese corporation which is a major investor in this country to say that shows how far this government has caused the deterioration of a key trading relationship in just a few short months of being in government. Heaven help us after they've had the reins for a couple more years. What damage is this government going to do to our international trading relationships?

This isn't a minor industry. This is a key industry for Australia. The gas industry is a key industry for my home state of Western Australia, and foreign investment is a key driver of that industry. We need foreign investment to underpin the economic development of this country. We go back to the 1970s, when investment, particularly Japanese investment, into Western Australia saw the development of our great gas industry. And we've seen this government in 10 short months destroy 50 years of relationship building and being a reliable, stable key trading partner in the gas space with these major international corporations.

And it's not just about the dollars that flow, although it is a great export earner for this country, and it's a great employer in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. It's just a wonderful industry. But it's also about energy security for one of our key strategic partners. Japan is one of our key and most-enduring strategic partners, certainly in this region. For the government to trash that relationship to the point where we have a global CEO speaking in this place about the damage that's been done—let me quote a little bit more from the speech:

In Japan we say, 'don't cheat at rock, paper, scissors'. This translates to "don't move the goalposts after the game has started."

Here we have one of our key trading partners saying that we, Australia, are cheating at rock, paper, scissors, and the trade minister stands up in this place and denies—is just oblivious to reality—the fact that this Labor government is having a negative impact on our key trading relationships. And they've got form. They're damaging key trading relationships in the Middle East through their decision to ban the live export sheep trade. They're damaging our relationship with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. These are key relationships.