Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to continue my remarks on the Export Control Amendment (Streamlining Administrative Processes) Bill 2022. In government we made it easier for businesses to navigate export systems and get product overseas, and we are immensely proud of our track record. Those achievements include delivering $328.4 million in congestion-busting measures to slash red tape and get products to export markets faster, and providing $85.9 million through our Agribusiness Expansion Initiative to diversify markets. In its first year, the initiative led to $418.9 million worth of export sales—great news for our ag industry. We finalised 11 trade agreements and lifted the share of trade covered by these agreements from 27 per cent under Labor in 2013 to almost 80 per cent with the inclusion of the UK and Indian trade deals.

We actively supported our exporters through the pandemic, through the International Freight Assistance Mechanism. This program supported more than 25,000 flights to 58 international destinations, carrying more than 399,000 tonnes of exports, worth more than $4.7 billion. That's a lot of numbers, but what it actually means is well-paid jobs right across this country, not just in our capital cities doing the manufacturing but also producing out in the regions. This program alone saved over 150,000 jobs in this country during COVID.

We launched the Trade Information Service to provide a single source of online information on how to export, including regulatory and border requirements. This initiative will save export businesses some 1,370 hours on average. We also appointed a Special Representative for Australian Agriculture, which has advanced our interests overseas.

It's worth recognising that in our last budget the federal coalition also committed an additional $100 million as part of our Regional Accelerator Program to go towards the Export Market Development Grant program, which would have helped our small- and medium-sized exporters in rural Australia to promote their goods in new markets. In their October 2022 budget, this Labor government abolished the Regional Accelerator Program, and with it that $100 million exporter grant program, as part of their $10 billion cuts to rural, regional and remote Australia.

The Regional Accelerator Program was intended to assist the regions to manage the transition to net zero, but it's exactly the thing this government has actually cut from those communities who will feel the challenges that a transition will bring and who might have had the opportunity to seize some of those opportunities. Has this government given any thought to those communities that are going to be left with the burden of the transition to net zero? It's not going to be in Kooyong. It's not going to be in the middle of Sydney. It's going to be in rural and regional communities where that burden will be borne.

Labor considered the Regional Accelerator Program rorts and waste. What a joke. I am talking about communities like Gladstone. I'm talking about communities like Dubbo, like Geraldton and like Alice Springs. They are the communities that this government thought weren't worthy of additional funds to assist in the transition into net zero. It's quite incredible. They're speaking out of both sides of their mouth. This Labor government has no vision for regional Australia, nor does it have the interests of regional Australia at heart.

To conclude my remarks: the federal coalition will always work constructively with the government of the day to support practical measures that will help strengthen our agricultural export sector. As a result of the work of the many dedicated public servants in the department of agriculture, who I've had the great honour and privilege to work with in my time in this place, the provisions outlined in this particular bill deliver on that front. Therefore, we're pleased to commend it to the chamber.