David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Cabinet Secretary, Senator Sinodinos, representing the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Can the Cabinet Secretary update the Senate on the government's long-term plan for trade, tourism and investment?

Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the very honourable senator from South Australia for his question. He is man of real integrity and does great things for his state. The new Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Mr Ciobo, has hit the ground running. His No. 1 priority is our trade relationship with Indonesia, and he is intent on concluding an Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. The Indonesia-Australia CEPA will create a framework for a new era of closer economic engagement between Australia and Indonesia, opening up new markets and opportunities for businesses, primary producers and service providers, and that means real jobs, including for people up there in the gallery. This is about real jobs. The minister's first overseas trip since the election was to Indonesia—that shows the priority we put on the relationship—where he met with the new minister for trade, Enggartiasto Lukita.

Australia and Indonesia both agree that our trade relationship is underdone, and both nations have committed to expanding our economic partnership. Indonesia is critical to our future prosperity, with a population of more than 250 million people and a rapidly expanding middle class who will increasingly be looking to world markets to satisfy their increasingly more diverse and sophisticated demands. Australia's proximity and modern economy give us a comparative advantage to help Indonesia grow. An agreement will benefit our traditional export sectors, such as resources and agriculture, and also our burgeoning services sector: finance, health care, infrastructure, transport operators. In spite of all these factors, Indonesia at the moment is only our 12th largest trading partner. Only 250 Australian businesses operate in Indonesia today. The CEPA will go beyond the traditional scope of a free trade agreement— (Time expired)

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Fawcett, a supplementary question?

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can the Cabinet Secretary outline the government's other priority areas across the trade, tourism and investment portfolio?

Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can report that the trade minister can walk and chew gum at the same time. While pursuing our trade relations with Indonesia, he has also been moving quickly to negotiate a trade agreement with the United Kingdom post Brexit. I can report that the foreign minister and the trade minister were both recently in Brussels and they were very warmly embraced by the European Union as well as their UK counterparts. There is now something of a competition between the EU and the UK to see who can sign Australia up to a free trade agreement the fastest. Another key area is trade in services negotiations. The trade in services negotiations cover 23 parties representing 50 nations, up from the original 16 nations. This is a global agreement that will have an innovative approach to the liberalisation of the global services trade. This is very important for Australia. We are now a services based economy— (Time expired)

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Fawcett, a final supplementary question.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can the Cabinet Secretary apprise the Senate of the benefits for Australians that will flow from the government's trade, tourism and investment agenda?

Arthur Sinodinos (NSW, Liberal Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a term of delivery. In part, the trade portfolio during this term will seek to maximise the benefits flowing from the free trade agreements that we have negotiated with China, Japan and South Korea. Our new FTAs will see tariffs slashed, if not eliminated, on a wide range of goods and services exports, benefiting everyone from healthcare providers in Queensland to dairy farmers in Victoria and mining engineers in Western Australia. Already we are beginning to see the benefits. Our export volume growth was double that of the rest of the world in 2015. We traded $670 billion worth of goods and services last year, which was an improvement of one per cent on the year before, during a time of falling commodity prices. And business is seeing positive effects, with 67 per cent of Australian exporters saying they believe business will be even better this year than it was last year.