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

I inform the Senate that, at 8.30 am today, Senators Gallagher and Siewert each submitted a letter in accordance with standing order 75 proposing a matter of public importance. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot.

As a result, I inform the Senate that a letter has been received from Senator Siewert:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

The dangers of Australia pursuing the ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today’s debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The reason I believed it was important for this chamber to debate the issue of the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, in this place today—before we all leave for the end of the parliament this year, and we will not be back until early February—is that despite the fact that Donald Trump, the President-Elect in the United States, has effectively signed the death warrant for the TPP, we now know that our own Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, wishes to continue to forge ahead without acceptance of the deal by the United States. This is just a ridiculous proposition.

The TPP is, of course, an arrangement that has been struck over a number of years—lots of negotiation, but all done behind closed doors and in secret. The Australian people and indeed the citizens of many of the other countries involved in the TPP were not privy to the details of this arrangement until long after it had been signed by the previous heads of state. But of course there were a number of key voices within the room at the negotiating table, and they were some of the CEOs and heads of some of the world's biggest corporations—right there at the table negotiating for their own interests, not the interests of the citizens of the countries that are signatories.

Our own Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, only last week, when he was in Peru, effectively begged the United States and indeed some of the other countries to not give up on this agreement, not give up on this dodgy trade deal and instead continue to forge ahead. Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister of Australia, just cannot let it go. He is flogging a dead horse. He seems to be unaware of the growing opposition to this dodgy trade deal, despite the fact that it has cost an election, at least for the Democrats, in the United States. Despite the fact that Hillary Clinton throughout the campaign did slightly change the Democrats position in relation to the TPP, we know that this happened really only after a massive outcry from the American people and indeed a surge in support for the proposition put forward by Donald Trump to scrap the TPP if he was elected as President. Well, now he has been elected. This trade deal was dodgy from the start, and it is time it was dumped. There has been a clear rejection of the TPP as a way of doing these types of trade deals. They were negotiated behind closed doors. They were negotiated for big business, by big business, with the help of nation states, and they locked out the very voices of the citizens whom governments are meant to represent.

We need to take stock of this failure of an agreement such as the TPP, take stock and realise that there are fundamental reasons that the public and the community have so resoundingly rejected the deal across the region. Here in Australia, there is growing opposition. In the US, of course, and in many other countries who are signatories to the TPP, people do not like it, they want it junked. They want their governments and their heads of state to start thinking about the interests of the people and not just those of the corporations who are out to make big bucks out of those deals. From the ashes of the TPP, other trade deals will rise. We know that this agreement is dead in the water. It cannot go ahead without the US signing it, despite what the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, says. The clauses and the underpinning of the TPP mean that unless the United States ratifies it, the whole thing falls over. So why on earth we have a Prime Minister and trade minister in this country continuing to beg, and to flog a dead horse in this regard, is beyond me. It is almost embarrassing, to be honest. We know that the Prime Minister tried pick up the phone to have a hearing with Donald Trump, to beg him to change his mind on the TPP—but no, our Prime Minister did not get that hearing, and he looked just a little bit foolish in attempting to do so.

We know that new trade deals will be and have already started to be discussed, and that they will start to be negotiated out of the ashes of the TPP. We must take this opportunity to learn from the mistakes in what has happened under the previous negotiations. The investor-state dispute settlement—ISDS—clauses, which would allow big business to have incredible power over the rights of citizens and governments, are just atrocious. Those types of clauses must be outlawed in this country in relation to ongoing and future trade arrangements. This debate is not just happening here in Australia, and not just happening in the United States, but it is happening right across Europe as well, as citizens and smart governments are recognising that it is just not worth trading away their rights—under these trade arrangements—to represent their people and to pass laws in the interests of the community.

Giving massive corporations the power to sue governments if they change laws; if they introduce new environmental regulations, or, heavens above, if we actually ended up getting what we desperately need in order to reduce emissions in this country, a moratorium on coal exports! Under the TPP—under a trade deal that includes ISDS clauses—that type of moratorium would most likely be found to be illegal, opening up the Australian government to being sued by some of the world's biggest mining corporations. The TPP itself was only going to lead to a very small increase in GDP growth. It was not about maximising goods and services exports out of Australia; in fact, Australia's trade deficit to date is larger than it has been a long, long time. It is close to $36 billion—that is Australia's current trade deficit. That means we are exporting and making less money out of our exports than we are paying for things coming into our country. The trade deals that have been done by this government, and by previous governments over the last five or six years, have done nothing to close that trade deficit. In fact, it has continued to widen; to get bigger and bigger. We hear the government talking all the time about the budget deficit and about what a crisis we are in in relation to that—yet we never hear them talk about the massive trade deficit that is getting worse, day by day, because of the dodgy trade deals this government continues to enter Australia into.

As these new trade arrangements are negotiated, there is another issue we must make sure of—along with outlawing and stopping ISDS clauses which give corporations more power than the people in a country like Australia. That issue is cracking down on big multinational companies to prevent them from having a monopoly on things like pharmaceutical drugs. Not many people know that under the TPP, big pharmaceutical companies in the US were going to get a boon from having a massive monopoly for years on life-saving cancer drugs. New drugs to combat cancer were going to be more expensive for Australians—for the Australian government under the PBS, and for Australians trying to access those new drugs. Those prices were going to go through the roof under the TPP. Big pharmaceutical companies wanted the TPP but, I tell you what, cancer patients did not. There were going to be poor labour rights and poor labour rights protections under the TPP. We need to make sure that, if we are going to enter into trade deals—which of course we need to do, because we need to be exporting things to the rest of the world—let us make sure we lift standards, not lower them; let us ensure that we lift workers' rights and protections, not push them down to the lowest common denominator. There are a number of things that we need to take from the ashes of the TPP and implement in any deals going forward. (Time expired)

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Acting Deputy President Marshall, I pose a question to the chamber and, through you, to those in the public gallery. In a country that has the population of Greater New York but has the land mass of continental USA with the exception of Alaska, how is it that, per capita, Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world? Stop to reflect on the answer. It is or has been twofold. The first reason was cheap energy. Well, that is going now. The great advantage that Australia had in terms of cheap energy has now, largely, dissipated. The best example of that is in Senator Hanson-Young's home state of South Australia, where originally the Liberal Premier—Playford, many years ago—had the realisation that South Australia did not have much going for it, and that therefore he had better create cheap energy. And he did. In so doing, he attracted a car-manufacturing industry and a naval shipbuilding industry, amongst others. There are three things about South Australia today which are due to its increasing reliance on unreliable renewables. First of all, it has had blackouts, and it will have more statewide blackouts. Secondly, it has the most expensive power in Australia. And, thirdly, that power price is going up and up.

I come to the second reason why Australians have been and are so wealthy per capita in this massive landmass where we have 24 million people. The reason is and has been that we always have been an active trading nation. We are the envy of the world, and I will tell you why. In 2016-17 we have the 25th year of uninterrupted economic growth. We are the only country in the world to have had a quarter of a century of economic growth. And why has that been? Why is it now? Why must it continue into the future? It is because of our export trade activity and the activity of our trade internationally.

For example, take my own home state of Western Australia. We will harvest somewhere between 16 and 17 million tonnes of grain this year, and 1.6 million of us cannot eat 17 million tonnes of grain. We export 95-plus per cent of it, and grain is of course only one example of our exports. When you have a look at where the wealth of our exports has been, in the 1950s it was wool: Australia grew on the sheep's back. It does so no longer, but nevertheless agricultural produce is still a significant export income earner for our nation. Of course from my home state we export some 600 million tonnes of iron ore each year. That is about 1.3 million or 1.7 million tonnes a day, seven days a week. We are still the world's largest exporter of safe thermal coal—high energy and low sulphur. And, of course, we are the largest exporter of coking coal, which goes into steel manufacture. And why have we been able to do this? Because we have excellent trading relationships.

When you look at the imports and the price that we now enjoy, for example, going back, just have a look at the old video recorders. How much did we pay for them years ago ? It was $600 and $700, and of course, as a result of trading arrangements with our neighbours, including our Asian neighbours, we saw a decrease in those costs. You can think of commodities all over the place. When we stopped our horrible long tariff protection, particularly in New South Wales and Victoria, we started to see a freeing up of trade.

Mr Trump and Ms Clinton indicated that they would not be supporting the USA signing up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a partnership of some 12 countries that represent 40 per cent of global economic activity and a quarter of all world trade. If you are a small-population country in a big landmass and you have a stack of commodities that you want to sell, why would you not want to be part of what is 40 per cent of world trade and is in our region? But let us have a look at the countries in our own region, countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Vietnam. Some of these countries do not enjoy some of the standards that our country enjoys—industrial relations and occupational health and safety, for example, in their workplaces. So by joining into a TPP we have an influence on other countries of the world to actually improve their standards of occupational safety and health and welfare.

Before I go on to things other than commodities, let me speak to you for a moment about the investor-state dispute system which is so much the subject of concern. You would think from listening to conversation that this is in some way some horrific envelope that sits over the top of us. There has never been a successful case in which Australia has been the adverse subject of an ISDS claim—never, ever. But I speak also as somebody who has done business throughout Asia, India and the Middle East. ISDS, the investor-state dispute system, has protections for us. I was in business in India. We were the subject of unfair contractual obligation imposed on us by the Indian government. There being no ISDS in place, we had no capacity to be able to challenge the government of India when they imposed taxes upon us which we simply could not sustain. So, when you hear about all this ISDS et cetera, it protects Australian industry and business in the same way that it protects others. But of course you will never hear that from Senator Hanson-Young and others. In the carve-out that Mr Robb was able to negotiate, you make sure that you exclude your country from any environmental adverse impacts, for example. You make sure that you exclude your country from anything that might relate, for example, to the health space. We heard about this voracious United States pharmaceutical industry. Let me tell you what actually happened as part of the negotiations. Mr Andrew Robb successfully negotiated that there would be no adverse impact on the Australian pharmaceutical industry. It is funny how the truth hurts, isn't it?

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

Might I be allowed to continue without this prattling that comes from that side? I do not remember interfering in Senator Hanson-Young's contribution—unhelpful and all as it was. But I want to say to you that the Americans turned around and said to Mr Andrew Robb, 'What you have in place in Australia could be to the advantage of the American consumers.' So once again a system is in place in which, by sharing trade around the world, it advantages.

It is the case at the moment that Mr Trump has said that he is not interested in a TPP. It will be of enormous benefit to the United States, but there are other countries—Mexico, Peru and Chile—into which Australia can trade.

Let me give you a quick example. Our vehicle manufacturing industry is coming to a close, but the Mexicans produce three million cars a year, moving up to five million. When I was in Mexico in January last year, they said to me, 'We know about the excellence of your vehicle component manufacturing industry.' That led to consultations in Adelaide and Melbourne by Austrade and the Mexican Embassy. Do you know who they negotiated with? Australian vehicle component manufacturers. There are now opportunities for Australian vehicle component manufacturers to sell into Mexico. Should we negotiate free trade agreements with Mexico, that would then, of course, be tariff free.

The point that I wish to leave the chamber with is this: services contribute 70 per cent of economic activity in Australia at the moment, but we only earn 17 per cent from services exports. Imagine the benefit to this country, to students, to the economy, to families if, indeed, our services could increase from 17 per cent as a contributor to exports to say 25 or 30 per cent. The sky is the limit. We must participate in free trade and trade activities around the world. Imagine what it would be like if we do not have a TPP.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

More than a week ago Labor made the public observation that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead. We did so on the back of the very public statements by President-elect Trump that he remains opposed to the trade deal. That was more than a week ago, but only today the Greens political party have decided to raise this in the Senate. Nonetheless, it probably is an occasion to again give some indication about how we think about trade going forward.

For the TPP to come into effect it must be ratified by the United States. Given the outcome of this month's US election, Labor had written to the government asking that consideration of the TPP by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties be suspended. They have refused that request. It really is up to the government now to make clear how the TPP could progress without the participation of the United States government, and they are yet to do so. The events of the US presidential election and the consequent demise of the TPP will, of course, delay any of the trade benefits that that agreement may have delivered. But they also give us an opportunity to achieve further outcomes for Australian workers in our future trade deals.

Labor has a long record of advocacy for global trade because it builds a pathway to a high-skill highway to the future for working Australians. Our region will be home to three billion middle-class consumers by 2030, and it is not hard to see how trade with our neighbours will be essential for the future of Australian jobs. We are now looking, though, to what happens next. Labor wants to ensure that we do have a real but fair plan to engage with our region—a fair way to provide jobs, improve living standards and reduce poverty not just here but overseas, in our region and with our regional neighbours.

The TPP was not without flaws. We have consistently put pressure on the government to resolve the problems of the TPP that was. In this agreement, as with many others, Labor stood firm against the government's decision to allow companies to bring in workers from Canada, Peru, Mexico, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam without first checking if there is an Australian worker who can do that job. Our position on the TPP was always that local companies must be compelled to test the labour market before they bring in other workers. Instead, Mr Turnbull traded away those protections. He traded away those protections to six countries. He traded away what could have been many thousands of jobs.

In the course of the negotiations no other country was as generous with their reciprocal visa rights as Australia. The Labor team and I are unable to account for the concessions on this front that are offered in the TPP, unless the government's agenda was to find yet another way to undermine existing arrangements for pay and conditions. We have a consistent position on labour market testing for the TPP and for many other agreements. Our position would have provided essential support for local Australian jobs, and we will maintain our position on the need for these protections in any agreements in the future.

I want to talk too about the investor-state dispute settlement arrangements. We have consistently expressed our concern about provisions that make Australia vulnerable to legal action by foreign companies. There is a principle here: there are no benefits that flow from trade that could ever override the fundamental need for sovereign governments to uphold their ability to make laws on behalf of their citizens. We believe that parts of the TPP that dealt with ISDS arrangements created a false impression that that mechanism had no potential to affect the sovereign capacity of the Australian government—and we were not alone in this view.

In 2010 the Productivity Commission said that the Australians government should seek to avoid accepting provisions in trade agreements that confer additional substantive or procedural rights on foreign investors over and above those already provided by the Australian legal system. We have had firsthand experience of how those ISDS clauses can frustrate proper government decision making. That was, of course, in the case of tobacco packaging, which followed the enactment of a groundbreaking reform by the Labor government at the time. The case was ultimately found to be unjustified, but not before the government had spent years and literally millions of dollars fighting that case. If the tobacco company had won their case, Australia would have been faced with abandoning the plain packaging, public health initiative, or paying compensation to the complainants.

We are talking a lot in this chamber at the moment about chilling effects. My concern, which I think is a reasonable one, is that there is a very real risk that the ISDS provisions will have a chilling effect on public policy that would arise from foreign governments being able to sue the Australian government should we seek to enact measures that protect the public interest. We are concerned too about the process—not just with this trade agreement, but certainly with the TPP—because there has been significant concern about how those discussions were dealt with and how much visibility this parliament and the Australian public had.

The lack of transparency to us seemed to be excessive, particularly in the context of reports from the US which suggested that much more comprehensive briefings are available there for business and for civil society. Now, we do not call upon the government to provide a copy of every draft. We understand that a negotiation requires some level of confidential dealings between the parties. We recognise that these are practical constraints, but we do call for parliament to be able to have a more complete oversight of the negotiations—a more complete oversight about where the agreement is heading. I would say to the government that this is the way to bring the Australian public along with you. Give people a sense of where we are heading. Take people into your confidence because secret agreements without any clear direction about what is at stake and without an honest conversation about what is at stake are unlikely to gain public support.

I will say that I am a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties and we did hear evidence from business that they feel that they could have had more access to information, that in the United States the approach to consultation is not so formal. It is more informal, but it is more extensive and it is more regular, and it gives business an opportunity to provide real input to government about what measures in the treaty would really benefit them, what things would really help them in terms of their export arrangements. For anyone who is interested in how we might improve our treaty-making process, I actually commend that evidence that was provided to the committee, because it was actually very interesting.

Where are we going next? I think, following the outcome of the election in the United States, negotiations for the next round of multinational trade deals will likely look very different, but some things will not change. Labor, and the Labor team, will always fight for a fair distribution of trade benefits, and we know that there are many people who feel displaced by changes to the economy that arise, in part, from international trade. The evidence shows that, in aggregate, international trade does deliver benefits, but there is little dispute that those benefits are distributed in very unequal ways. And trade benefits, in the aggregate, often come at the cost of local communities, specific regions and specific industries as well as to individual men and women who are affected by structural change to the economy. And we will always argue for targeted adjustment that ensures that Australians are lifted up and not left behind by economic change, and we will advocate for a social safety net that means that equality in this country stays as it is, improves, that we do not have worsening inequality and increasing disenfranchisement from the political system.

As we move into the next phase of trade deals and negotiations, we will remain steadfast in our view that we will not support trade deals that lack a foundation of widespread consultation, that constrain our public services, that adversely affect international property protections or that weaken the domestic labour market in job availability and core work standards. We will not accept trade agreements that diminish environmental protections and we will not accept trade agreements that fail to take account of social as well as economic impacts. These are the standards that the Australian government ought to meet in the interests of the Australian people so that we can grow our economy in our region and deliver better jobs for Australian working men and women.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend Senator Hanson-Young for moving this motion. This is an important debate because it seems that, with the election of Donald Trump as President-elect of the United States, the TPP will not be proceeded with by the US, and that was the fulcrum for this trade deal. I think we need to reflect, both in terms of trade deals generally, their importance and the problems we have had with them, and also to reflect on Donald Trump's role in respect of the TPP.

I want to pay tribute to Dr Patricia Ranald, a research associate at the University of Sydney and the Coordinator of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, AFTINET. She makes a point that Donald Trump did not kill the TPP. His opposition was only the final blow which came at the end of more than six years of criticism of the TPP in the US, Australia and other TPP countries by a whole range of community groups.

I think we need to look at the context of the TPP. It was not just about trade issues. It was about sovereignty. It was about the dispute resolution clauses that do take away our sovereignty and, as Senator McAllister made reference to, the Hong Kong case about plain packaging. There was a very worthy health measure moved by this parliament, and yet a multinational tobacco company found this little clause in a trade agreement with Hong Kong to have a case in Hong Kong which was eventually dropped, and that was the end of it. In recent Senate estimates, I asked a very simple question: how much money has the Australian government spent on defending that case? I have been told it is cabinet-in-confidence. Respectfully, that is nonsense and, if I have to end up in the AAT to fight that case, I am very confident of success. It cannot be cabinet-in-confidence to find out how many taxpayers' dollars were spent in fighting a legal case.

But that goes to the whole issue of secrecy of these deals and the way that they have been negotiated, and the TPP is no exception. One of the problems we have with our trade deals is that there has been enormous secrecy. As Dr Patricia Ranald says, there are precedents for ending secrecy in trade negotiations. The EU has determined that the full text of trade agreements should be made public before the decision to sign them instead of the parliament here been effectively a rubber-stamp or going through a very restricted process. You also have a position where the United States Congress is much more open in its process with the TPP and all trade agreements.

I want to talk more broadly about trade agreements. I know that Paul Kelly from The Australian has called me 'the most dangerous protectionist politician that this parliament has seen for a generation'. I think he secretly likes me because I think that actually helped me amongst my supporters. But he is wrong; I am not a protectionist. I just want to make sure that we have fair trade.

No less than the Productivity Commission has revealed predictions of growth in jobs from free trade agreements have rarely been delivered because the economic models employed exaggerate the benefits, ignore many of the costs and assume away unemployment effects.

The Australian National University's study of the outcomes of the US-Australia free trade agreement after 10 years showed the preferential agreement diverted trade away from other countries. Australia and the United States have reduced their trade with the rest of the world by US$53 billion or AU$71 billion and are worse off than they would have been without the agreement. That study concludes that:

Deals that are struck in haste for primarily political reasons carry risk of substantial economic damage.

We have seen with the FTAs with Japan, South Korea and China the claim that they will lead to tens of thousands of jobs. The government's own economic modelling, by the Canberra based Centre for International Economics, estimates that by 2035 these three FTAs will have produced a total of only 5,400 additional jobs. That is less than 300 jobs a year. Those are not my figures but the figures of the government's own modelling.

It seems that with the crisis in manufacturing in this country we have not negotiated these agreements well. I am not against the expansion of trade or negotiating free trade agreements. Trade is the lifeblood of our economy. But we have been lousy negotiators, and that is why we should move away from the TPP.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make an observation about a trend that seems to be appearing—

Senator Dastyari interjecting—

Senator Dastyari we know, of course, is up for trade. He wants to trade, but only with China! He only wants to trade with China. So we know that we have his support for the China FTA. I know that he is not operating on a large scale—dim sim and spring roll stuff—but nonetheless we do appreciate his contribution. Halal dim sims are going to be the new black in food!

I am seeing a disturbing trend in this Senate. It just so happens that at the moment the Senate seems to have all of the power in government in terms of what will or will not happen. I am seeing a disturbing trend in the exercise of that power by those who sometimes have it—that is particularly Labor and the Greens—with what seems to be a concerted effort to pursue policies and decisions that are impacting negatively on rural Australia, agriculture and those who produce those soft commodities—beef, fibre and food.

I truly want to make a genuine contribution to ask colleagues in the Senate to have regard for some facts. The first fact is that we are a trade exposed nation in agriculture. Well over 70 per cent of what we produce in this country is sold. Given the circumstances of our labour market—and I am not going to reflect on any adjustments required there because the problem with labour market challenges is cheaper labour amongst all of our competitors—

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Cheap power!

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Lambie, let's wind you up if that is what we need to do! You showed your hand on what you think of farmers just a couple of hours ago. You have destroyed many, many small businesses in Tasmania.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, on my left. Senator O'Sullivan, direct your comments through the chair.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But I am not directing them even to Senator Lambie. I am just indicating that the decision taken in this chamber earlier today has exposed the attitudes of a number of people in this place to farmers and people who live in provincial areas of this country. It alone is going to come back to bite them.

But let me come back to the issue before us—the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership represent around 40 per cent of the GDP, particularly around agriculture, in the world. About 800 million people are within the countries involved in the TPP. Those countries import roughly one-third of the total goods and services exports, worth over $100 billion, from this country.

This has been five years in the drafting and negotiation phase and there had not been one peep about it until we were at the eleventh hour. It amazes me, particularly with the Greens, how they are joining Donald Trump in relation to this question. It was only a week ago that they referred to him as the most dangerous creature on earth. Now what they will do on the national interests of this country is send a clear message to Trump that they join him. On the philosophy of protectionism and not wanting the TPP to occur, they join him. They do not want Australia to engage in this.

For those countries that import around 34 per cent or one-third of the total Australian agricultural exports—and that is based on the most recent figures from 2015—this is going to create the elimination of tariffs, almost 90 per cent of the tariffs involved in trade with these nations. I can tell you that when you get out and about in rural Australia and with the real people on farms who have an interest in this or when you meet with the peak industry bodies—the NFFs and cattle councils of the world, and there are 72 of them who have a real interest up in my home state to do with horticulture and the like—they tell you that they want us to pursue equitable trade agreements as often as we can. They are anxious with this talk that we will pick and choose trade agreements based on two or three issues that are raised in opposition to them.

We all know about sugar. There has really been an argument on recent trade agreements we have done with Korea, Japan and China that sugar has missed out. This particular agreement will give an additional 65,000 tonnes of sugar to the US. So let us just hold the phone on sugar for a moment as I make this contribution. The sugar industry is a major industry in my state of Queensland. It is concentrated almost wholly in the state. Some in this place not only want to prevent that industry from spreading its wings in relation to trade and export opportunities but also want to introduce a sugar tax. I am no economist, but I do not need to be an economist; I am a farmer. I will tell you this: if the TPP does not proceed and if you people are successful in introducing a sugar tax, the sugar industry—which is a fragile industry at the best of times and exposed to world prices—will come to an end. In my home state, 4,500 sugar-farming families, their wives, their husbands, their children, their small communities, their newsagents and their bakers are all going to suffer enormously as a result of the activities of this place in what, it is becoming evident, is anti-agriculture.

Our friends in the Greens come in here in their leather shoes, cotton pants and woollen jumpers, yet they do not want us to run sheep. You would know that, Senator Williams, you are battling it all the time. They do not want us to disturb—

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely. They produce methane—those naughty sheep!

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You are the only non-Kiwi I know who loves his sheep as much as you do, Senator Williams! The Greens do not want us to disturb a metre of ground to be able to cultivate it for cotton. They do not want us to go down to the river and take another milk bottle full of water out to irrigate the cotton.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's got to go straight out to sea!

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right. They want that water to go out into the Great Australian Bight, as I understand their current arguments. They do not want us to expend any fuel that might emit some micronism of carbon—I do not quite understand the whole argument there.

Senator Hanson-Young interjecting—

Senator Hanson-Young is not in her seat, Mr Acting Deputy President, but I will not draw that to your attention. She comes in here in the finest of robes. You are a very well-presented lady, Senator Hanson-Young. Do you know where those robes come from? They do not come out of Myer. They come out of a paddock somewhere near where I live. They come out of a header, they go into a processor, they are processed, and they are turned into that cotton and that wool that you wear. Of course, you think that somehow down at the bottom of the garden there is a little fairy there with a set of knitting needles and that this silk comes from—I do not know where—Nirvana or somewhere and just appears on the end of the knitting needles and makes those beautiful garments that you and your friends in the Greens wear.

We see the resistance. But Senator Williams is one—I am another, and we have many colleagues on this side—who will steadily and continually draw people's attention back to your resistance and to bring their attention back to what you have to say, the decisions you make that are going to impact on our farmers and pastoralists and those in the small communities who support them—those whose entire lives' investments are in these small economies around our country. I intend to make it my life's work to continue to bring to their attention your attitudes and decisions in matters around agriculture—just like the one you made today, Senator Lambie, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President. Just like your decision today. You are going to pull horticulturalists to their knees. Those great cherries from Tasmania will remain on the trees for this year. (Time expired)

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to begin by thanking Senator O'Sullivan for his intriguing contribution. It was a great speech in this debate on the TPP. I have to say, Senator O'Sullivan, that it takes a brave man to rock a pair of suspenders the way that you do!

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You want to get a shot? There they are.

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Great. Now he is flashing me in the Senate!

This is an unusual public interest debate to have two days out from the end of parliament, but I think there are going to be important lessons from this debate for us for the new year, when we return. What has already been said, obviously, is that one of the consequences of a Donald Trump presidency is that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is highly unlikely to go ahead. It is effectively dead, buried and cremated, as we say in Australia. It looks as though the TPP itself is not going to progress, but that does not mean we cannot have a broader discussion about the lessons from the TPP debate so far, about the opportunities and about how we need to craft trade deals moving forward.

If anything, the dangers of the TPP are a warning to us all about how we engage the public on free trade agreements if we want to maintain support for these agreements and if we want these agreements to be successful. Australia's response to the TPP also reflects what this government has been prepared to give—the removal of labour market and skills testing, the potential rise in cost of biologic medicine, the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions, intellectual property clauses, and the lack of any independent assessment of the agreement.

Two of these concerns, the removal of labour market and skills testing as well as the investor state dispute settlement provisions, I think really warrant further investigation. For those who support trade and support the principle of trade, I think it is important to note that not all trade deals are good or bad because they are trade deals; it is the details of the deal that make it either good or bad. Trade deals should be assessed on their merits. Removing labour market testing fundamentally undermines things like the 457 visa program, which we have already spoken about today, and is at odds with community expectations. Insofar as that is concerned, the TPP would have undermined this fundamental right by allowing six countries to be exempt from labour market testing provisions. This would have been a fundamental shift which would have allowed jobs—such as those for mechanics, plumbers, electricians and nurses—to be filled by foreigners even if there were Australians willing to do the job.

Beyond that, I had very serious concerns about the power and the role of investor-state dispute settlement provisions as they were outlined in the draft TPP. The inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions commonly known as ISDS was extremely concerning to the many Labor members on this side of the chamber but also, I know, to the broader community and to many other parliamentarians. Throughout the hearings that were done on this—if you go through the report, you will see the work that the committee did—there was not sufficient evidence that ISDS would benefit Australia. In fact, the evidence presented to the committee showed that it would put our nation's sovereignty and reasonable policymaking at risk.

The other 11 TPP nations moved to omit the United States from the agreement. So that it can be enacted, there would have to be a new agreement, and it would all have to be looked at again. But we need to look at these individual agreements based on their own merits, one at a time. So it seems highly unlikely that we are going to have a TPP agreement as was originally outlined. That is not to say that this government is not going to spend the next year working on future and further agreements, and different agreements.

I think in doing so it is very important that we understand that community expectations have to be brought into any action taken, and there cannot be a situation where there are winners and losers—where one group is discriminated against in a trade agreement that favours another group—and expect the community to support it and go along with it. But I do not think that is necessarily a bad thing. It is a wake-up call for politicians—that, when it comes to free trade agreements, some of them are good and some of them are bad, and that they are not inherently either.

I want to say—and I note my very good friend Senator Williams is in the chamber across from me—that there are 11 other members of the TPP, and that we will hopefully be working with these nations to develop our own free trade style agreements, and hopefully it can be a mass agreement which will be beneficial to Australia and to these nations. It may be done at a bilateral level or a multilateral level, and there may be different types of agreements. But, as we are coming to the end of the year, I think it is important to wish our many friends from across the world who are working with us on the TPP a very merry Christmas. I want to wish them a merry Christmas and a happy new year. If you can indulge me for a few moments, Mr Acting Deputy President Back, I intend to offend most of these nations now by saying 'Merry Christmas' to them in their own language in an incredibly botched manner!

To those from Malaysia and Brunei, I say 'slamat hari natal'. To the Vietnamese, I say 'chuc mung giang sinh'. To the Singaporeans and Chinese, I say 'sheng dan kwai loh'. To the Japanese, I say—this is how you say 'Merry Christmas' in Japan—'merii kurisumasu'. Frankly, I think they're not even trying!

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Chocolate' is 'chokore-to'.

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Chocolate' is 'chokore-to'! To our Spanish-speaking friends we say 'feliz navidad'. Now we are all going to have Feliz Navidad stuck in our heads for the rest of the evening! I do want to wish them a merry Christmas and a happy new year. To the New Zealanders, our very close neighbours, who would be part of any future trading bloc, I say, 'Merry Christmas, bro!'

I want to note that there are a few other nations that we are looking at engaging in trade agreements with in the coming years. There is talk of the ASEAN+6 countries, and it looks like the Koreans will be signing up to that. To them, I say 'jeulgaeun krismas doeseyo', which is an incredibly botched way of saying it!

To the Filipinos, I say 'maligayang pasko'; to the Indonesians, 'selamat natal'; to the Thais, 'souksaan wan Christmas'; to the Laotians, 'merry van khrid samad'; to the Burmese, 'Christmas nay hma mue pyaw pa'; to the Cambodians, 'rik reay bon noel'; to the Indians, 'krismas mubarak'; to our Italian friends, 'buon natale'; to the Dutch, 'vrolijk kerstfeest'—these are getting worse and worse, Mr Acting Deputy President!

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You don't have to tell us!

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In Farsi, Senator Dastyari?

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In Farsi, it is 'Christmas-e-shoma mobarak bashad'.

Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is the only one you have come anywhere close to yet, Senator Dastyari!

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do wish my good friends Senator Lambie, Senator Williams, Senator Birmingham and the other senators here today a very merry Christmas as well. But I digress.

These free trade agreements need to be assessed on their own merits. They need to be looked in their parts, and no individual agreement is good or bad. I strongly urge that, when we have the opportunity to look at these agreements in the new year, we make sure we are bringing the community with us. I think there were a lot of community concerns over the powers and integrity, and what has been given up by people in their bids to reach these types of agreements.

I would suggest to the government, when we are looking at these sorts of agreements, that we cannot do it in the vacuum of parliament, in the vacuum of bureaucrats and others. I think sometimes we are a little bit closed off from the reality of what is going on on the ground. If we want these trade deals to be successful, it is going to be about winning community support, and that is about making sure that powers that people do not want to give up are not given up and that community expectations are rationally and reasonably met in how we deal with these agreements. With that, Mr Acting Deputy President Back, I say to you in Italian, 'Buon natale.'

Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this matter of public importance debate regarding the dangers of pursuing the ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. One of the best outcomes of the recent American presidential election is the fact that the TPP is dead and buried—although there are government members in this place who are acting like the Black Knight in the famous Monty Python skit and pretending that the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA is 'just a flesh wound' to the TPP. President-elect Trump has made it quite clear that the TPP is dead and buried, and yet we have increasingly desperate calls by government members that it is not dead and buried. I struggle to understand those Liberal members' optimism when it comes to the TPP.

The TPP, with its investor-state dispute settlement provisions, fundamentally undermines this parliament's sovereignty. Perhaps it is not Australia's best interests that are driving this unnatural urge to put in place trade deals which dud Australian workers and undermine this parliament's sovereignty. Perhaps it is the Liberal members' best interests after they retire from this place that is really driving them to sign up to a bad trade deal.

We only have to look at where previous Liberal trade members are making their money now in their retired lives after parliament to understand where their true loyalties lay. We should have new rules which prohibit any trade ministers involved in making trade deals from taking up lobbying jobs for foreign counties, especially non-democratic countries, for five years. That way we will have a guarantee that trade ministers are not trying to line their and their families' pockets rather than doing deals which benefit future generations of Australians.

One of the important elements of a good trade deal is to make sure that Australian businesses are internationally competitive. If Australian businesses are not internationally competitive then we are going to lose jobs and economic growth. So it came really as a surprise to me that this government, which talks about being smart, innovative and internationally competitive, refused to put in place a backpacker tax rate which is internationally competitive. This morning, on the behalf of desperate Tasmanian farmers, I voted to improve the Liberals' backpacker legislation and make it internationally competitive. The Senate had an opportunity to vote against the Liberals' flawed backpacker legislation; however, instead of opposing the legislation, the official record will show it proceeded through the Senate's second reading without any opposition. For Tasmanian Liberal members like Senator Duniam to say that I blocked the backpacker legislation is a desperate lie once again easily disproved by the Senate's official record: Hansard.During the committee stage of the backpacker debate, I simply voted to improve the government's own legislation and to make it internationally competitive by lowering the tax rate to 10.5 per cent.

Every Australian farmer and visiting backpacker knows that New Zealand's headline tax rate for backpackers is 10.5 per cent and, if we are going to have a lasting and competitive backpacker tax rate, ours also must be set at 10.5 per cent. The issue is now back in the hands of the government where it has been for the last 18months. The government now have their own legislation waiting for debate and a vote sitting in the lower house. So much for time sensitive! The government have a decision on whether they will support backpacker tax legislation that is internationally competitive at 10.5 per cent or vote to ensure that the backpacker tax rises from 0 to 32 per cent.

I am calling on the Prime Minister to personally take charge of this matter and bring some honesty, reason and common sense to the problem. If he can take over the South Australian water crisis and cut out the destructive influence of Deputy Prime Minister Joyce's ego then he can do the same for the backpacker crisis. Prime Minister Turnbull, like all Australians, knows that his Deputy Prime Minister Joyce is incapable of swallowing his pride and admitting that he is wrong. The PM knows that we must have an internationally competitive backpacker tax rate at 10.5 per cent to compete with New Zealand. The PM knows that the best hope our farmers have of surviving long term in this global market is to be internationally competitive. So, you know what? Let's do something once, do it right just for once and make our backpacker tax rate internationally competitive.

Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for the discussion has expired.