Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to interject in the minister’s speeches if that is the way he wants to do it. I pay him the courtesy—I always do—of not interjecting through his speeches, boring though they are.

In terms of the opportunities that APEC provides to create jobs and create income in Australia, I support the minister’s words. You would not know it from his speech, but Australia did host APEC last year. Those of us who were fortunate enough to be ministers were involved in that process and we do understand how APEC works; we do not need a 20-minute lecture from him about it. I acknowledge that what he says is true and I acknowledge what he says about the importance of reducing tariffs. I also acknowledge what he says about services being an important area where we need to do more. All of those things are supported by this side of the House. I further acknowledge that productivity growth is something that every government aspires to.

We are in a time when trade is going to be important. We are in a situation where we are never sure what is going on in the trade portfolio in government. We know the minister was unable to stand up for the exporters of Australia during the budget process. He was only able to gain a one-off allocation in terms of his much-vaunted EMDG scheme. We know that, at the same time, he lost ground in terms of negotiation ability because the budgets for the FTA negotiations with China and Japan were cut. We know that he merged two government departments to try to have Austrade do the job of those two departments but with 100 fewer people. No matter how much he blusters and speaks at the box there is no way he can convince me that with 100 fewer people you can do the same job.

Letting major budget cuts undermine Australia’s exporting programs and our support agency leaves plenty of time in the minister’s diary to contemplate ministerial statements at this box, and I would have thought there would have been more content in what he said.

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