Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bushby for the question. The China-Australia Free Trade Agreement is an outstanding agreement that will see benefits flow to Australian businesses immediately. This free trade agreement will result in a sharp growth in export trade, create significant new openings for Australian services and result in increased investment flows. The government is working hard to ensure the agreement can be brought into force before the end of this year. Why? Because it will result in double-whammy effective tariff cuts for our exporters—one round of cuts this year and a second round in January 2016. This would result in literally hundreds of millions of dollars in tariff or tax relief for our exporters. If this free trade agreement is delayed beyond this year or worse, the costs will be enormous. As our farmers say, a delay will cost agriculture alone $300 million in 2016, with untold flow-on effects to rural and regional communities. Failure to ratify the agreement will cost the red-meat industry $100 million, the dairy industry up to $60 million, the wine industry up to $50 million and the grains industry more than $43 million. The coal industry says that every week of delay will cost it about $4.6 million in extra tariff payments on thermal and coking coal.

The Financial Services Council warns that if ChAFTA is stopped it would cost our economy more than $4,000 million. China buys almost a third of all Australian exports, valued at nearly $108 billion in 2013-14, and is our top overseas market for agriculture, resources and services exports. Labor's Senator Wong and Mr Shorten need to get out of the way. (Time expired)