Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I thank the House for its rearrangement of business. As many members would know, the member for Page, the member for Forrest and I were in the selection committee meeting, which is actually a very important part of the parliament because it decides when debates happen, and it is something we cannot really get out of. So I do thank both the members here who have been arranging the business of the House in our absence and making allowance for this problem. It is very much appreciated by all of us—and I note the member for Page was saying the same thing as well, and I am sure the member for Forrest appreciates the fact. I also thank those other speakers who thought they might have been on and have had to wait a little bit longer. We really do appreciate the effort that the House has gone to to ensure that we can continue with this.

The Customs Amendment (Anti-dumping Measures) Bill 2011 is a very important bill. There are several reasons why I wanted to speak on this bill. The first is because businesses in my electorate of Barker have been harmed by foreign imports dumped in Australia. This is not a thing about cheap things coming into Australia; this is actually where it has been proven that the products have been dumped in Australia at less than the cost of production. Under the World Trade Organisation rules we had every right to penalise the dumpers of those products, because we need to have fair trade. Certainly businesses in my electorate have been harmed by these foreign imports that have been dumped—another reason I like to buy Australian. I think everyone likes to buy Australian if they possibly can, and we do want to protect Australian industry, within reasonable WTO guidelines. I want to highlight this because the Gillard government has not lifted a finger towards fixing the problem of this product being dumped in Australia. It is frankly a disgrace. It is a very important industry—I am referring to the Kimberly-Clark plant in Millicent in my electorate, which makes a lot of tissue paper. It has had to try to compete with unfair imports from other countries. One of those countries is, I believe, Indonesia. Another is Thailand. It was a bit of a shock to us in my electorate and to those in the company. In fact they have had to lay off over 100 people—that is a lot of people who have lost their jobs as a result of the inaction of this government.

The government had many chances to take action and many reasons to want to fix this. There were many warnings to the government about the effects this dumping would have. Despite ongoing pressure from the coalition and the calls for help from national and local businesses and local government to do something, this Labor government seems totally oblivious or is just plain ignorant about the issue.

The coalition has set up an antidumping task force and certainly the coalition can see that there is a real problem here that is taking its toll on Australian businesses, on jobs and on the communities that rely on the businesses and the jobs. We want to make sure that Australian businesses are protected so they can continue to do what they do best: manufacture goods so that consumers can actually buy Australian made products. Consumers want to walk into their local supermarket and see 'Australian made' on the shelf. Tradies want to use Australian made steel to build homes and Australians want to buy Australian made products. That is what it comes down to.

The problem is though that the Labor government just does not seem to grasp the concept that if you do not protect Australian industries they will just not be there in five or ten years time. In the case that I quoted, it has obviously had a pretty drastic effect immediately.

I am not saying that we should not have competition. We as a party believe in competition, but, when it is unfair competition and it forces Australian businesses to close or shrink, then there will be no choice to buy Australian made. Not all competition is unfair. The coalition supports healthy competition. It is good for consumers and drives business innovation. However, selling foreign goods cheaply into Australia at below the cost of production is not healthy or fair competition. The consumer might be happy for five minutes when they are buying the cheap steel or the cheap milk, but after the local steel company or the local farmer has closed up shop there will not be any more Australian made product and it might be your brother's or neighbour's job that is lost. It may not be there anymore because they have had to sell the farm and move.

This is what will happen under this government, because it fails Australian businesses. It fails to protect them and fails to act. But not the coalition. We have taken measures so that this sort of thing will not happen under a coalition government. My colleagues are working hard so that a coalition government can hit the ground running and have sound policy to protect Australian business against unfair competition. I do not see the Labor government doing anything like this.

What the government has done is lie to the Australian people. They have promised action and delivered nothing. On 27 May last year the Minister for Home Affairs and the Assistant Treasurer released a statement about the Productivity Commission's report. This was nearly a year ago, almost to the day. The minister said that the Productivity Commission has made recommendations about changes to the operation of the current system. He then went on to say:

… the report contains recommendations that need to be carefully considered.

Then, later in the release, he said that the government's response was to be:

… developed and considered in the 2011-12 budget process.

Here we are, just after budget week in 2011-12, and there is nothing in this government's budget about improving Australia's antidumping regime, nothing at all. The government must think it is okay that Australian businesses have to close down because of product being dumped here, because there was no response to the Productivity Commission report in this budget the Treasurer handed down. There is nothing in this budget to combat dumping in Australia. After three years of talking about it, this government has failed Australian industries yet again—no claims from this government, in this year's budget, to support businesses.

During the 2010 election, the coalition announced that we would act to improve Australia's antidumping regime. Unlike Labor, we then took action. Yes, we were as good as our word and acted on that when we established a coalition task force, unlike the ignorant Labor government that has once again been all talk and no action. The coalition task force has been working hard to find out the key issues with the current arrangements and what needs to be fixed. One of the issues with the current arrangements is that businesses are faced with large bills and spending a lot of time internally to prove that their businesses have been retrospectively harmed by product being dumped in Australia. 'Retrospectively' means that the damage has already been done—irreversible damage, more often than not—and then, on top of that, a business has to spend time and money to prove its case. I do not think this is good enough, and Australia should be acting before the fact to protect businesses. This is the coalition's plan.

Many businesses have voiced their concerns that the current arrangements are too cumbersome, place the onus of proof on domestic businesses rather than on their competitors, and are generally prohibitively expensive to access. Foreign goods sold cheaply into Australia unfairly distort the marketplace, harming Australian businesses and ultimately costing jobs.

I have an example of this in my electorate of Barker, as I said: the Kimberly-Clark mill in the township of Millicent. Millicent is a town with a little over 5,000 people, about 700 of whom are employed in the Kimberley-Clark factory—so you can understand how important the Kimberley-Clark mill is to the people of Millicent. The factory uses a lot of our wood products, which we also grow in the local area, and it is a very strong part of our whole economy down there. In fact, the forestry industry is worth more than $2 billion a year to the local economy. It is not just a very substantial part of the direct local economy around Millicent; it is also important to the area for another 100 kilometres around it, where there is a lot of forestry.

This factory uses those products and makes tissues, toilet paper and those sorts of things. The Productivity Commission report showed that there were other countries dumping tissue and toilet paper in Australia to quite an extensive degree, at up to 60 per cent below the cost of production—not five or 10 per cent but up to 60 per cent below the cost of production. When faced with that sort of evidence that product is being dumped in Australia—which affects what is produced in Australia—and is competing unfairly with what is produced in Australia, I would have thought that the government would have said, 'We're going to impose some penalties in the form of tariffs,' or whatever, 'on the tissue that is being dumped in Australia.' But the Labor government did not take any action, which was very disappointing, I have to say.

The local community was hugely concerned about job losses and the effect they would have on this small country town of Millicent that relies so heavily on the mill. The Gillard government were not interested at all in hearing about the Millicent community's concerns. That was evident when they took no action then, and they still have taken no action over a year later.

I have stood in the House before and spoken of the problems Kimberly-Clark are having. The government has been well aware of examples from around Australia of businesses struggling with the unfair competition. Labor cannot plead ignorance on this issue. I brought the plight of Kimberly-Clark to the government's attention some time ago, but here I am in this House again speaking about Kimberly-Clark and about dumping in Australia, because the government is failing Kimberly-Clark and Australia's industry. What the Labor government have done is to offer a patch up solution, and that is simply not good enough. This week the Labor government announced that the budget would contain an initiative to support workers at the Kimberly-Clark mill who have lost their jobs, but I think it is a bit cute to come along and say, 'We'll provide training because we actually didn't act in the first place to stop those jobs being lost.' We have a bandaid solution: 'Yes, we'll provide all this retraining'. We have a great government announcement: 'Aren't we such a great government because we're going to try to help those people who have lost their jobs.' But we have both of these because the government refused to act when they had the chance to act. I am hugely concerned that this funding is a patch up job, and the funding would simply not have been needed if the government had done its job in the first place.

This is a trend I have identified with this government—they fail to take the right action to start with and then when it all goes bad, as it so often does under this government, they have to run around patching up all the holes. One only has to think of things like the Green Loans or the Home Insulation Program, as a result of which 200 houses were burnt down and which was a real rort. The government create a shocking system and then have to spend all that time fixing up the problems they started.

Someone should point out to the government that, if you take appropriate action to start with, you get the job done right and do not have to spend double the time and money fixing it up later. This government have spent a lot of extra time and money fixing up mistakes, and it has come to be the norm to expect Labor to make very costly mistakes. The set-top box funding announced in this budget is the latest example. The story broke, and not long after the Treasurer had to defend his government's program and promise it would not be rorted like so many other programs under Labor have been.

The issue of dumping in Australia is just the same—the government knew about the problems but failed to act. The Australian Workers Union has been running its own antidumping campaign, and you would think that, given the union's love of the Labor Party and vice versa, the government would listen to the union. However, all the union's boss, Paul Howes, had to say was, 'Go and speak to your local MP about it.' But I can assure you that they have spoken to me, and the government have done nothing. (Time expired)

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