Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes with concern the importation to Australia of goods that:

(a) breach Australia's anti-dumping regime; and

(b) do not comply with Australian standards;

(2) further notes the:

(a) injurious effect that the importation of such products has on Australian businesses and Australian jobs;

(b) risk to consumers of using substandard products and goods; and

(c) lack of inspection and compliance enforcement of imported products; and

(3) calls on the Government to:

(a) continue to monitor the anti-dumping regime and effectiveness of recent changes;

(b) strengthen the inspection and compliance enforcement regime for imported goods;

(c) review penalties for importers who breach their Australian legal obligations and if necessary increase the penalties where they are found to be insufficient, to act as a deterrent; and

(d) hold an urgent meeting of the International Trade Remedies Forum to address these and related issues.

For those with regional electorates that still have strong manufacturing in their areas, this motion and what is contained in this motion will not come as any surprise. The motion that is before the House that we are debating talks about the need for a strong anti-dumping regime in this country. It talks about the need to ensure that imports coming into this country comply with Australian standards. It talks about how, by doing this, we will ensure that we are protecting Australian jobs, that we are protecting Australian industry and also ensuring that consumers do not become at risk of what could happen when, for example, substandard building products are used in construction.

When I am out talking to manufacturers of building products in my electorate of Bendigo, when I ask the question, 'What do you most fear, what puts your business, your industry and the jobs of many local people at risk?' without a doubt, the first thing that always comes up is the fear of cheap imports undercutting their quality product. But what they fear most is not just the cheap imports undercutting their product, but that these imports do not meet Australian standards. Their concern is real. Increasingly, we are seeing reports in our media of inferior products not meeting Australian standards entering our market, particularly in the building area. If I can just take a moment to cite a few examples that have appeared recently in the media: last week the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched an awareness campaign over the recall of Chinese-made electrical cable that was below standard. They believe it has been installed in an estimated 40,000 homes nationally. Whilst the recall happened last year, it was decided a campaign was necessary due to the low rate of action on the problem—forty thousand homes at risk because of product that had been brought into this country that did not meet Australian standards.

Another example has received lots of media, particularly in Melbourne and Victoria, because of the fact that it affected over 170 high-rise buildings in the Melbourne Docklands area. In this particular situation, aluminium cladding with a plastic core was used in the construction of many buildings. It is on the outside. There was a fire last year that the MFB themselves said they were scared and worried to go into because of the nature in which the fire took hold. The MFB, through their investigations, found that the fire spread quickly at this establishment, Lacrosse Docklands in La Trobe Street, from floor to floor because of the aluminium cladding and the plastic cladding that was on the outside of these buildings. So we now have a situation where we are not only putting consumers at risk because of the potential fire hazard of these buildings, through the use of this inferior product that is coming into our country, but also we are hearing concerns from the MFB who have to go to these fires when they occur.

In moving this motion, I call on the government to not only continue to monitor this to ensure that we have a strong anti-dumping regime that will help secure and protect the jobs that we have in our manufacturing industries, particularly in our building industries, as I have sought to highlight today, but also strengthen the inspection, compliance and enforcement of the regime for imported goods.

Now is the time for the government to make sure that it gets this regime right, that we have strong compliance with Australian standards and that product from overseas is not being dumped on our markets. If the government is genuine about creating job opportunities under the China free trade agreement or the Korea free trade agreement, we need to ensure that we have our systems in place so that the current situation where we are seeing cheap product being brought in is not exacerbated. We need to ensure that any product coming in is safe and meets Australian standards.

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