Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to speak on the motion moved by the member for Bendigo. I note that the motion calls for more inspection and more compliance. I know the member for Bendigo was not a member of the previous Labor government. I think it is worthwhile pointing out from the outset that, under the previous Labor government, our Customs service was gutted, with 750 jobs scrapped and $64 million stripped from their budget.

Dumping is not about selling cheap goods into the country. Dumping applies to goods that are sold below the cost of production and—which is mainly the case—to goods that are sold at a lower price in the export market than they are in the home market. It is effectively a form of international geographic price discrimination, where a higher price in the local market subsides the export market. That presents many difficulties in comparing costs. You are not actually comparing apples with apples. The product many companies sell in their domestic market is completely different from the product they sell in the international market. That means that there are many practical difficulties in comparing apples with apples.

The biggest problem I see for Australia with international geographic price discrimination is not that goods are being dumped on the Australian market at a lower price that that for which they are sold in the home market; it is the complete opposite. Time after time, we see examples of goods being sold in Australia at a much higher price than they are sold in any other market in the world. That is perhaps even a greater problem than dumping.

The other point that needs to be made is that, no matter how rigorous an antidumping regime we have, it is no substitute for Australian companies being cost competitive. When the carbon tax was put in place, the carbon tax would be paid by an Australian company producing a good, but that very same good, if produced overseas, would escape the carbon tax. That simply placed Australian companies at an international competitive disadvantage. This is why I am sure everyone that manufactures in Australia must be very concerned about the policies being proposed by the Labor Party, because they want to bring back the carbon tax in some form. They may give it another name—they may call it an ETS or whatever—but they want to bring that back, and that burden will be borne by Australian companies, whereas the overseas companies will not have to pay it.

The other point is that we need to be very careful about overreach on dumping. We have seen any examples overseas where countervailing duties have been placed on products with the idea that they would protect jobs, and what has been found is that that has actually cost jobs. I notice the member for Werriwa brought the example of Viridian glass. Before I came to this place, one of the things that I did was source float glass table tops. We were manufacturing local product, but we needed to get a glass table top. The glass table tops that we could buy with locally made glass were three or four times the price for which they could get the glass table top from overseas. Yes, buying the local glass may have been protecting jobs there, but it would have cost jobs down the supply chain. So it is important sometimes to recognise that many of the imported parts that come into the country are used in the supply chain, and cutting those off with dumping duties will not actually save jobs; it will actually cost jobs. Therefore, we need to make sure that these antidumping regimes are not used as protectionist measures.

Another point relates to the free trade agreements out of China. I often hear people saying: 'China are taking over. Everything in our shops is from China.' If you look at some of the numbers, clothing imports from China are worth $5.1 billion; in telecommunications, we import $4.9 billion worth; in computers, $4.8 billion; in furniture and mattresses, $2.2 billion; in toys, games and supporting goods, $1.8 billion. Just those categories alone add up to $19 billion worth of product that we import from China. But in reverse, in 2013-14, in iron ore alone we exported $57 billion worth to China, plus another $9 billion worth of coal, another $8 billion worth of gold and another $2 billion worth of copper. We are actually exporting to China twice as much as we are importing. That is why free trade is good for this nation, and we commend the free trade agreements put together by this government.

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