Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties's Report 186 on the Indonesia and Hong Kong free trade agreements. Labor welcomes progress made to safeguard Australian jobs and economic growth. I want to acknowledge the members of the JSCOT. In this JSCOT report on the Indonesia and Hong Kong free trade agreements, Labor particularly welcomes the recommendations that the government conduct independent modelling of all proposed trade agreements and pursue the termination of the existing bilateral investment treaty (BIT) between Australia and Indonesia.

Importantly, the report confirms that there is no waiver of labour market testing for contractual service supplies in either the Indonesia or the Hong Kong agreement. While Labor does not support the inclusion of the investor-state dispute settlement, ISDS, provisions in trade agreements, the report highlights that the ISDS provisions in IA-CEPA, the Indonesian agreement, include safeguards equivalent to the best Australia has agreed to date. Moreover, the ISDS provisions in this agreement are superior to those currently in force under the BIT, the bilateral investment treaty with Indonesia. The report has found that IA-CEPA would reduce tariffs imposed by Indonesia, facilitate cooperation to address non-tariff barriers, ease restrictions on Australia's participation in Indonesia's services sector and improve protections for Australian investment in Indonesia.

In the case of the Hong Kong FTA, Labor welcomes the committee's acknowledgement of concerns about the political situation in Hong Kong and its view that the treaty's ratification would strengthen Hong Kong's unique status under the one country, two systems arrangement and provide greater certainty for Australian business.

As set out by my colleague Peter Khalil, the Deputy Chair of JSCOT, when presenting this report in the House this week, Labor is pleased that the body of the report stresses the importance of improving consultation mechanisms to be more inclusive of civil society, the union movement and businesses. The Labor members of the committee argued that any future agreement with Indonesia for the entry of temporary foreign workers should: one, be negotiated as a treaty-level agreement so that it would come back to JSCOT for further consideration; and two, include a commitment to labour-market testing to preference Australian jobs and also skills tests to ensure that any temporary foreign workers meet the same standards as Australian workers.

In light of these concerns, Labor will continue to push for the expertise of industry, unions and community groups in the course of trade negotiations. But I note that the report concludes that these agreements are ultimately in Australia's national interest. The economic gains to be made for Australians are major. Deepened economic cooperation with one of our closest and most important neighbours is clearly in Australia's national interest, and this is obvious in light of the fact that Indonesia will be larger than the UK and France economically by 2030 in PPP terms. Indonesia is predicted to be the fourth-largest economy in the world by 2050, which will make it half the size of the US economy in PPP terms and roughly four times the size of the Australian economy by then. In that light, it's extraordinary that Indonesia accounts for two per cent of our exports.

Northern Australia is particularly well placed to reap the benefits of expanding our trade and investment portfolio in Indonesia, and vice versa. There are huge opportunities for northern Australian retail and hospitality suppliers to better integrate the Indonesian tourism supply chains. Under IA-CEPA, there are real opportunities for northern Australian education and VET providers to work in the Indonesian education sector. There are opportunities for Australian cattle, dairy, vegetable, wheat, sugar and steel exporters and mining services firms, among other sectors.

But these economic gains are also a means to an end, and the longer term end is the intergenerational effort of deepening the people-to-people links and strategic trust between Indonesia and Australia, because our freedom, wealth and security are inseparable from Indonesia's. As the representative of Australia's northern capital of Darwin and a long-time friend and student of Indonesia, I'll continue to do my part to deepen our ties. I truly believe the Australian Labor Party will continue to play a major role in this long-term endeavour, as that has been the historic and enduring position of the Australian labour movement from the time it first supported Indonesia's independence.

I was very proud to be appointed recently by the member for Grayndler, the Leader of the Opposition, as the chair of federal Labor's Indo-Pacific trade task force. We've got stuck in to work that is truly in the national interest. It was fantastic to be able to travel to Jakarta to meet with the Indonesian foreign affairs minister with the opposition leader and also the shadow minister for foreign affairs, Penny Wong. We had a great roundtable facilitated by the Australian embassy in Jakarta. I'd like to thank the ambassador and staff and all the participants of that event. We learnt a great deal.

Then, self-funded, I travelled through Indonesia to West Timor, which is one of the close neighbours of Darwin and the Northern Territory, where I met with the deputy governor. There's a lot we can do, particularly from northern Australia, with NTT, Nusa Tenggara Timor, that very eastern province of Indonesia. We talked about increasing connectivity and the opportunities for Australian businesses to partner with businesses in NTT.

It's important to lead. It doesn't matter whether you're in opposition or in government, it's incumbent on all of us to be active leaders in bringing our two countries together. The future for our two countries is in deeper engagement. We need to deepen our economic, cultural, people-to-people and business-to-business links with Indonesia. I strongly believe that, and it's self-evident that geography doesn't change, so our strengthened ties with Indonesia are incredibly important. I would suggest that it behoves us all to continue to think about Indonesia as an absolute economic, strategic partner.

I'm glad that, even though the opposition isn't in total agreement with what the government members of the JSCOT report concluded, there are some very strong recommendations in it that are going to be very important for our future economic ties. The recommendation to conduct independent modelling on all proposed trade agreements was a very important one. So too was the recommendation to pursue the termination of the existing BIT—bilateral investment treaty—between Australia and Indonesia, because it contained very poor ISDS protections.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I will leave it there, but before I finish I want to emphasise the importance of our relationship with Indonesia and the contribution that this report has made to our deliberations in relation to the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, in particular, and in relation to the treaty with Hong Kong.

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