Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the European Union (EU) is Australia's second largest two-way trading partner of goods and services worth over $74 billion; and

(b) with a high-income population of almost 450 million people, the EU represents an incredibly significant market opportunity for Australian exporters;

(2) acknowledges the significant work undertaken by the former Government to pursue an ambitious and comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU; and

(3) calls on the Government to:

(a) prioritise the negotiation and completion of the Australia-European Union Free Trade Agreement; and

(b) deliver a commercially significant agreement with liberalised access that is in the national interest.

I will get to the European Union free trade agreement in a second, because this will be really the first test of this new Labor government in nailing a free trade agreement. They don't have a great record in that. Before I do get to that, the previous government—between 2013 and 2022, when we were in government—nailed so many free trade agreements. Deputy Speaker, I'm sure you're probably aware that goods and services covered by free trade agreements when we came into power were at around 25 per cent and, by the time we left government, that had got to all but 80 per cent. That's a great thing, obviously, for exporting companies. We're an open, transparent exporting nation—a trading nation—and having more access to more customers is obviously great for all those people and companies who are exporting.

So the first of the three immediate jobs the new government has to do is bring into force the UK free trade agreement. I would like to acknowledge the previous trade ministers: Andrew Robb, who I had the great pleasure of catching up with last week, Simon Birmingham and Dan Tehan. They all did a great job with the free trade agreements. Dan Tehan, the previous minister, did a great job with the UK-Australia free trade agreement. What now has to happen is for that to go through our Treaties Committee process to bring it into force before 1 January. We want it to happen before 1 January because we'll get the tariff reductions and other things like that when it comes into force, and then we'll get another tariff reduction on 1 January. So we encourage and are looking to work with the government to do this as quickly as possible. The India-Australia agreement also has to go through that same process, so we're encouraging and working with the government to get those done as quickly as we can.

That's those two jobs, but again, as I said, the big test for the new government and the new minister is: do they nail a deal, and what type of deal do they nail, with the European Union? This is an important free trade agreement. The European Union is a massive market. It has over 450 million people, with a GDP of almost $15 trillion, so this is no small market and no small deal for us. The EU at the moment—this is why this deal is especially important—runs a significant trade surplus with Australia. It's around a $23 billion surplus for goods and $14 billion for services. To give you an interesting stat that I think highlights this, we sell $4 of food per person to the EU. Now, you know we're a great food-exporting nation, but guess what? They export $200 of food to us. So it's very imbalanced, especially given that we are a great food exporter.

So what's going to be important? One of the tests for the new minister and the new government will be the type of deals, the type of access, they get for our agricultural sector. Historically, it has proven for other ministers that you have to play a hard game to get a good deal for our food exporters—the beef, the dairy, the rice, the sugar and the grain. So the new minister is going to have to play a tough game and be a tough negotiator to make sure he gets a good deal.

To give meat as an example—and this is one thing they're going to have to watch out for—we have never before done a free trade agreement where, at the end of transition, there are still quotas. You might start with quotas. You might start with getting increased quotas or increased access for meat into a free trade agreement. By the time the free trade agreement is fully transitioned, though, it's completely liberalised. It isn't limited to quotas then; it's just completely liberalised. So that's also going to be a test for the new minister: can he get a completely liberalised market for meat?

There are many other examples as well, but there is a precedent for this too. We have just done, as I said, a very good deal with the UK. The European Union themselves have just done a deal with the UK, and they are both good models. I think we'll be looking at this and measuring what the new government negotiates between Australia and the EU, compared to what the EU negotiated with the UK or, indeed, what we negotiated with the UK. They're bars that I think the minister and this new government need to meet to support our agricultural and other exporting sectors.

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