Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Sovereign Capability) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Hunter stood before this House and painted a picture of promised lands and open doors, but, for the farmers of North Queensland, the reality is that they've been left shivering on the welcome mat. We're told that this agreement opens a $30 trillion economy. Yet, when you look at the fine print, the only thing that's been opened is our own flank, to heavily subsidised foreign competition. This is not a free trade agreement; it is a national surrender. And to call it success is to deliberately ignore the pain that it will inflict on regional Australia.

In my electorate of Dawson, sugar is the lifeblood of our towns. We are the largest cane-growing region in the country and we expected that our government would fight for the people who feed this nation. Instead, we've watched as the Labor government walked into a room with professionals and behaved like amateurs. CANEGROWERS CEO Dan Galligan said that to only secure an additional 35,000 tonnes of sugar quota, which is less than two per cent of Europe's import requirement, is 'laughable'. He was right to call this 'a horrendous outcome'. When Brazil and its partners walked away with a deal four times larger, it was clear that this Labor government has locked our growers into a subpar deal for the next generation.

The National Farmers' Federation has been crystal clear, saying, 'Our producers will be paying the price for this capitulation for decades.' Look at the red meat sector. Cattle Australia chair Gary Edwards described this EU trade deal as an 'appalling result'. It is an insult to the hardworking cattle men and women of Dawson, who have been asked to compete with one hand tied behind their backs.

It gets even more absurd when you look at the trade imbalance being forced upon our dairy industry. Australian Dairy Industry Council chair Ben Bennett has pointed to the stark reality: we are looking at nearly a billion dollars of subsidised EU imports flooding into our shelves while we struggle to scrape together $29 million in exports to them. How is that free and how is that fair? It is a one-way street that leads to the destruction of our local producers. We are giving up established commercial freedoms for the sake of a diplomatic trophy, and it is our farmers who are forced to pay the price.

Then we come to the arrogance of geographical indicators. Labor has decided that a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels should have the power to dictate what we will call our food in our own country, so we will lose the rights to names like feta, gruyere and romano and to accept a measly 10-year reprieve for prosecco. It's a total betrayal of our culinary industry. It sets a dangerous precedent—that Australia is a nation that can be frankly bullied into anything.

Perhaps the most sinister part of this motion is the hidden green tape. The Albanese Labor government has allowed this trade deal to be used as a back door for climate activism. By making binding commitments to the Paris Agreement within this free trade agreement, Labor has given the EU a lever to interfere in our sovereign affairs. They now have the power to suspend trade preferences based on their own arbitrary definitions of environmental standards. It is a sell-out of our national interest to allow foreign entities to police our land management and our resource use.

The member's motion talks about strengthening partnerships in turbulent times, but a partnership built on capitulation is no partnership at all. We are told that no deal would have been a failure, but VFF president Brett Hosking said it best when he said 'no deal would have been better' than this embarrassment and that 'we've been hung out to dry' for the sake of a photo opportunity. This government has chosen ideology over image, over the prosperity of our people who actually feed and clothe this nation. A partner that demands our names, limits our growth and controls our environment is not a partner; they are a predator. This government should have demanded a deal that respects the hard work of the Australian people. I will never accept a future where our producers are forced to beg for scraps at a table that they built.

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