Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade. Would the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on recent favourable developments for Australian exporters? How is the government working with Australian exporters to create jobs and boost our economic performance?

Mark Vaile (Lyne, National Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kalgoorlie for his question. I recognise that he represents the largest electorate in Australia and also the majority of our large resource exploration areas in Australia, and he is doing a very good job in that vast part of Western Australia. He asks about Australia’s resource exports. Australia’s resource exports have again hit record levels in 2005. I know that the member for Kalgoorlie is excited about that, because that means jobs right throughout his electorate of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

Our reputation as a safe, reliable and competitively priced supplier is helping our exporters win big on the international market. We are currently in the middle of a global resources boom. It is one of Australia’s competitive advantages that we are incredibly well endowed with resources across the country, across a number of sectors, and our companies are taking advantage of that. I will give just some examples. One is our biggest ever export deal with Mexico. Two Australian suppliers will supply $688 million worth of coal to Mexico in the next 18 months. I acknowledge that the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources has been heavily involved in helping to put that deal together. In Western Australia, the LNG industry—and I was recently up in Karratha, in the member’s electorate, having a look at the operation there—is also on the cusp of a new era. The first shipments of a $25 billion China contract start this year. The Bayu-Undan LNG field recently started shipments to Japan, and two new projects at Gorgon and Pluto look set to develop after a series of multibillion-dollar preliminary deals with Japanese buyers late last year.

So we can see that the resources sector is booming. There is a global resources boom under way at the moment and, importantly, our industries in Australia are taking advantage of that, because these resources and the reserves in Australia are the competitive advantage that we have. It is important to recognise the job that particularly the private sector is doing in maintaining investment in ports and infrastructure to make sure that there are no bottlenecks in getting those bulk products out of those ports and down those rail links. Billions of dollars are being spent in those ports and rail links, particularly in the north-west of Western Australia. That is in stark comparison to what a lot of the state owned enterprises are doing—or not doing—on the eastern seaboard, where we have been experiencing bottlenecks, particularly as far as our coal exports are concerned. As a nation we should get behind and support these major Australian companies exporting these resources out of Australia which have delivered another export record in 2005 for resource exports.