Vince Connelly (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Will the minister outline the Morrison government's achievements in trade policy and how the government will continue to work in a stable and certain way to address this issue of real importance to Australians?

Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Stirling for his question. I know he, like a lot of members, will be taking great note of the Australian Export Awards tomorrow night, because there's a business, IMDEX Limited, from his electorate which is up for an award. I wish them, and all the other export businesses that are up for awards tomorrow night, all the best

Since we came to office we have concluded FTAs with China, Korea, Japan and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP-11. As the Prime Minister rightly said, we now cover 70 per cent of our trade through our free trade agreements, providing stability and certainty for our exporters. Last week we took another step when we started finalising FTAs with Indonesia, Peru and Hong Kong by taking legislation through the parliament. This is incredibly important. It's incredibly important because Australian businesses that export, on average, hire 23 per cent more staff, pay 11 per cent higher wages and have labour productivity 13 per cent higher than non-exporters—that is, our exporters help drive our economy. When it comes to what's happening to our exporters: over 53,000 businesses are now exporting; 46,000 of those are small businesses. That's an 18.5 per cent increase since we came to office. That is why we are backing Australia's exporters. This is creating more jobs, with one in five Australians employed in trade-related employment. And that is even stronger when it comes to regional and rural Australia. It's one in four in regional and rural Australia.

Why do we want to continue pushing our trade agenda? Because we want to keep creating jobs. We've already created 1.5 million jobs, and our target, under the Prime Minister's excellent stewardship, is 1.25 million jobs over the next five years. If we keep creating jobs, if we keep driving the economy through trade, we know that this will lift our productivity, it will lift wages, and that is what we're going to do. We're already looking at free trade agreements with the European Union, with the Pacific Alliance—Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia—and through the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. We're not going to rest on our laurels on this side. We have seen great success when it comes to trade. We've seen great success when it's come to creating jobs. We're going to keep doing that every single day we're in office for the rest of this term and many terms to come, hopefully.