Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian government wants Australian businesses to have the best possible opportunity to sell products and services all around the world. We want Australian manufacturing businesses and Australian businesses generally to be able to export Australian products and services. The Commonwealth procurement rules, as Senator Carr well knows, identify that potential suppliers to government must be treated equitably and cannot be discriminated against due to their size, degree of foreign affiliation or ownership location, or the origin of their goods or services. This is an important principle that our exporting businesses also rely on when supplying goods and services in overseas markets because, importantly, the nondiscriminatory rules contained in our various export agreements ensure that Australian suppliers are not disadvantaged when tendering for government procurement in countries with which we have such agreements in place. The senator for Pyongyang, the senator from North Korea, he wants us to go back to a situation—