Senate debates

Monday, 10 September 2018

Questions without Notice

Economy

2:35 pm

Photo of Simon BirminghamSimon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

As I indicated just before, Australia is in its 27th consecutive year of economic growth. That growth has been underpinned by our capacity as a nation to trade successfully with the world—to sell our goods, to sell our services and to generate investment—and be able to build a stronger, better country as a result. That in large part is due to the work of successive coalition governments. You can track back to the good work of the Howard government in building access to other markets and in growing our export capacity, as has this Liberal-National government over recent years. The result is that we have seen significant growth in terms of our reliance on trade and, with that, job opportunities. Around one in five Australian jobs rely on trade, and trade equates to some 40 per cent of our GDP. The average Australian family's real income is almost $8,500 higher due to Australia's work in better engagement with the world over the last few years.

This has been built upon most recently by the agreement reached between Australia and Indonesia for the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. This agreement will allow, by 2020, over 99 per cent of Australian goods exports to Indonesia, by value, to enter that market duty free or under significantly improved preferential arrangements. It will see a guarantee from Indonesia in terms of the automatic issuing of import permits for live cattle, for frozen beef, for sheep meat, for feed grains, for rolled steel coil, for citrus projects, for carrots and for potatoes. The highlights: we will see some 575,000 live cattle duty free in year one; dairy tariffs reduced or removed; 455 semi-loads of oranges will be duty free in the first year, with that growing continuously; and, for example, duty free access sufficient to make five Sydney Harbour bridges each and every year out of Australian steel products. (Time expired)

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