Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to take note of Minister Birmingham's response to the order.

I think it's worth putting on the record once again that in the space of the trade ministry since 7 September 2013 there have been three ministers: Minister Robb, Minister Ciobo and Minister Birmingham, assisted by assistant ministers Colbeck, Pitt, Hartsuyker and Coulton. Everywhere you look with this government, you look at a ministry and you realise that, in the short five years that they've been on the benches opposite, there's been a procession of people through the ministerial positions. Now, that could work out in the long run to be a good thing, but the evidence seems to indicate that it's not a particularly effective way of delivering successful outcomes for the country. And if you go back over the history, there were three ministers of trade in the entire Howard government period. I just put that on the table.

I get really interested when the other side keep saying, 'The Hawke-Keating period did this, that and the rest of it, and it was all great.' Well, if you glance at my bio and at Minister Birmingham's bio, you'll realise that he was in primary school when Bob Hawke was elected and probably completing studies at a university or organising a student union at a university when Keating was unelected. But I actually lived through all of that time, as a Labor Party member and a unionist, and it was a hard struggle to convince workers in all sectors that free trade agreements were useful to the country, because they certainly weren't popular, and they're not popular now. But there is no-one on that side doing the hard work of convincing people of the benefits of these free trade agreements. I can remember various Hawke-Keating ministers saying: 'Yes, there are going to be jobs lost in the economy, but we're going to replace them with better jobs. There will be better jobs. The economy is going to shift. These opportunities are good in aggregate for the country. We will make sure you're employed, and you will have better opportunities, particularly in the textile industry.' The textile industry was a classic. We then had the opportunity for families in marginal areas of the economy to purchase shoes, clothes and school uniforms at a much cheaper rate, but we lost jobs in Australia. It was a really harsh reality. But the advocacy was to take that issue head on and say, 'You're going to get better jobs.'

I, along with other senators in the chamber, have sat through all of the inquiries into the Japanese-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement, the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement, the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, the TPP and the TPP-11, and I have read the submissions that have come in to all of these very useful inquiries. We put the reference in here about treaty making because of the evidence and the submissions we were getting and because there was a general agreement that treaty making needs to be more transparent. There is abundant evidence for this right around the world, outside of the Westminster systems. The Westminster system is basically: trade agreements are executive prerogative—whatever the minister wants to sign and get through cabinet is effectively what goes into the parliament. There is no say on the treaty per se; there is only a vote on the enabling regulations which give effect to tariff cuts and arrangements. That's the Westminster system, unlike the US, where people are invited into the treaty-making process—business, unions, people representing groups in the community. We've looked at all that and said, 'Why wouldn't Australia reform its treaty-making process to make it much more transparent?' Because we're not just talking about wool, sheep, iron ore, coal, zinc and aluminium; we're talking about an export of services.

I was in the United Arab Emirates. An Australian university has a campus in Dubai, and they were saying, 'This is an export of services.' I said, 'But how does it actually work?' The lecturers in Dubai are in a tax-free environment, and that's why it's attractive for them to go and work in Dubai. The university in Australia is getting government funds but making a profit in another jurisdiction, which is tax free. Where is the net benefit to Australia in all of this? The answer was that, if anything is repatriated back to the university in Australia, there will be less government funding put in. I said: 'Where's the incentive for them to do that? Why would you repatriate profits from overseas back to Australia and decrease your funding stream?'

When you look at services and education, it's extraordinarily complex. We've had three ministers in five years and four assistant ministers in five years. I would suggest that they would've had to take a little bit of time to get their head around these very complex issues. As Senator Carr says, there are many chancellors of universities who are very interested in this space who hope the government know what they're doing. We would hope that they would actually be a little bit more transparent. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect transparency on bilateral agreements about labour movement.

This morning we had a briefing from the MIKTA group, which includes Mexico. Mexico is quite a buoyant economy in a lot of ways. What I really know though is that that labour force in Mexico underpins the ninth largest economy in the world with legal and illegal labour. So those 90-odd million people in California—their agriculture and a lot of their economy would actually collapse without cheap Mexican labour. That's a fact of a Mexican-American free trade agreement.

We've got the same understanding that the TPP-11 could involve labour mobility. We can have a Peruvian electrician come over here and work in Australia, and, if they're appropriately qualified and there's a need for that, that's probably not a bad thing. But there is no transparency on this. There is a complete absence of transparency.

The ISDS provisions are only supported in the treaty-making process by the minerals lobby. The Minerals Council of Australia and their representatives are the only ones who support ISDS. There is no other support—those are the submissions to the various inquiries. They support it, quite rightly, because, if they make an investment in Indonesia or Africa or somewhere and they are at risk of losing that investment, they can take them to the international dispute-settling arena and seek redress. But there is no other person.

Agriculture doesn't support it. When we asked the people in agriculture what they thought of the ISDSs, they said: 'It doesn't matter to us. We're not interested. It doesn't apply to us.' We know that, with the case of the Hong Kong free trade agreement, it can severely impact on us. So we're of a mind to look at that issue very carefully, and we've made that very clear to the government. The government is saying: 'Trust—trust is all you need. We will do the right thing.' They don't even get out and argue. Let's not beat around the bush here: free trade agreements or trade agreements are not popular everywhere. You have to do the hard yards of going out and talking to people about it.

If we look at the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement, which is touted as the icon, we didn't need an agreement to get millions of tonnes on every tide in Western Australia to China. Their capacity to make steel drove that. We didn't need an agreement to do that. When we look at the agricultural aspects of it, particularly the phytosanitary barriers for vegetables, we can't get the best blueberries in the world from Tasmania to China because someone's written a barrier—a quarantine barrier or another barrier. These are not free trade agreements. There is no freedom about it. In a lot of cases, particularly in the area of Australian vegetables, for which exporters are seeking to get access to the Chinese market, there are enormous barriers.

If you press the department, they will always say, 'Oh, but that's Austrade.' Then, when you go to Austrade, they will say, 'That's the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources.' Then, when you get their heads together and ask, 'Why have we done an agreement that doesn't actually get us access?' they'll say, 'In aggregate, it's a good deal.' The problem is we don't get to examine it. I concur with Senator Whish-Wilson and others: transparency, disclosure and inclusion in the treaty-making process would benefit everybody in Australia. It would still be a difficult task, but it would be a lot better than the blind treaty-making process that we currently have. That's what it is; it is a blind treaty-making process.

Debate adjourned.