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

Opening access and reducing barriers through trade agreements is one thing. We then need to provide advice and assistance to Australian businesses to be able to take advantage of those opportunities. Yesterday I was pleased to launch the Indonesia-Australia Business Connect program, a three-month digital program of market webinars led by Austrade to provide business with an Indonesia market entry guide, particularly for our food and beverage exporters; a program of webinars unpacking market access arrangements, especially for horticulture, meat, livestock and grain producers; and online education, training and skills events. This is sitting alongside a 12-part free digital FTA seminar series that our government is providing.

So far almost 4,000 people have watched these free seminars but, importantly, they are part of the very significant growth in the number of Australian businesses we see exporting. We've managed to see growth of more than 18 per cent of Australian businesses exporting in our term in office and we want to continue to help more businesses to do so. (Time expired)