Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to make some comments from the perspective of my participation in the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties deliberations on the RCEP agreement. I want to thank those Labor senators and members who participated in that committee, who've done careful work in the labour interest, in the labour movement's interest and in the national interest to continually improve Australia's participation and the quality of these agreements.

I want to deal with a few facts. The debate about trade is too often a fact-free debate. The key issues that we prioritised in the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties were, firstly, the legitimate issues raised by people in aged care wanting to ensure that the impact of the RCEP wasn't to limit the Australian government's capacity to regulate in aged care. It is crystal clear that there is no impact from the RCEP on the capacity of the Australian government to regulate aged care if this government or a future Albanese government chooses to implement the full recommendations of the aged-care royal commission—no impact on labour mobility and the capacity to regulate temporary work, no investor-state dispute settlement procedures, and despite what we heard a few minutes ago, a commitment in writing from this government that is binding that Australia will not pursue investor-state dispute settlement procedures at the two-year review.

The issues around Myanmar are a top priority for the Labor members of the committee, and in no way is Australia's participation in the RCEP a legitimisation of the Tatmadaw regime in Myanmar. It is an assertion of ASEAN centrality. And, if you're concerned about issues like the brutal takeover in Myanmar and you want a pathway to resolve those issues, ASEAN centrality is critical; collective action in the region is critical.

We do have some criticisms of the government's approach to Myanmar. We on the Labor side do believe that a stronger statement at this point would be of value. We would support Magnitsky-style sanction regimes; they would allow more targeted, agile and effective sanctions of Tatmadaw figures. But in no way should Labor's support for the RCEP be taken as a tacit endorsement or legitimisation of that regime. Environment, labour and human rights are all provisions supported by Labor when we commenced negotiations for this agreement, and we will continue to seek improvements in those areas.

Now, our region is not composed of entirely democratic countries. That may be a newsflash for some people in this place. From some of the language about alliances with like-minded nations, it may be a newsflash for people in the government and in the Greens, but, you know what, the region's a bit more complicated than that. Diplomacy and seeking peace, freedom, relationships and security in our region involve deepening relationships with countries that are very different to ours and have very different styles of governance to us. And we should be focused on that. If you're interested in security and peace, that is the strongest argument, in fact. There is not a very strong economic argument for RCEP. Not even its principal opponents would argue that there are any significant advances in RCEP in economic terms or market access terms. The strongest argument for RCEP is continuing to build our relationships in the region. That is the strongest argument. If you're interested in peace and security in our region, you cannot be against our participation in the largest piece of regional architecture that has been developed in recent times.

It does lead me to make a couple of observations about the government's approach to trade agreements more broadly. It is the case that the government has, at the very least, overstated the economic case for each of the agreements that it has participated in and led. I think the closest the government's going to get to achieving net zero this week is RCEP, where there is net zero economic benefit—no real benefits, no real costs. They won't get much closer to net zero in any other terms this week. There is no independent economic analysis, and it is a problem for building confidence in the Australian community that the government's secret deals approach to trade agreements is actually in the national interest when the government cannot demonstrate one extra job from its trade agreements—in fact, the reverse. There have been too many cows-for-cars agreements. There have been too many agreements that privilege the export of raw commodities and don't actually act in the interests of jobs.

Australia has been forced further down the global value chain over the life of this government and become less and less economically diverse. You have jokers like Mr Christensen chairing this Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth, worried about our economic diversity—the diversity of our trading relationships. If you were remotely interested in Australia's economic sustainability and diversity, you would be focussed on lifting us up the global value chain and making our economic exports more complex, not less. What have we seen? We've seen the car industry close down. We've seen incomes decline. We have seen no wage growth. This is because of the free market ideology that's attached to the government's approach.

The second element of the government's approach that is a problem here is a focus on ribbon-cutting and announcements and not delivery. That's why you see people performing and putting a big amount of emphasis on agreements like the Uruguay agreement. Our trade volume with Uruguay is $24 million, at its highest, a year, but we devoted resources to pursuing an agreement with Uruguay. The IA-CEPA is the most recent significant bilateral agreement. It was supported through this place by the Labor Party. There was a big announcement and all the razzle-dazzle, all the press conferences, all the claims made about the economic benefit, but where is the follow-through from this government? Where is the increase in commitment to resources from trade offices to support Australian businesses to participate in economic activity in Indonesia? The short story is: nothing; zip. The government's focus is on the instrument itself and not the object.

We've seen, I think, a government that's approach to trade agreements has let Australia down, a government that's approach to trade agreements is stuck in the 1990s and the 2000s. We've slid much further. We are repeating the certainties and sureties of the 1980s and 1990s, and things have been allowed to slip, decline and deteriorate since then. What we see in the Australian community on issues like temporary migration, for example, is that there is an association in people's minds with the amount of temporary migration and the trade agreements. Well, the truth is trade agreements are now irrelevant in temporary migration terms; it's this government's approach to temporary migration that is the problem. There is no effective local training and no regulation of temporary migration. Former Treasurer Peter Costello said in the early 2000s that Australia would never become a guest worker nation. I don't think you could travel in the streets of Sydney or Melbourne, or in our agriculture sector, and say that that is still the case. There is a deep complacency that has infected the government's approach. It's still stuck in the early 2000s when we had, essentially, a benign economic environment and a benign geopolitical environment. With that complacency and that sense of confidence, the coalition government has not caught up with the big shifts in the region.

What would be different about the Labor approach in government? Well, the first thing is that we would be results based—not measuring our effectiveness on the number of trade agreements or the number of press conferences, but having a focus on actually deepening trade and market access, particularly for Australian firms higher up in the value chain. We would be supporting businesses, rather than just signing the agreements and saying, 'Job done.' That has been the approach of this government.

The second thing we would do to rebuild confidence in these issues is clean up temporary labour. We would be focused on permanent jobs and permanent migration and eliminate the abuses, the rorts and the rip-offs that have been perpetrated by this government in temporary labour. We should be prioritising permanent migration. We don't want a guest worker economy; we want to be supporting permanent migration. And for temporary workers who come here, their experience of life in Australia should be a good one. They should be able to come here and work in confidence and then be able to return to their countries and tell a good story of their lives in Australia, not a story of desperation and hunger and lining up in food queues, which has been the experience of temporary migrants over the last couple of years.

Fix agriculture, train apprentices, look after temporary workers and make sure we actually recognise the soft diplomacy asset that there is in our region and look after Pacific workers properly when they come here, instead of the current approach of all care and no responsibility. What do you think people say when they return about their experience if there have been 14 people stuck in a flat in Inverell paying exorbitant rents and working in a meatworks? What do you think they say about the Australian government's commitment to the Pacific when that happens? We have to improve that.

There will be no ISDSs under a Labor government's trade approach. They are not in RCEP. They are a declining feature of the global trading environment, in any case. We will not permit them. There will be no agreements that undermine our sovereign capacity to provide and protect public services or to regulate in the interests of Australians.

An Albanese government will build local. We will use the power of our government procurement capability at the Commonwealth level and encourage the states to build locally. Just like President Biden, in the COVID recovery we will build back better and build Australian industry. That means more trains in Queensland, with no more Campbell Newman approaches to outsourcing or Mr Baird or Ms Berejiklian approaches, where all the trains, buses and ferries were built offshore. There'll be billions of dollars spent and local jobs in places like Maryborough and Newcastle. There'll be defence procurement, supporting our small to medium enterprises.

We will rebuild Australian manufacturing under an Albanese Labor government. Under the government opposite, good jobs in manufacturing have declined. The car industry has gone offshore. Manufacturing now sits at 5.7 per cent of GDP. You can't wander around this place wittering on about national security and pretend that it's sustainable for Australia to be strong and secure in the region when our economy is diverse and hollowed out and manufacturing hovers just above five per cent. It's completely inconsistent, it's completely reckless and it will leave Australia a weaker and impoverished place if we allow it to continue.

An Albanese Labor government will support good-quality trade agreements, but we will not allow free trade ideology to capture our approach to industry policy or to regulating and protecting the Australian national interest.