Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Polley once again for her deep interest in this subject area. It is a subject that is so important to her home state of Tasmania.

It's important to say that, after almost a decade of the Liberal government, Australia was more dependent than ever on a single market for our exports. To overcome this predicament the Albanese Labor government is progressing a trade policy agenda that creates opportunities for Australian businesses to gain new market access in major markets. This includes implementing trade agreements with two of our major trading partners: India and the United Kingdom.

The Liberal government dropped the ball by failing to conclude parliamentary processes to implement the Australia-UK Free Trade Agreement and the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement. In contrast, this government took an important step yesterday, deepening and diversifying our trading relations with India and the United Kingdom, by passing legislation to implement these trade agreements.

We want to continue to work closely with the United Kingdom and the Indian governments. I've been in contact with both of those governments overnight to ensure that all of the processes that we commenced and completed yesterday—we're just waiting for royal assent—everything we have done on our side to complete these processes, is done on the other side.