Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That these bills be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speeches incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speeches read as follows—

CUSTOMS AMENDMENT (AUSTRALIA-UNITED ARAB EMIRATES COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION) BILL 2025

The Customs Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025 amends the Customs Act 1901 to implement the Free Trade Agreement known as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Agreement will bring both commercial and strategic benefits. The UAE is Australia's largest trade and investment partner in the Middle East. In 2024, total trade between UAE and Australia was worth $12.3 billion. UAE investment into Australia rose to $14.7 billion in 2024 while our investment in the UAE rose to $9.0 billion resulting in two-way trade of $23.7 billion.

The Agreement will give a competitive advantage to Australian exporters by eliminating tariffs on over 99 per cent of Australian exports, by value; to the UAE.

It is estimated that this will result in tariff savings of up to $135 million on Australian goods exported to the UAE in the first year, rising to $160 million as tariffs are progressively eliminated over five years.

The Agreement locks in access to services markets, and provides a framework to facilitate investment to support Australia's energy transition and Future Made in Australia ambitions. It will also improve certainty for exporters and importers, service suppliers and investors across the whole economy.

The Agreement will support a strong and diversified economy that will enhance the resilience of Australia's trade and investment to future crises. It will also enhance Australia's economic engagement with the UAE through strengthened trade rules that will help build upon our already healthy trading relationship.

The amendments contained in this Bill will establish, in the Customs Act, the rules of origin and document retention requirements called for by the Agreement. Those amendments determine when imported goods from the United Arab Emirates in accordance with the Agreement may be considered to have originating status, called UAE originating goods, and be eligible for preferential rates of customs duty.

Complementary amendments to the Customs Tariff Act 1995 are also required to provide for these preferential rates of customs duty applicable to UAE originating goods.

The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties reviewed both the Agreement and related supplementary Investment Agreement, and recommended that they be ratified.

I commend this Bill to the Chamber.

CUSTOMS TARIFF AMENDMENT (AUSTRALIA-UNITED ARAB EMIRATES COMPREHENSIVE ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION) BILL 2025

The Customs Tariff Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025 will amend the Customs Tariff Act 1995 to implement the preferential rates of customs duty for UAE Originating Goods to implement the Free Trade Agreement known as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement between Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

These amendments, together with the amendments by the Customs Amendment (Australia United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025, will ensure that Australia fulfils its obligations as a signatory to the Agreement and is prepared for the Agreement to enter into force for Australia.

This Bill will insert a new Schedule of duty rates into the Customs Tariff Act. Schedule 16 will contain the preferential rates of customs duty for imported goods that satisfy the rules of origin set out in the Agreement. UAE Originating Goods not set out in Schedule 16 will have a 'Free' rate of duty.

Australia has committed to reducing the rate of customs duty on most UAE Originating Goods to 'Free', either at entry into force or over several years following entry into force of the Agreement.

Excise-equivalent goods—which are certain fuel, alcohol, tobacco and petroleum products—that are UAE Originating Goods will continue to have excise equivalent duties of customs applied, so they receive the same treatment as domestically produced equivalents.

Finally, this Bill also amends certain tariff concessions to maintain their scope and ensure that commitments made under the Agreement are honoured.

The amendments in this Bill complement the amendments in the Customs Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025.

I commend this Bill to the Chamber.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the opposition, I'll make a contribution to these bills, the Customs Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025 and Customs Tariff Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025. It was the former coalition government who initiated the Australia-UAE agreement via announcement with the UAE in March of 2022.

When the former coalition agreement was elected in 2013, our goods and services covered by a free trade agreement were at 25 per cent, and by 2022 it had gone to 80 per cent, including the agreements with the UK and India. The former coalition government ratified the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world's largest free trade agreement, and signed FTAs with Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Peru and Indonesia, as well as regional agreements across the Indo-Pacific, including the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations, PACER, and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Live sheep are a key commodity for the UAE, who import for religious, cultural and social reasons. This deal with the UAE could have supported the industry for years to come. Instead, those opposite have turned their backs on our farmers and left them out in the cold by ending the live sheep trade domestically.

Of course, there are some benefits to this agreement. The agreement is Australia's first free trade agreement with a nation of the Middle East. The UAE is Australia's largest trade and investment partner in the Middle East. Australian exporters will benefit from the elimination of tariffs on over 99 per cent of Australian goods exports to the UAE by value. Once fully implemented, it is estimated to increase Australian exports by around $678 million per annum. When fully implemented, CEPA will eliminate tariffs over 99 per cent of Australia's exports to the UAE by value, with most tariffs eliminated on entry into force or locked in at zero, and others eliminated over three or five stages.

Removal of the UAE's import tariffs will create commercially significant benefits for Australian exporters, which opens opportunities for Australian exporters to diversify into this important Middle East market and provides greater certainty on the tariff treatment they will receive. CEPA will also benefit exporters of products such as automotive parts, gold, nickel, coal and diamonds. Farmers and food and beverage producers stand to gain from our preferential access to the UAE's growing market for premium food and agricultural products with the elimination of tariffs on products such as frozen beef, sheepmeat, canola seeds, dry legumes and dairy.

With $9.43 billion in two-way goods and services trade in 2023—over $10 billion, of course, in the pre-COVID era—the UAE is Australia's 21st-largest trading partner globally. Goods and services exports to the UAE were worth $5.2 billion in 2023 and were dominated by alumina, meat and oil seeds. Australian goods and services imports from the UAE were worth $4.7 billion in 2023 and mainly consisted of petroleum products and urea. Australian exporters will benefit from the elimination of tariffs on over 99 per cent of Australian goods exports to the UAE, by value. Once fully implemented, it's estimated to increase Australian exports by around $678 million per year.

Andrew Bragg (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to put on record how important it is for pieces of legislation like these, the Customs Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025 and Customs Tariff Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025, to pass this parliament. We are a trading nation, and there will be much commentary over the coming months and years as countries like Australia respond to the United States' new tariff policy. Historically, it's not unusual for the United States to adopt a form of protectionism, nor is it unusual for Europeans and others to adopt a form of protectionism. But there are a couple of important lessons for Australia which must be mainstays of our trade policy going forward.

I note that the opposition's trade spokesman, Kevin Hogan, has been doing a great job here in presenting a very cogent analysis as we have been responding to the United States' tariff policies, which you would have to say are quite volatile policies at the best of times. One of those lessons is that the subsidisation of industry should be avoided at all costs. The nation went through a very difficult period in the eighties and nineties, when the Hawke government did the right thing and started to bring down the tariff wall and ended the policy of industry subsidisation. That is an important lesson for today, because initiatives to subsidise industry where government is picking winners—as we have seen from this Future Made in Australia policy—are destined to fail. It's throwing money—taxpayers' funds—at businesses and, frankly, misses the point of the role of government. The role of government is to ensure that a country can be competitive and can then concentrate on its comparative advantages. We need to have some sophistication as we respond to these huge policy ructions from the United States, and the subsidisation of industry must be avoided at all costs.

The other thing we must do—and this has been put on record by Mr Hogan—is find more avenues to diversify our trade. We will always be a trading nation and we have a relatively small domestic population, which relies on trade very heavily. In fact, any attempt to try and compare the economic positions of the United States and Australia really does miss this key point, I've noticed. The United States is a very large domestic market, sure, but it's also a trading nation. But it can get away with a lot of crazy ideas which we would be killed by. So we have to show fidelity to free trade. We must, as these bills propose to do, find ways to liberalise and open up new markets. We should always look to eliminate barriers to trade beyond the border and we must, at all costs, avoid the subsidisation of industry.

This is a disastrous policy, and, for a government that is a Labor government, it needs to go back and look very carefully at the policies of the Hawke government, which were the reverse of a lot of this government's industry subsidisation policies we see today. Mr Chalmers is a great devotee of the Hawke government. I think he's done some sort of doctoral thesis on the Hawke government. He might need to dig up this thesis. If he does so, he will find that the Hawke government eliminated the subsidisation of industry and brought down the tariff war, which is the reverse of what the Future Made in Australia policies will be doing in part.

I am very conscious that a lot of false comparisons between Australia and America are made in the public domain. Of course, we are culturally very alike, and America is one of our most important friends, but we are fundamentally different economies, and we cannot entertain any form of protectionism, nor should we ever entertain any form of industry subsidisation as we have seen canvassed in these past few months.

Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on the Customs Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Australia-United Arab Emirates Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement Implementation) Bill 2025. The government is committed to seeking the entry into force of the Australia-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement as soon as possible to enable the realisation of its many benefits.

The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties of the previous parliament scrutinised this trade agreement and recommended that binding treaty action be taken to implement the agreement. I wish to express my sincere thanks to all members of the committee, of which I was one, but, most importantly, special thanks go to the former and current chair, Ms Lisa Chesters MP. There was an enormous amount of work involved in progressing that report as quickly as possible so that we could be in the position to consider that bill today.

This trade agreement includes ambitious outcomes to benefit both Australia and the UAE. These include eliminating tariffs on over 99 per cent of Australian goods exported to the UAE, valued at $160 million when fully implemented; valuable First Nations outcomes covering trade and investment; and acknowledging the importance of women's economic empowerment, as well as the importance of the environment and the transition to net zero. The UAE is Australia's largest trade and investment partner in the Middle East, with total trade between the UAE and Australia worth $12.3 billion in 2024. This trade agreement will give Australian exporters to the UAE a significant commercial edge over other international competitors.

Finally, the government's approach to trade recognises that Australia's economic resilience depends on open global trade relations underpinned by robust rules. 'More trade, not less' is a key part of how we will build the economic future we want in Australia, with secure, high-paying jobs and an open, internationally competitive economy powered by clean energy. This trade agreement with the UAE will assist Australia to reach its full economic potential. I'd like to thank my fellow members for supporting the legislation that will ratify this important trade agreement, and I'd like to put on record my thanks to the minister and his team for their very hard work in negotiating, achieving and, hopefully today, ratifying this important trade agreement.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.