This conference will cover many subjects, but improvement in all things depends upon improvement in one thing: our economy.
So, that’s what I want to address today – our economy, and the heart of our economy, which is trade.
A short walk from here, in Macquarie Place, is a statue of Thomas Sutcliffe Mort, a leading merchant of colonial New South Wales.
Mort helped to start the international wool trade that was the foundation of our early prosperity.
He also founded the Australian Mutual Provident Society, which became today’s financial giant, the AMP.
I mention this because what we do makes a difference and because then, as now, prosperity was generated by trade.
Then, as now, jobs were generated by trade.
Australians today are wealthier and our country is more prosperous and more influential because we have grasped the opportunities of trade.
As you all know, Bob Hawke was one of the founders of the Boao Forum.
Better than many others and sooner than many others, he understood that Australia’s future prosperity rested on our trade with China.
Australia is now poised to realise the Hawke vision and to complete the work begun by Prime Minister John Howard over a decade ago, when the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement passes through our Parliament in the next few months and enters into force.
This is a decisive moment for the economic future of Australia.
It is as vital to our long-term prosperity as floating the dollar and deregulating banking was in the 1980s.
The FTA with China will change Australia for the better, it will change China for the better and it will change our region and our world for the better.
It will secure the employment of generations of Australians to come.
It will provide massive new markets for our entrepreneurs.
It will provide investment opportunities that will enrich the Australian people and the Chinese people alike.
It is an agreement that is fundamentally fair, giving our nations unprecedented access to each other's markets.
It removes barriers to Australian agricultural exports including beef, dairy, lamb, wine, horticulture and seafood, so much so that Meat and Livestock Australia forecast that their sector will benefit by $11 billion over the next decade.
The FTA means duty free entry for 99.9 per cent of our resources, energy and manufacturing exports within four years, so much so that the Minerals Council of Australia says that this will remove nearly $600 million in costs from the bilateral minerals and energy trade.
Remarkably, China has agreed to Australia gaining the most substantial market access of any of its FTA partners apart from Hong Kong and Macau.
Australian banks will be able to expand branch networks in China, Australian fund managers will be able to invest overseas on behalf of qualified Chinese institutions and Australian insurers will be able to provide third-party motor vehicle insurance in China.
Over 400,000 Australian workers are employed in financial services.
This agreement makes their positions more secure and it will help open new opportunities in this vital sector.
For China, the FTA liberalises the screening threshold for Chinese private sector investment in Australia and it puts Chinese businesses in the same position as those of our other major trading partners.
To protect Australian investors in China, there’s an investor-state dispute settlement provision.
We’ve secured this protection for Australian investments in China, so it’s only fair that we give the same protection to Chinese investors in Australia.
But I must say this: the FTA’s critics have forgotten their history.
After all, we have investor-state dispute settlement provisions in our FTAs with South Korea, Singapore, Chile, Thailand and ASEAN.
We have investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms in no less than 21 investment protection and promotion agreements and we’ve had an investor-state dispute settlement provision with China since the Hawke Government first signed a bilateral investment treaty with China way back in 1988.
The evidence of some 27 international agreements is that these provisions protect Australian investments.
And likewise, the FTA’s labour mobility provisions protect the integrity of our labour market while allowing businesses to get skilled workers here where labour shortages exist.
Everyone working in Australia will be employed under Australian wages and conditions and will have to meet Australian standards for qualifications.
That’s fair, that’s reasonable and that’s what we’ve agreed to.
The FTAs signed in the past year with Korea and with Japan as well as with China account for nearly 40 per cent of Australia’s two-way trade in goods and services.
Our Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and with Japan are only months old and yet we are already seeing increased exports, like a 34 per cent increase in frozen beef prime cuts to Korea and a 56 per cent increase to Japan in just 12 months.
Macadamia exports to Korea have more than doubled and Japan is importing 66 per cent more of our rolled or flaked oats.
There have been increases in wine, in lamb, in horticulture and other products as well.
Here in Sydney, one business alone, RBK Nutraceuticals, has increased its export sales to just one major customer in Korea by almost 170 per cent in a year and it’s now fielding more inquiries from China in anticipation of the FTA coming into force.
Barossa Valley winery, Seppeltsfield, has clinched deals that more than quadruple its sales of premium wine to China to four million litres, in fact, which is about 10 per cent of Australia’s total wine sales to China.
So these businesses, and thousands like them across this country, are demonstrating that FTAs mean stronger Australian businesses and more jobs for Australians.
Now, in an uncertain world, I’m often asked about Australia’s jobs of the future.
The answer is absolutely crystal clear: the jobs of the future will be found in the markets of the future.
Our efforts to secure these free trade agreements are all about better markets, more trade and more jobs.
As you know, our Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, is now hoping to finalise the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
The talks are at their final, critical stage.
If the Trans-Pacific Partnership is concluded, it will be the world’s largest regional free trade agreement, accounting for around 40 per cent of the global economy and involving almost a billion people, with almost unlimited potential for our businesses.
These free trade agreements are too important for our country; they’re too important for our businesses and too important for our children to be sacrificed at the altar of short-term xenophobic politics.
So, I hope that our opponents will end their flirtation with the ideas and the fears of the past.
As the former trade minister, Simon Crean, put it: “World trade is a multiplier of economic growth. If people are looking for job opportunities and advanced incomes, the path to that is in opening up trade.”
It was, after all, Gough Whitlam who signed the first trade agreement with China 42 years ago last Friday.
Likewise, it was a vision for deep engagement with the region that drove Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
So right now, the Labor Party should recall its recent history and listen to the sane economic voice of people like Simon Crean and Martin Ferguson.
After all, a deal is a deal.
To amend one part is to re-open it all with big risks to Australian businesses, Australian exports and Australian jobs.
This is a test of character for Labor which first welcomed the China FTA but is now trying to stop it.
Freer trade is an essential part of any credible plan to build a strong, prosperous economy for a safe, secure Australia.
Freer trade will strengthen and deepen the relationship between Australia and the nations of our region.
Australia has nothing to fear and everything to gain from freer trade.
We gain and the world gains as well.
Indeed, so much of our region’s prosperity has been built on Australian coal, iron ore and gas.
I am proud to lead a country which has done so much to drive the extraordinary economic miracles that we have seen in the countries to our north over the last half-century.
Australia can give the countries of our region the resource security, the food security and the energy security that we all seek for the future.
We are in the right place at the right time with the right spirit and as far as I am concerned, we must and we will seize this moment.
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