Page 3428 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 September 2015
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Mr Smyth has taken the opportunity of the 15th anniversary of the sister city relationship to raise the contentious issue of the China-Australia free trade agreement, and I would like to make some observations on that today. Obviously, opportunities for trade are something that governments clearly focus on when they invest in international relationships. It has been so for a very long time. That can happen irrespective of a sister city relationship, and in some ways should probably be kept separate from those relationships.
Sister city relationships in my view are about building contacts and relationships between people and cultures and strengthening relationships. Trade relationships are somewhat more hard-nosed. We should acknowledge that governments and companies are in it for themselves when it comes to trade. Trade relationships are often created by governments who are being heavily influenced by large corporations and much less so by citizens. Trade agreements are often negotiated out of the public eye and away from the purview of citizens, while large corporations are integrally connected to the proceedings. Indeed, citizens are often arguing against their own governments with regard to provisions in trade negotiations. We have seen this over decades of trade negotiations across the globe; this China-Australia free trade agreement has been no exception.
The China-Australia free trade agreement was signed by the Australian government on 17 June this year, yet the Australian parliament has not finalised scrutiny of the agreement. This is not too unusual these days. The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties is still considering this agreement, but the federal government tabled the enabling legislation in the federal parliament a month before the report from the committee is due to be tabled. That gives a pretty good indication of how much the federal government cares about the view of citizens in regard to trade agreements. The government should have at least waited until this report is tabled before introducing the enabling legislation—but no; they have gone ahead anyway.
The federal government have been keen to spruik the benefits of this free trade agreement, even blindly ignoring their own modelling on the DFAT website about how many jobs will be created. The government’s own modelling, done by the Centre for International Economics, predicted just 5,434 jobs in 2035 but the federal government is touting 178,000 jobs, clearly trying to imply a jobs bonanza. Whilst 5,000 jobs in 2035 may well be welcome, it is important that we have some degree of integrity in the numbers that are being used. The government refused to back down from this position in the Senate earlier this month, despite the Centre for International Economics modelling being the basis of government analysis on their own DFAT website.
Ironically, a review of the Australia-US free trade agreement 10 years after its introduction has found that the deal was a net loser for Australia, despite the promise at the time that it would deliver billions of dollars in benefits and undoubtedly many jobs attached to that. The federal government also promised that immediate benefits would flow from the Korea and Japan agreements; but since they have come into force, trade to these countries has substantially dropped.
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