Page 1366 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 3 May 2016
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The Singapore Business Federation is a highly influential organisation representing 22,500 Singapore companies as well as key local and foreign business chambers, and it champions the interests of the Singapore business community in the areas of trade, investment and industrial relations. Its membership base comprises all registered Singapore companies with a share capital of more than half a million Singapore dollars.
Partnering with Singapore’s pre-eminent business chamber is also a fantastic outcome that will open up a range of new and exclusive opportunities for our local businesses to engage with Asia. In addition to trade, investment and tourism, the relationship between the ACT and Singapore also includes government cooperation.
For the past two years the ACT government has been working with Singapore government agencies to share ideas on developing support for vulnerable families. The relationship began with a visit to the ACT by the Singapore Ministry of Social and Family Development in January 2014 as part of a five-day study trip to Australia. During this trip the ACT government’s better services team shared with the ministry its work on the strengthening families program that supports families with complex needs. This cooperation has continued and is helping both governments continue to develop policies to support vulnerable people in our communities.
To date the strengthening families program has supported 65 families, including 293 individual family members. As part of my Singapore program, I had the opportunity to meet with senior officials from the Singapore Ministry of Social and Family Development to discuss ways to continue this cooperative model. I was advised that the program has been extremely successful in Singapore, enhanced by common approaches and principles to supporting vulnerable people of our respective societies. Formal evaluation results of Singapore’s pilot program will be available in mid-2017.
My delegation then travelled to Shanghai to attend the Australian government’s largest ever trade mission to China—Australia Week in China 2016. Before discussing that week, Madam Speaker, please allow me to highlight the significance of the Australia-China relationship. China is, as many people are aware, Australia’s largest two-way trading partner with trade of around $150 billion annually, and China is the world’s second largest economy. China is Australia’s largest export market for both goods and services, accounting for nearly a third of our country’s total exports, and it is, of course, as many are aware, a growing source of foreign investment. Australia’s and China’s economic ties will be significantly deepened through the China-Australia free trade agreement, which entered into force on 20 December 2015.
ChAFTA will unlock substantial new benefits for Australian businesses by giving unprecedented access to the world’s second largest economy and greatly enhancing our competitive position in key areas such as agriculture, services, premium food and wine, technology and infrastructure investment. Over 85 per cent of the value of Australia’s goods to China will now enter duty free, rising to 93 per cent after four years and 95 per cent when ChAFTA is fully implemented.
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