2 March 2009
Interview – Country Hour, ABC Radio
Subject: ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement
INTRODUCTION: Federal Trade Minister Simon Crean says there'll be an increase in exports as a result of a free trade agreement, signed with the Association of South East Asian Nations. Reporter Mary Goode spoke to him about the deal, which is Australia's biggest free trade agreement.
SIMON CREAN: It means significant new market opportunities for a diverse range of our agricultural commodities - dairy, meat, grain, wool, cotton, all of these will see significant market openings. They'll vary from country to country because that's a reflection of the different stages of development that those markets are in. But take dairy, for example. In the case of cheese, the tariff in Indonesia and Malaysia will be eliminated immediately. For butter, similarly, for Indonesia and Malaysia. Other countries will still eliminate theirs, but over a longer period of time.
REPORTER: You explain this as not a perfect deal. What makes it not a perfect deal?
CREAN: Well there are still some exclusions in certain countries in sensitive areas such as rice and sugar. Rice is excluded from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, but not in the other seven countries. Sugar has some exclusions in a number of countries, but Malaysia, for example, has bound its zero tariffs on sugar. So this is always the case with free trade agreements - you're not going to get the perfect outcome, the most ambitious from our perspective.
But that's because there are a lot of sensitivities in those countries.
REPORTER: So what do you expect to happen as a result of this deal. I mean, do you expect to see higher exports into these areas?
CREAN: Yes, expect to see higher exports into the region. Understand that ASEAN, collectively, as a group of countries, is our largest trading block - trade between Australia and ASEAN is currently at $80 billion.
Now, with these new openings, that can only improve.
REPORTER: The ASEAN trade deal, you know, it helps trade with one partner, but with the EU and US increasingly showing protectionist measures, what's the government now doing to ensure that EU and US opens their doors?
CREAN: Okay, well let's understand this agreement, in the first place, is a huge hit against protectionism, because it introduces, by agreement, a whole new set of disciplines that can't be raised as barriers to Australians trying to enter them. So far as the EU is concerned, and the US, we've made very strong our objections against the Europeans and the US, but the most effective counter to them invoking those new protectionist measures is again to conclude the Doha Round. Because the export subsidies in dairy that the Europeans are invoking would not be able to be invoked in the future...if we conclude Doha, because export subsidies are eliminated.
What we've got to do, at the G20 meeting in April, is to reinforce that commitment.
[ENDS]
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