Quest with Richard Quest Interview
RICHARD QUEST: The Australian Trade Minister Steven Ciobo is with me, good to seeyou.
STEVEN CIOBO: Richard, good to be with you.
RICHARD QUEST: Before we talk about this, we do important things, I do need to just talk about the experience that Australiahas had with gun control following the Tasmania shooting what, twenty-odd yearsago?
STEVEN CIOBO: Yeah, April 1996 we saw, unfortunately, a mass casualty event there. We saw 35 peoplelost their livesand scores more were injuredin that mass shooting, but, andlook, I would never presume to lecture the US about what to do, that's obviously a decisionfor the United States, but Australia's experience, if you look at the 18 yearsprior to the 1996 shooting, we had something like thirteen mass casualty events, Ithink five or more fatalities fromshootings. We then enacted a whole series of laws to, to basically, buy back or encourage people to hand in theirweapons in Australia. We saw 700,000 weapons that were handed in into Australia, I mean with, on a per head of populationbasis, that's equivalent in the US of something like forty millionguns coming back into the government. And sincethenwe've had zero mass casualty events.
RICHARD QUEST: And you also, of course, the word 'other' measures that were introduced, tightening up on theownership, the restrictions, the background checks and all of thosethings, but it was the buyback that was the key to it. Becausethe argument in thiscountrygoes, 'well, if you just have background checks andrestrictions on ownership, you've still got 350 million guns out there."
STEVEN CIOBO: Yeah. Well,I can't speak to the US experience, In Australia -
RICHARD QUEST: Right, but the Australian experience.
STEVEN CIOBO: In Australia,what we did was several things; we bought back guns, and that was around 640-650,000 guns were bought back. We sawabout another 60 thousand that werevoluntarily handed in, and that removed 700,000 weapons from the Australian population. And as I said, since thenwe've had zero mass casualty shootings in Australia. So, the results in Australia have been very profound, but also suicide,Richard. We've seen thesuicide rate, successful suicide rate, in Australia fall by somethinglike 50-60 per cent since we did this as well, so there'sbeen a lot of benefits for Australia.
RICHARD QUEST: We'll put all that to one side.Let's talk now about trade
STEVEN CIOBO: Sure.
RICHARD QUEST: The CPTPP-
STEVEN CIOBO: Let's just call it the TPP-11.
RICHARD QUEST: The TPP-11. Or the TPP minus 1, what's differentabout it? Whichever. What'sdifferent about it?
STEVEN CIOBO: Well, what we did, the eleven of us that were still remaining, Imean we were disappointed but not surprised when the US took the decision to withdraw, I mean the President flagged that prior to theelection so it happened and that was to be expected. But the elevenof us said 'No, this is a very important deal, it's going to be good for all ofus,' $13.7 trillion worthof economic activitycaptured by the agreement betweenthe 11 of us, so weforgedahead and we've done this deal.
RICHARD QUEST: Right. But how does it differ? How does TPP-11differ from the original? I mean obviously, the US isn'tthere numerically, but what terms have not survivedor have been added? What have you managed to get?
STEVEN CIOBO: Well, actually, the most important is what we didn't do. And by thatwhat I mean is, we are able to not have countries change their marketaccess offers, so inothers words, what was on the table before stayed on the table, even with theUS withdrawal, and that was really critical, so we didn't have to open negotiations all over again.But whatwe did do was suspend around 20 provisions that represented, I guess, the main offensive interests of the United States.