Sky News Business

TICKY FULLERTON: Meanwhile, TradeMinister Steve Ciobo is in Brisbane, having agreed a scoping exercise on theAustralia-European Union free trade agreement. Well, I caught up with him ashort time ago. Minister, thank you for joining us there. I guess the big newsat the moment is these missile attacks on Syria in response to that atrocity.That's kind of overshadowing everything, isn't it?

STEVEN CIOBO: Well, look, it isbut understandably too, Ticky, I mean, the fact is that what the Assad regimehas done over the past couple of days was truly barbaric. It was horrific. Itdeserved a response like this, quite frankly, and Australia stands behind theUnited States in what is a very proportional, calibrated and appropriatestrike.

TICKY FULLERTON: Could it escalate?I guess that's the problem, isn't it?

STEVEN CIOBO: Well, look, thishas been an area of conflict for quite some time. I'm not in the business ofcrystal ball gazing. In politics we have to deal with the terrain as itpresents itself. It comes down to this fundamental threshold question though:is the Western world prepared to stand by while we see a murderous regime usechemical weapons on its own people? And the unequivocal answer from the UnitedStates, from Australia and from others is no, we are not.

TICKY FULLERTON: Now, in themeantime, obviously, President Donald Trump has a very big meeting with XiJinping, the Chinese President. A lot of talk about what might happen withtrade between the two nations. So often when you have a big trade conversation,it gets overshadowed by something geopolitical. Is it likely to impact thosediscussions?

STEVEN CIOBO: Look I think withrespect to the United States and China on trade, everyone is familiar with theissues. Everyone knows what the issues are and what some of the common areas ofinterest are and what some of the conflict points are. I don't believe thatsomething like this is going to in any way, shape or form change the engagementbetween the United States and China on this issue. There's issues there to beresolved, to be discussed, and I think it's good that President Xi Jinping andPresident Trump have the ability to come together to discuss these issues.

TICKY FULLERTON: Okay, so DonaldTrump has said, quote, "We've been treated unfairly and have made terribletrade deals with China for many, many years". Sitting here as theAustralian Trade Minister, what would be a nightmare scenario for us?

STEVEN CIOBO: Well Ticky, you'llunderstand if I'm probably not going to go down the - not walk through the doorthat you opened for me. What I am going to say is that as Australia's Trade,Tourism, and Investment Minister, my focus is upon doing good trade deals forAustralia. Now obviously, people will look around the world at the globaltrading environment and make decisions about what they see is happening, andmake calls about what they're going to do in response or in anticipation ofevents as they unfold. Fundamentally, Australia's interests are well served bya couple of principles. One, opening up more export markets for Aussieexporters to get products and services into, which we know underpins oureconomic growth and helps to drive employment. The second thing is -

TICKY FULLERTON: But if trade fallsdown between the US and China, that surely is going to impact us quite a lot,isn't it?

STEVEN CIOBO: It's based on thepresumption and the assertion you made was 'if'. We've got to see what happens,as I said. I'm not in the business of crystal ball gazing. I'm going to dealwith the terrain as it presents itself. We will continue to open up moremarkets for Aussie exporters, driving economic growth, driving jobopportunities, diversifying the countries with which we have an excellenttrading relationship, because obviously, the more eggs that we have in morebaskets, the better it is for our nation.

TICKY FULLERTON: This seems to bethe new game in town. A lot of bilateral dealing being done all around theworld at the moment. Now the latest thing is your Australia-European free tradeagreement. You've got your scoping structure agreed. Baby steps, though I wouldsay.

STEVEN CIOBO: I wouldn't call itbaby steps. I'd call it a pretty fundamental first step. What we've been ableto secure in 18 months, I mean that's almost a record amount of time, in termsof being quite quick, was a comprehensive scoping study. I was really pleasedafter speaking with EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström recently, thatwe're able to finalise off the back of negotiations between her and I the finalsteps of the scoping paper. Now, this is going to be the document that helps toshape the mandate that I received from my cabinet, from our cabinet about whatit is that Australia wants to achieve in an EU-Australia free trade agreement.For the Europeans, it will be a chance for them to have a say on what's goingto shape their asks and their bids with respect to an EU-Australia free tradeagreement, so it's a very important first step.

TICKY FULLERTON: What does it sayabout Brexit in there, because obviously, I've been reading that Australia'sbiggest two-way trade in services partner is Europe, and yet two fifths of thatservices trade is with the UK. Now is the UK part of Europe in this agreement,or is it not? What sort of allowances have been made in that scoping brief?

STEVEN CIOBO: Well the UK is partof Europe until such time as they formally exit. They'll remain part of Europefor the next two years, and so of course, they'll be part of the Europeanprocess, but by the same token, they're also exiting. And we know that in twoyears' time the UK will no longer be part of Europe. That's precisely why,Ticky, I've engaged with Liam Fox, the Secretary of State from the UK, mycounterpart, to talk about putting in place arrangements for an Australia-UKfree trade agreement. We've already established a joint working group betweenour two governments. We're already making excellent progress around preliminarydiscussions on what an FTA might look like between Australia and the UK -

TICKY FULLERTON: That mustdramatically colour your agreement with Europe given the sorts of argumentsthat are going on now between Europe and Britain?

STEVEN CIOBO: Not at all. We canwalk and chew gum at the same time. The fact is that we can engage in goodfaith, negotiate, push for a win-win outcome with the Europeans, and I'm verycomfortable to be able to do that. And by the same token, we're having thatconversation with the UK to achieve the exact same outcome. It's not a zero sumgame. It's not a case of you can only do one thing at a time. We've got goodpeople, people that are able to pursue these conversations in parallel, andthat's precisely what we're doing.

TICKY FULLERTON: Okay. Just going tothe Prime Minister's speech last night at the Sydney Institute, I thought itwas very interesting how much time he spent talking about India, and hisupcoming trip, particularly in relation to trade, particularly, possibly, a lotof talk about the Adani coal mine, and the Government's support for it.

STEVEN CIOBO: Well we're veryfocused on boosting trade ties with India. You'd be aware, of course, that wehave undertaken, commenced free trade agreement negotiations between Australiaand India. We're currently undertaking a stock take of where those negotiationsare. In other words, what we're doing is seeing where each side is with respectto the different offers that have been put -

TICKY FULLERTON: That's slowedthings down a bit, hasn't it?

STEVEN CIOBO: Well I think it'san important breather. Let's call it that, an important breather. And this isan opportunity for us to focus. Trade deals, Ticky, are not alwaysstraightforward. We've seen, for example, the Coalition concluded theChina-Australia Free Trade Agreement, but that had been under discussion forquite a number of years. Now I'm determined to make sure that we do a tradedeal with India, but let me also be very clear, I want to make sure that it's agood trade deal. I'm not just trying to score runs on the board and not careabout the content of it. We've got to make sure that we keep the horse in frontof the cart. And in this case, the horse is making sure it's a high quality,good agreement that suits our purposes, and suits, of course, India's purposestoo.

TICKY FULLERTON: I don't know whatthe horse and cart thing is in terms of Adani, but the Indians must be sort ofwringing their hands as to how long this is going to go on. I mean there's beenan awful lot of money, Indian money put into that project, and yet it's stillkind of up in the air.

STEVEN CIOBO: Look, Adani isunderstandably very frustrated. We have spoken time and time again as aGovernment about some of our concerns around what we would describe asgreenmail. No one disputes for one second, Ticky, that we need to make surethat all the appropriate environmental safeguards are taken into account. Ofcourse we do. No one's wanting to sell off a clean, green future for Australia,but we also need to make sure that we don't become completely bogged down inprocess around appeal after appeal after appeal, and people being able inparticular, green groups being able to slide different sorts of legalcontrivances into a decision, or appealing a decision to slow this down. Imean, it's unacceptable. It needs to be addressed.

TICKY FULLERTON: But is the PrimeMinister going to receive a bit of pressure from the Indian Government on thisfront, do you think?

STEVEN CIOBO: Well I'm probably thewrong person to ask that question to. That's probably better directed towardthe Indian Government, but I think everyone knows that the AustralianGovernment is committed to making this happen. We think it's high time that theQueensland Government stepped up, and that we saw less greenmail and morejob-creating, economy-growing projects like this take place.

TICKY FULLERTON: Minister SteveCiobo, thank you very much for joining me.

STEVEN CIOBO: Good to speak withyou.