Mr ROBB (Goldstein—Minister for Trade and Investment) (12:02): It gives me great pleasure today to table the historic Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, or TPP, and accompanying national interest analysis for consideration by the parliament. Last Thursday, together with my ministerial colleagues from Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam, I had the privilege of officially signing the agreement in Auckland, New Zealand on behalf of Australia. The TPP is the fourth trade agreement concluded by this government. It comes on top of the trifecta of bilateral agreements with Korea, Japan and China. These agreements are the result of a most ambitious trade and investment agenda. This is part of a very deliberate and ambitious strategy to support the diversification of our economy in this challenging post mining boom period. Make no mistake, the TPP is a very big deal and it is undoubtedly the most significant global trade and investment agreement concluded since the landmark Uruguay Round over two decades ago. As it stands, the 12 foundation members of the TPP represent around 40 per cent of the world's GDP. Importantly, it is open for other countries to join in the future, which will further amplify its benefits. Already, other major and emerging economies such as Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and the Philippines have expressed interest in also coming on board. The TPP is also commonly referred to as a 21st-century agreement. It addresses not only the traditional trade and investment issues but also new issues that are extremely relevant to the contemporary global economy. These include e-commerce and, increasingly important, global and regional value chains and services which are so critically important to the health of the Australian economy. As well, it sets in place common rules for labour and the environment and new rules to combat bribery and corruption and state owned enterprises. Along with the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, which is currently under negotiation and which includes the likes of China and India, it provides a prospective pathway to the ultimate objective of creating what would be a transformative free trade area across the entire Asia-Pacific region. In my assessment, given this deal's reach and future potential, Australia simply cannot afford not to be a part of it. It will assist our further integration into the Asia Pacific—a region that will be a critical driver of global economic growth in the years and decades ahead on account of an exploding middle class which the OECD itself estimates will go from 600 million to more than three billion over the next three decades. The opportunities this will present for an innovative, knowledge and services based trading nation such as ours are limited only by the imagination. The Chief Executive of the Business Council of Australia, Jennifer Westacott, said: Seen in the context of the cumulative impact of three ambitious bilateral free trade agreements, these deals open the door for Australia to the geographical epicentre of global growth. TPP levels the playing field for business, workers and farmers, which means more jobs, higher wages, stronger growth, a higher standard of living and new economic opportunities for Australia. Australia's exports of goods and services to TPP countries were last year worth $109 billion, or around a third of our total goods and services exports; and our investment in these economies amounted to 45 per cent of all our outward investment, reaching $868 billion in 2014—a 16 per cent increase from 2013 and a doubling since 2004. We are certainly dealing with a region that will be the growth centre of the globe through this century. Conversely, TPP countries invested $1,109 billion, or $1.1 trillion, in Australia in 2014, an amount which has more than doubled in the last decade. And experience shows that when you deepen trading relations new investment inevitably follows. For example, in the decade since we concluded our bilateral free trade agreement with the United States our two-way investment relationship has more than doubled to over $1.3 trillion. Under the TPP, more than 98 per cent of tariffs will be eliminated. For Australia that means tariffs will be eliminated on approximately $13 billion of our dutiable exports, including $4.3 billion worth of agricultural goods with new levels of access for key industries such as beef, dairy, sugar, rice, grains, seafood, horticulture and wine. National Farmers Federation President Brent Finlay said and I quote: The signing of the TPP is a game changing move for Australian agriculture and a comprehensive and liberalising agreement for the Australian community. A further $2.1 billion of Australia's dutiable exports will receive significant preferential access through new quotas and tariff reductions. For our exports of manufactured goods, worth an estimated $27 billion in 2014, the TPP will afford new levels of market access for iron and steel products, ships, pharmaceuticals, machinery, paper and auto parts, to name but a few. And Australia's energy and resources sector will see significant new opportunities in oil and gas exploration. The tariff cuts will deliver material gains for our exporters across the board and place downward pressure on the cost of imported goods for households and businesses, but the benefits that will flow from provisions that will create a more seamless trading environment are perhaps not well understood. The embrace of paperless trading, streamlined customs procedures and trading rules, assistance for SMEs, more seamless data flows and greater flexibility with data storage are all features of the TPP. There is a noodle bowl of bilateral trade agreements that sit in many cases underneath. Nearly all of these members of the TPP have agreements with one another bilaterally but they all saw the benefit of moving and agreeing to one level—a higher level—of single trading rules, a seamless trading environment that will lower the cost and increase the efficiency of so much trade. It also promotes high levels of environmental protection, enhanced compliance with internationally recognised labour rights and encourages TPP parties to address bribery and corruption. These are firsts in the case of trade agreements in many instances and will provide and ensure across many different economies, many different cultures, many different languages and many different stages of economic development greater protection for the labour force in many of these countries and certainly look to environmental protection in many of these countries as they do develop over this next century. It will ensure that our private companies and businesses are able to effectively compete against state owned enterprises across the region—another first in a trade agreement. Australia of course has a most sophisticated and diverse services sector—it accounts for around 83 per cent of our GDP but less than 20 per cent of our exports. Collectively, TPP countries accounted for almost a quarter of the world's total trade in services and our exports to TPP countries were worth over $20 billion last year—over a third of our total services exports. Significantly, this agreement will promote the expansion and diversification of our world-class services by liberalising key barriers, providing more transparent and predictable operating conditions. It will also capture future services sector reforms. On the investment side this agreement will make it easier for especially our small and medium businesses to physically establish in these sorts of markets where previously, before the digital age, before connectivity and before these sorts of greater levels of certainty, there was a large measure of discouragement for our small and medium businesses, especially in the services sector, to take the risk of establishing a presence in these markets. Much of that will be addressed with this TPP agreement. Some of the services areas that will benefit include: our world-class, $90 billion mining equipment, technology and services, or METS, sector, as it is known; professional services, such as legal, architectural, engineering and surveying services; financial services; education; telecommunications; IT; transport; health; hospitality; tourism; and much more. The TPP and our new north Asian FTAs provide a strong platform to significantly grow our services exports, which are in increasing demand across the region. We have seen it in China but we are seeing it in Indonesia, India, Malaysia and Vietnam—you name it. We are seeing that these economies are moving to a stage where they need to increase domestic consumption to replace a heavy focus on the export of manufactures. They need the First World services skills that we have to offer. There is a great symmetry between what we have to offer and what is needed in the region. We cannot satisfy even a small proportion of what is coming down the line for us but we can be at the premium end of all of these services. We can train the trainers. I can tell you that our brand on services is gold standard right across the region—gold standard—and we need to capitalise on that. It does require in many cases a very significant cultural change from our small and medium businesses to see their next best opportunity is to establish a presence in one or several of the countries around us, because for the first time since European settlement what we are seeing is the nexus of world growth—and it is going to continue through this century—is in our own backyard, not 12,000 miles away, as it has been for 200 years. The TPP and our new North Asian FTAs provide a strong platform to capitalise on these opportunities that are emerging and are profound. Australian companies will also have new opportunities to deliver government procurement services as a result of the TPP. The OECD estimates that eight to 20 per cent of a country's GDP comprises government procurement. The opening of procurement markets around the TPP region, underpinned by fair and transparent procurement rules, will allow Australian suppliers to discover new market opportunities for foreign government contracts and compete for them on an even playing field in a market of 800 million people—compared to the 23 million people in the Australian community. This is an enormous opportunity in its own right, government procurement, which is difficult and has been difficult in many of the member countries of the TPP. That is about to change. The ability for professionals to work overseas is an integral feature of modern business. The TPP will provide Australian skilled business persons preferential temporary entry arrangements into key TPP markets. Australia's ability to continue attracting more than our fair share of foreign investment remains absolutely fundamental to our future growth and prosperity. And with a relatively small domestic market our economy also benefits from Australian companies investing abroad. The TPP investment obligations reflect the importance the 12 parties have placed on providing transparent, stable and predictable investment environments. But a careful balance has been struck between the genuine interests of investors and preserving the rights of governments to pursue legitimate policies that are in the public interest, in areas such as health and the environment. In the application of the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, it will be available for much of commerce if they find that governments in other member countries have discriminated against them or expropriated their property without due payment. On those two conditions, they can use the ISDS. But we have been successful—and Australia led the charge on this—in having an ability to exclude many areas of health and the environment from the ISDS so that we preserve the right of governments to pass public legislation in those areas. The TPP will also promote further growth and diversification of foreign investment in Australia by liberalising the screening threshold at which private foreign investments in non-sensitive sectors are considered by the Foreign Investment Review Board, increasing it from $252 million to $1,094 million for all TPP parties. This is consistent with the approach taken in other free trade agreements. The TPP delivers on this government's commitment to tackling red-tape and reducing business costs by including more transparent and efficient customs procedures, regional rules of origin and a single set of documentary procedures for products traded under the TPP. There will be electronic entry of the rules of origin and the data that is required for customs procedures at the first point of export. That data and those rules and those conditions will prevail throughout further trading of that material or subsequent manifestations of that material throughout the TPP region. Again, it is an area of business activity which is not properly understood—nor should it be, necessarily—but it is very important to get more seamless and more efficient and more digitised access of a lot of this data. It also will have an impact on reducing the opportunities for corruption, at ports, in many parts of the region. The government values innovation and creativity and the need to protect it. The TPP establishes a common set of rules on intellectual property, which prevent piracy and counterfeiting. The intellectual property chapter is consistent with Australia's intellectual property regime. It will not require any changes to Australia's legislation. As has been well publicised, we resisted pressure to increase our five-year period of data protection on biologic drugs and maintained the status quo because we have a system that works for Australia. Consequently, shrill claims by antitrade groups that the TPP will drive up the cost of medicines in Australia have proved unfounded. I am pleased to advise the National Interest Analysis conducted on the TPP states in part and I quote: By setting common international trade and investment standards between member countries, the TPP will make doing business across the region easier, reducing red tape and business costs. Increased and more efficient trade and investment in the region will benefit the Australian economy. Improved market access for Australian goods and services exports and lower import prices will increase capital accumulation, raise productivities and improve utilisation of resources. And despite claims by opponents that the government's involvement in the TPP negotiations was shrouded in secrecy, the National Interest Analysis shows that since 2008, when negotiations commenced, almost 500 groups were consulted, including individuals, NGOs, companies, academia, peak industry groups, consumer groups and trade unions. In total there were more than 2,000 consultations, and almost 100 formal written submissions were also received. These proved, as you would expect, invaluable in guiding our approach to the negotiations and keeping us in step with community expectations. Our position on biologics is testament to this. To assist Australian businesses take advantage of the TPP we will also continue with our stakeholder engagement and provide detailed briefings to all interested stakeholders. Once we have finalised our treaty processes, we will add the TPP and all its component countries to our interactive online trade portal, which already features comprehensive information to help exporters take advantage of our free trade agreements with China, Korea and Japan. It is a very user-friendly stepwise process, which identifies the tariffs and much other information that apply in each of these member countries so that potential traders from Australia can, very quickly, assess the opportunities and the competitive position that they would confront if they decided to export or import. In finishing I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all those who have a stake in this success. This includes all the negotiators and support staff from DFAT who have so diligently and professionally, over a long period, worked to secure outcomes beneficial to Australia. Most recently they have been ably led by our lead negotiator, Elizabeth Ward, and also Jan Adams, our new ambassador designate to China. I think we have got quite a number of the team in the gallery and I would like to very personally acknowledge them and thank them for the outstanding support. There is 16,000 pages to these negotiations. That tells you the number of decisions and the issues that are involved. The complexity and the need for very expert legal advice on every step, as well as the endless conferring with industry groups to ensure and to understand the impact of propositions being put to us, not just by one country but by 11 countries, required a lot of very professional and dedicated work, and I was just in awe of the work that the department was able to provide. It has been a long, drawn out process. Many have been the distance, in fact, with this particular agreement, and that was certainly to my great advantage as we tried to wrap it up. I also pay special tribute to Chris DeCure, who was Elizabeth's predecessor. Sadly Chris passed away before the negotiations were concluded. In fact, sadly, it is the first anniversary of Chris's death this very day, so it is perhaps a testament to the significant contribution he made as the leader of this team over many difficult years in this negotiation process. He was a wonderful man who made an invaluable contribution. I would also like to thank my own staff for their professionalism and support and, again, also for their effective working relationship with all of our DFAT team. It is very important to have one team when you are doing these sorts of things, and I am very grateful for the long hours and the expertise and the judgement that has been exercised by my own team. And I acknowledge my immediate predecessors in Simon Crean, Craig Emerson and Richard Marles for their work in advancing negotiations under the previous government and also the shadow minister Penny Wong for her constructive engagement. Australia's strong tradition of bipartisan support for freer trade is grounded in an innate understanding of the importance of more efficient global trade and investment to the economic health of our nation. Long may this continue. I hereby table the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, with its National Interest Analysis, and commend them to the House. In tabling the document, because it is 16,000 pages, there is part of the hard copy, but also, as it is a 21st century document, I have got 16,000 pages on a memory stick, which I commend to the House. I present the following documents: A copy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement between the government of Australia and the governments of Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States of America and Vietnam and associated side letters and a copy of my ministerial statement.