The introduction of the enabling legislation for the China Australia Free Trade Agreement today is an important step forward in ensuring the agreement enters into force before the end of 2015, Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Brendan Pearson said in a statement today.
“The China Australia Free Trade Agreement will further strengthen a minerals and energy trade already worth more than $80 billion annually,” Mr Pearson said.
“The agreement will eliminate Chinese tariffs – which currently range between 1.5 per cent and 10 per cent – on all minerals and energy exports within two years.
“When applied at current rates, these tariffs impose a burden of about $600 million on the bilateral minerals and energy trade each year.”
Mr Pearson said the opportunities offered by the FTA have been put at risk by “a mischievous and misleading campaign” by sections of the trade union movement.
“The CFMEU made similar scaremongering claims about earlier trade deals with Korea, Japan and Thailand. None of the union’s claims about those trade deals were ever realised,” he said.
“The China free trade deal will provide Australian exporters with an advantage over many of our competitors in China’s $US10.4 trillion economy.
“It will also eliminate the advantage that some nations – including New Zealand and South East Asian nations – have had over Australian exporters for several years as a result of earlier free trade agreements they concluded with China.”
He said passage of the legislation by late October/early November is absolutely essential and will ensure there is “sufficient time for the entry-into-force to take place before the end of the year”.
“That will mean that Australian exporters will secure a two-stage tariff cut, with immediate tariff cuts on entry-into force and again on 1 January 2016,” Mr Pearson said.
“Failure to achieve that would mean that the squalid and dishonest union campaign had cost hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits for Australian exporters.”
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