Time for Crean to deliver on his Doha rhetoric
20th July, 2008
Labor must tick off every part of a comprehensive checklist if a Doha Round deal is to provide real and lasting benefits to Australia, the Leader of The Nationals and former Trade minister, Warren Truss, said today.“Labor made plenty of gung-ho pre-election promises but has since shown all the signs of being prepared to roll over for a Z-grade agreement in next week’s crucial World Trade Organization talks in Geneva,” Mr Truss said.
“Labor sold out in the Uruguay Round and seems ready to do it again over Doha.”
What Australia and Trade Minister Simon Crean need to achieve from a Doha Round deal includes:
· Real cuts in applied tariffs in both the developed and developing world;
· New and genuine market access for agriculture into Europe, industrial products and services including into developing countries such as China, Korea, India, Brazil and South Africa;
· Real cuts in European Union and United States farm subsidies (not just painless reductions of unusable subsidies during a time of high commodity prices);
· No special exclusions or carve outs for sensitive products or long-scale lead times;
· No trade-off of agriculture for manufacturing benefits, and
· Real progress on freeing up trade in services.
“Anything less will be a major disappointment and condemn Australia’s exporters to further years of unfair competition in a heavily distorted global market.
“Before the election, Labor criticised the Coalition government for not putting all of its efforts into the multilateral trade agreement process. Bilateral or regional deals were ridiculed as bad or effectively worthless by the ALP.
“Since then, Labor has found apparent worth in bilateral agreements and laughably claims any achievements as its own.
“I will be the first to welcome a genuinely trade liberalising and comprehensive result from Doha. The Coalition worked hard for many years towards achieving an ambitious Doha outcome that delivered more markets for our exporters.
“However, Labor’s approach to date has looked more like abject surrender. No-one should ever forget how Kevin Rudd in July 2006 gave up the fight for real reform and said that Doha was ‘as dead as a dodo’.
“Now Labor is desperate to put its name to a deal even if it entrenches subsidies and locks out Australian product for many decades to come.
“This is a critical moment for Australian trade. We must not settle for a bad deal,” Mr Truss said.
