SENATOR THE HON PENNY WONG
LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR TRADE AND INVESTMENT
LABOR SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RADIO NATIONAL BREAKFAST
MONDAY, 24 AUGUST 2015
SUBJECT/S: China-Australia Free Trade Agreement; Tony Abbott’s Royal
Commission.
FRAN KELLY: Penny Wong is Labor’s Leader in the Senate and Shadow Minister
for Trade. Senator Wong, welcome back to Breakfast.
SENATOR PENNY WONG, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE:
Good morning Fran. Good to be with you again.
KELLY: The DFAT website says the Chinese deal will “not allow unrestricted access
to the Australian labour market by Chinese workers. It will not allow Australian
employment laws or conditions to be undermined. It will not allow Chinese
companies to avoid paying Australian wages by foreign workers. It does not change
the required skill levels for Chinese visa applicants.” Why doesn’t that satisfy you?
WONG: And the agreement does not ensure that jobs available are offered to
Australians who can do them first. Can we just take a step back first, and I’m very
happy to deal with the detail of the agreement, which is something the Government
refuses to do. We’ve got a situation where legitimate questions have been asked
about this agreement. Instead of dealing with them we have ministers in this
Government, including the Prime Minister, simply calling people racist for raising
these issues. We’ve got a Government that’s announced a taxpayer funded
advertising campaign and a Minister who has headed off overseas, what we don’t
have is anybody who’s prepared to deal with the detail of the agreement and the
excerpts you played, whether it’s the Finance Minister, or the reference to the Prime
Minister, demonstrates it’s a Government that’s running away from the detail of the
agreement.
I’m happy to go through the two issues. There are two aspects of the China Free
Trade Agreement which deal with people movement, labour movement. There’s
what’s called the movement of natural persons, where labour market testing, that is
offering the job to Australians first, has been explicitly removed. And the second is in
relation to the Investment Facilitation Agreements, these are projects of over $150
million, and it’s quite clear that labour market testing is not in the agreement and is
an optional extra at the discretion of the minister.
KELLY: Let me quote the Minister on that, Andrew Robb, who is the Trade Minister
says, and I’m quoting here: “If a company is approved for an IFA, one of those
projects, there are significant conditions that must be satisfied before a single
overseas worker can be recruited, that includes that employers must demonstrate a
labour market need, prove that Australians have been given first opportunity through
labour market testing, with evidence of significant recruiting efforts.” How is that not
an effort to recruit Australians first?
WONG: None of that is in the agreement, Fran. None of that is in the agreement.
KELLY: So, Andrew RobbWONG: That might be what he says government policy is, what the discretion or the
whim of the Minister of the day may or may not include. But he should be clear with
Australians, none of that is in the agreement and that only applies to the Investment
Facilitation Agreement. And I have to say the accusations of racism really, from a
Government that defended the rights of bigots, from a Prime Minister who has
refused to condemn a backbencher for attending a Reclaim Australia rally, and we all
know the racist views those rallies set out, and a government that has a
discriminatory investment framework which discriminates against Chinese
investment, really those accusations really do fall pretty flat.
KELLY: I want to come back to that, but I just want to try with some of the detail,
because I’m also quoting to you from the Department of Immigration and Border
Protection guidelines now, for those big projects, those IFAs, I’m quoting here again:
“employers must show that there is demonstrated labour market need, Australians
have been given the first opportunity through evidence of domestic recruitment
activity, in other words labour market testing, and there are no suitably qualified
Australians”. So we have had the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of
Immigration, and the Trade Minister all saying that the FTA insists first opportunity,
with evidence of domestic recruitment activity, is in this FTA.
WONG: It cannot be in relation to contractual service suppliers and installers and
servicers, because that Chapter of the Trade Agreement specifically excludes labour
market testing, it says Australia will not impose, as a condition of the Agreement,
labour market testing on persons who enter Australia under that Chapter of the
Agreement. So, let’s be very clear about that, that’s been specifically given away and
excluded by the Government.
KELLY: That’s for specific areas of skills, is it?
WONG: This is movement of natural persons, that provision of that Chapter in the
Agreement, which specifically says people who fall into the categories of contractual
services suppliers and installers and servicers. There is no labour market testing in
relation to those provisions and the Minister has not answered any questions, the
Government has not answered any questions about that provision. In relation to the
second aspect, which is these projects of over $150 million, what I would again say
to you is what you quoted at me is not included anywhere, in any of either the text of
the Treaty, or in any of the side letters between Australia and China. So the
Government is asking Australians to ignore the text of the arrangement and to
believe that the whim of the Minister might include these provisions.
KELLY: So what do you want to do? What does Labor want to do? You say you
don’t want to threaten the FTA, you want to back it. Labor spent years itself in
government itself trying to get this FTA. Do you want to rewrite the deal, that’s likely
to throw it back to the negotiating stage, or what do you want to do?
WONG: We have said we are up for a trade agreement with China. We recogniseKELLY: We’ve got one, so what do you want to do with it?
WONG: - the importance of the economic relationship with China. In government
you might recall, Fran, we spent a lot of energy on the White Paper which set out
Australia’s engagement with the region, something that the Abbott Government has
junked.
KELLY: Yeah, but Andrew Robb has got the deal signed.
WONG: On this, we think this deal lacks some critical safeguards. We want to
explore how we improve this agreement with the addition of safeguards and we
would say to the Government, you should do what John Howard was prepared to do
and that is to sit down with the Labor Party and work our way through how additional
safeguards can be included in this agreement.
KELLY: But the Minister says trying to renegotiate this will undermine the whole
thing, put it at risk. Do you want to renegotiate the Trade Agreement, or do you just
want to have certain elements written into legislation?
WONG: We want to see how we can include certain safeguards in relation to this
agreement. Now, in terms of the detail of that, I would make this point: we don’t have
enabling legislation yet before the Parliament. The Government, in fact, sat on this
deal for some seven months between signature and making the text public. Now
they are demanding that Labor immediately sign up after they have sat on this for
months and months, and the various committees of Parliament that consider the
Treaty haven’t reported. Now we will certainly work our way through the detail of this,
but it is disappointing that the Government’s first response to legitimate questions
being asked by the Opposition and by the community more broadly are simply met
with an attack as to people’s intentions.
KELLY: The attack that we heard earlier from Mathias Cormann that says Labor is
supporting a racist dog-whistling campaign by the unions. Do you accept that the
union campaign has xenophobic overtones?
WONG: I think the union campaign is critical of Tony Abbott. I think the campaign,
both from the union and questions from the community more broadly and questions
from us are about legitimate concerns relating to the agreement. And I think the
Government would do far better to respond directly to some of those concerns,
rather than simply lashing out at anyone who does. What’s interesting, to be fair to
you, you have actually asked me questions about the agreement. That is not
something the Government is proposing to do. They don’t set out their response in
terms of what they’ve actually agreed in answer to any of the concerns raised by the
community, or the Opposition, or the trade union campaign.
KELLY: Those TV ads though from the unions, they are a little scary. They do say
others are going to come to take your jobs and yet the Government says under the
FTA more jobs will be created for Australians, not less jobs, which is, it’s true, isn’t it,
ultimately if the FTA is successful?
WONG: The whole point about trade and opening up trade, which is why Labor has
been a party that has opened up our economy and engaged in trade liberalisation in
government and opposition for some decades now, is we want to create more jobs
for Australians. The whole point of that is undermined if you have an agreement
which doesn’t have the appropriate safeguards in relation to people movement,
which is why we are raising these issues.
KELLY: Can I just ask you finally, on another issue, Senator Wong, Dyson Heydon
will tell us tomorrow whether he accepts or rejects submissions that he should step
down as the Royal Commissioner, the Trade Union Royal Commission, because of
perceived bias. If he decides to continue, will Labor accept that decision, or will you
move to ask the Governor-General to remove him?
WONG: We anticipate that Commissioner Heydon should do the right thing. I don’t
think our concerns have been allayed by anything that he has said. I don’t think any
fair minded observer, looking at the explanations he has given for his acceptance of
speaking at a Liberal Party fundraiser, could come to the view that there is no
apprehension of bias. Now I am conscious that he is deliberating currently and
obviously he should be permitted to do that, but I’d have to say Labor and the
community’s concerns haven’t been allayed by any of the responses that were
provided by the Commissioner last week.
KELLY: Senator Penny Wong, thank you very much for joining us.
WONG: Good to speak with you.
ENDS