A game plan for a decade of growth
Beijing’s rulers are determined to punish us for standing up for what’s right but here’s how we could turn the tables, writes AWU national secretary Daniel Walton.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
- ‘We are very concerned’: China issues new Aussie coal threat
- Personal insight into China’s regime a timely reminder
Australians don’t generally pay close attention to foreign policy — until a foreign government places their job under threat.
When that happens, they expect the Australian government to put aside diplomatic niceties and stand up for them.
When the Australian Workers’ Union was formed in 1886, I suspect no one gathered mentioned trade with China.
Fast forward to today and just about every one of the diverse industries the AWU covers is heavily influenced by our relationship with what’s become the world’s second largest economy.
From our members in steel and aluminium who are exposed to the dumping of underpriced Chinese product, to our members in agriculture and mining who are exposed to the constant threat of arbitrary tariffs, China is the 800 pound gorilla in the room.
So when I urged the Prime Minister to hold his nerve and stand up to China’s hostility on trade, I understood the skin our union members have in the game.
The Australian ethos of never backing down to bullies is important. Our coat of arms, after all, features two animals incapable of taking a backward step. But standing up to the Chinese government on trade isn’t about posturing or looking tough. It’s about protecting a rules-based trading system.
The Chinese Communist Party is currently punishing the industries in which AWU members work as payback for what they perceive as foreign policy rudeness — namely over our advocacy for an international investigation of coronavirus's origins in Wuhan.
Now some politicians and business leaders have argued that we shouldn’t rock the economic boat. If we were to back down on our calls for the investigation, the argument goes, wouldn’t that just be easier?
Perhaps. In the short term. But what about the precedent?
If we speak out about the grotesque human rights abuses against China’s Uighur population, will Beijing whack tariffs on wool? If we ban Huawei from a telecommunications bid, will they stop buying our wine? If Mack Horton publicly calls out another doped-up Chinese swimmer, will they mark up Australian seafood?
Our trading relationship would become a point of leverage for the CCP. And that’s when jobs will really be at risk. Australians can, and always should, back ourselves to compete on a level playing field.
So our national interest lies in defending that playing field.
And national interest is what this is all about. We should reject the nonsense frame that this debate is about rational business interests versus racist working Australians.
It’s insulting to suggest working Australians are so unsophisticated they can’t tell the difference between Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party.
Australian workers see CCP belligerence for what it is and billionaire self interest for what it is. They expect their leaders to represent neither.
Of course we should seek to keep trading with China. But regardless of what deals we strike, we should be ever mindful that authoritarian dictatorships are inherently fickle.
Democracies hold that the rules should trump the authority of any leader. China quite explicitly believes the opposite, which makes them unreliable. So, long term, we should ensure our fortunes are not tied to China alone.
That means retaking our status as a nation that makes things. Becoming a manufacturing powerhouse will require a variety of measures and excellent work is being done by the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission.
However, there are three easy wins available this year that could turbocharge our manufacturing sector.
Firstly, procurement. When we build roads, bridges, tunnels, schools and hospitals, it should be done using Australian-made products.
You would think the idea of spending Australian tax dollars to support local Australian business would be common sense.
Yet in recent years we’ve seen all manner of imported products in our infrastructure builds, from Spanish train carriages to dumped Chinese steel in our iconic buildings. With a pandemic-inspired infrastructure boom on the cards, we need to ensure Australian tax dollars power Australian industries.
Secondly, we need to seize Australia’s sovereign advantage: affordable energy. We are blessed to live in a nation with abundant energy reserves: coal, gas, uranium, hydrogen, renewables – we have it all.
Yet somehow we manage to charge our businesses the world’s highest prices for power. It’s insane and it needs to end.
Ensuring that our manufacturers have access to Australian gas at a globally advantageous rate would be the most obvious place to start.
Instead of selling LNG to China at a discount, how about we keep some of that gas here to power Australian jobs.
Thirdly, we need to continue to block dumping. The Chinese government, for example, considers it advantageous to produce low-quality steel at below cost to prop up employment in key regions. That’s fine, but we shouldn’t allow that below-cost steel to be dumped on our market and undermine Australia’s steel industry.
If we do these three things, and government creates the appropriate incentives for investment, the 2020s could be a decade characterised by the rise of Australian manufacturing.
Australians will be able to proudly buy things made locally, Australian-made products can gain a name across the globe, and we can start freeing ourselves from the worrying market power we’ve handed over to an authoritarian regime.
Daniel Walton is national secretary of the AWU