Reckless ALP putting trade deals at risk: Birmingham

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham says Labor’s refusal to fully support the Indonesian free-trade deal is “reckless”.

Simon Birmingham has condemned Labor’s refusal to fully support the Indonesian free-trade deal as “reckless”. Picture: James Elsby/AAP

Bill Shorten has put future trade negotiations at risk and turned his back on a long tradition of bipartisanship, according to Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, who has condemned Labor’s refusal to fully support the Indonesian free-trade deal as “reckless”.

Senator Birmingham said the Labor trade policy, released last year, would make it “next to impossible” to negotiate future deals and exposed Labor for “turning their back on the legacy of Hawke, Keating and John Button”.

In an advance copy of Senator Birmingham’s speech to an Asia Society event — obtained by The Australian — he accuses Labor of having its trade policy dictated by an emboldened union movement.

“I proudly and readily acknowledge that trade has been a largely bipartisan endeavour. But this is at risk,” he says. “Labor is being influenced by self-interested unions and others placing obstacles in the way of finalising FTAs.”

The Australia Indonesia trade deal was signed this week after long periods of diplomatic wrangling and delays, exacerbated by the Coalition’s move to float shifting the embassy in Israel to West Jerusalem. Mr Shorten and his trade spokesman, Jason Clare, have welcomed the signing but have not committed to helping the ­Coalition pass laws to bring the deal into force. They said they would “study” the deal and its impact on workers, and want it to go through the normal parliamentary committee processes.

Labor’s trade policy introduced last year bars the party from supporting new deals that include investment dispute clauses or clauses that ease the entry of foreign workers to Australia.

The new Indonesia deal does include some of these clauses.

Labor sources said, if elected, the party was likely to seek renewed negotiations with Indo­nesia to excise the investor-state dispute settlement clauses (ISDS), which could allow foreign companies to sue the Australian government, before passing the laws to bring the deal into force.

They say Indonesia has not been in favour of these ISDS clauses anyway, because they mostly favour Australian mining companies, and it could be done through a “side letter” to avoid a wider re-writing of the agreement.

Labor has yet to publicly articulate whether it would allow the enabling legislation for the Indonesia deal to pass without the excise of these investment clauses.

The opposition has declined to support the enabling legislation for the Peru free-trade deal and has also demanded the government approach Peru and obtain a side letter ruling out the investment clauses.

Senator Birmingham accused the party of being led by unions and orchestrating a “scare campaign” against ISDS clauses. “Labor policy now, at the demands of the same self-interested unions, threatens to renegotiate recently concluded agreements and even existing agreements for what are frankly spurious reasons.”

Mr Clare declined to comment.