Not perfect but the Australia-UK free trade deal is the real business

Prime Minister Scott Morrison gestures as he leaves 10 Downing street. Picture: AFP

The Australia-UK free-trade agreement is a triumph for Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson and an early fruit of Brexit.

The Prime Minister says if London can do a deal with its best friends first, then that paves the way for deals with others.

The British PM says he’s impressed by Australia’s climate change ambition. He even says Morrison has committed to zero emissions by 2050.

Somebody seems to have misunderstood something there, or is there a little creative ambiguity in the Australian position?

Morrison’s commitment is zero emissions as soon as possible. Anyway, a bit of fudge is forgivable in an area in which fudge abounds everywhere.

Morrison told us this is the most comprehensive agreement we have with any nation except New Zealand. That seems a little contrary to the very long phase-in of agricultural liberalisation.

Johnson for his part understandably talked mainly to his domestic audience and assured them the British agricultural industry would not suffer. It would be good for the agriculture sectors in both countries, he said.

Strategically, this is a very big win-win agreement. It makes it much more likely that Britain can in due course join the Trans-­Pacific Partnership.

Morrison has had a very good G7 but for Johnson it has been an absolute triumph. He had to show that his nation was still “global Britain” after Brexit.

Hosting the G7 then concluding an FTA with Australia have both done just that.

So far, Brexit, which could never have happened without Johnson, has been a boon to Britain. The nation’s stunning late recovery in the Covid crisis is entirely because it was free from the shackles of the EU to use all its national purchasing and manufacturing power to secure a supply of vaccines sufficient to get most of the population vaccinated relatively early, certainly much faster than Europe.

Nonetheless, those active Australian platoons of the idea that Covid is wildly exaggerated should take note of the fact that Johnson has postponed the end of lockdown for a month.

This is because, even with high rates of vaccination, the new Delta strain of Covid is far more contagious than earlier strains.

Now, with the Australian FTA, Johnson demonstrates that his nation can do real business outside the EU.

At this stage, it’s unlikely that trade in goods and services between Australia and Britain will go off the charts, but you never know. Certainly the new deal buttresses the deep, intimate investment relationship.

Like all trade deals, it’s partly symbolic, partly political, but Australia and Britain are good friends and want to trade with each other.

This deal is great win for Morrison and Trade Minister Dan Tehan. There was nothing inevitable about the outcome, and Australia will still need to diversify its trade all over the world.

Beijing now has no interest in continuing to make Australia wealthy. It’s more than likely that when it finds an alternative to our iron ore, that great engine of our national wealth will decline.

We are not going to replace China as an export market with Britain – the two economies are not sufficiently complementary – but our fat and happy days are likely to come to an end and we will need to find every export market we can in every corner of the world.

Britain remains one of the biggest and wealthiest economies in the world. After the Americans, the Brits are our most intimate international partners.

This trade deal is not revolutionary, but it’s a very good piece of work by both governments.