Free trade talks with UK bring golden opportunity for Tassie

Tasmania will have a “huge advantage” to grow its multi million-dollar exports to Britain after Australia began official negotiations for a free trade deal last night. Details >>

TASMANIA will have a “huge advantage” to grow its multi million-dollar exports to Britain after Australia began official negotiations for a free trade deal last night.

The state currently sends about $10 million of goods to the UK each year – just a fraction of the $3.6 billion Tasmania exported in 2019.

Trade with the UK dipped massively after it entered the European Union in the 1970s.

But federal Trade Minister Simon Birmingham, who formally launched trade talks with his UK counterpart at 5pm on Wednesday, said Australia was aiming to make it a top ten trading partner again.

“Tasmania’s premium produce and clean, green image is such a huge advantage for them in markets like the UK,” he told the Mercury.

Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham delivers his speech at the National Press Club in Canberra, Wednesday, June 17, 2020. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

“It’s an opportunity to secure a range of niche opportunities for high value, high quality, clean, green goods.

“And as the UK was Australia’s third largest goods destination in the 1970s, it’s now only our 12th.

“Our ambition is to drive it back into top 10, and our hope is that premium goods from Tassie will play a key role in achieving that growth.”

While the country is much further for Tasmanian exporters than the lucrative Asian Pacific markets of China, Thailand and Vietnam, Mr Birmingham said the UK was a “huge potential market” as a country of almost 67 million people.

“We see potential for many hundreds of millions of dollars in additional Australian exports into the UK,” he said.

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Better visas for Australians to live and work in the UK, and vice versa, are also on the table.

“We start from a really high benchmark of mobility between Australia and the UK,” Mr Birmingham said.

“Already we see many young citizens from each country enjoying a rite of passage as a backpacker or working holiday maker in the other nation.

“I think there are opportunities for us to build on that and to pursue areas of mutual recognition of qualifications, where we have similar high standards of training and education.”

Onions, wine and hops are some of the key Tasmanian exports which might boom under a trade deal.