Mr St CLAIR (2:55 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Trade. Would the minister inform the House of the latest development concerning Australian lamb and how this came about? Minister, what alternative approaches to international trade negotiations exist in this area?

Mr VAILE (Minister for Trade) —I thank the honourable member for New England for his question. Obviously, the member has a significant number of lamb producers in his electorate that export to the United States and want to see that market opened up further and the impediments that have been placed in the way of that trade removed. We have been actively and aggressively pursuing Australia's rights and the rights of Australia's exporters within the WTO on this matter. At the end of last week we received news that the United States administration clearly indicated in Geneva that they intended to implement the decision that came out of the appellate body in the WTO that the quota and the tariff regime should be removed. The US administration have also indicated that they will need a reasonable amount of time, which is yet to be negotiated, to implement those measures.

From the outset we and the industry have maintained that these measures were unjustifiable and that there had not been serious injury caused to the US industry by the export of Australian product into that marketplace. Going through all the processes within the WTO, we have established that right through to the latest decision of the appellate body and we aim to continue to aggressively exercise our rights under the rules and disciplines of the WTO, whether it be for the lamb industry or for other industries engaged in trading internationally. We are now asking the United States to implement in the shortest period of time possible that decision within the WTO.

We have seen a lot of commentary lately on what trade policy should or should not be, what the government is or is not doing, and we have been actively and aggressively pursuing a trade policy both multilaterally and bilaterally within our region and more broadly across the globe. We have an attitude of `Not Asia only, but Asia first'. We have been actively engaged in the region—in South-East Asia and in East Asia.

We have seen rantings recently from the shadow spokesman that, within 100 days of coming to office, a Beazley government would organise a trade treaty with China, but in the same article they are saying that the first thing they are going to do is abolish the East Asia Analytical Unit within the department. Then they are going to establish a trade treaty with China. It is interesting to note that it has taken about 15 years to negotiate a position with China for entry or accession into the WTO which is going to deliver enormous benefits to Australia's exporters, and yet that is the approach. We have seen the shadow spokesman say that he is favourably disposed to what the government is proposing for improving the economic relationship with the United States. He is saying he is `favourably disposed' in one comment. Then we have the member for Griffith running around, particularly in the US, saying that may not necessarily be so—that it may not necessarily be the Labor Party's position. So, of course, Australia's exporters and some of our interlocutors overseas are a bit confused about Labor's position. Is it Beazley's position, is it Cook's position, is it Rudd's position or is it Dougie Cameron's position that we have seen recently where he almost rolled the Labor Party in terms of their trade policy? I should say their trade non-policy, because a trade policy does not exist. If you go to the Labor Party's web site, a trade policy does not exist. So we have got the shadow spokesman out there being very critical of the things that the government is achieving, yet there is no serious proposition on the direction that the Labor Party would go in the future as far as trade policy is concerned.