Statement to WTO Members by the Hon Mark Vaile MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade

Director General - regrettably I must agree with the analysis and suggestions you make for the path ahead. In so doing I want to acknowledge and thank you for the immense effort you have made to support the objectives of all Members in these negotiations, and to help us make progress in the Round.

Clearly we are disappointed with our failure to make the necessary progress in agriculture. Whether we call it a setback, a failure or a crisis, clearly the Round is hanging by a thread.

This denies us not just the benefits of agricultural reform but also the important trade gains that the Round promises for industrial tariff cuts, services liberalization and strengthening of the rules.

At this point we need to step back and reflect on the endeavour in which we have been engaged these last few years.

A round to advance and complete the process of reform of world agricultural trade has been something that the Cairns Group has worked for over many years. We now have almost a decade invested in this round. It took years to see this round launched. And we have been seeking to make progress for 5 years. This has been a difficult and rocky road to where we are now. Clearly there is some way ahead of us to bring the round to conclusion.

We have made such an effort because what we seek is something far-reaching and ambitious. What the Cairns Group wants is fundamental reform of world agriculture, in all its dimensions - market access, export competition, and domestic support. This is necessary to achieve a durable structure for reform.

Achieving fundamental reform is obviously not something that can be satisfied with superficial or partial reforms. If we have learnt anything in the past few days and months it is that there is no low-ambition path to success in this Round - this is not just a slogan; it has proven to be a practical reality.

But, Director General, we remain strongly of the view that anything short of effective cuts, meaningful disciplines and real new trade flows will not command the necessary political consensus.

I can assure all of you that Australia has worked assiduously and constructively with its Cairns Group colleagues, indeed with all Members, for an ambitious outcome to this round and that we will not be lessening our effort. I can accept that agreement on modalities is not within immediate reach, but I cannot agree that the round is suspended for some indefinite time.

This is not the time for finger pointing. But it remains fundamentally the case that we have to remove all the distortions in world agricultural markets. Progress here is the key to unlocking the Round’s development potential and boosting world economic growth.

We launched this round in 2001 in the climate of a high level of ambition by all of us to achieve both a strong development outcome and to succeed in an important multilateral effort to liberalise global trade.

Today, 5 years later, both these objectives remain as important as ever.

To keep faith with our domestic constituency and our moral obligation to the developing world we must commit to continue our shared objective to deliver the Doha mandate.