Australian Customer Service Association

Address by The Hon Tim Fischer MP, Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of the National Party, Minister for Trade, to the Australian Customer Service Association Annual Awards Night, Melbourne, 6 October 1997.

It is a great pleasure to be here tonight for this Australian Customer Service Association Annual Awards Night.

This evening we all have a chance to mark excellence in an industry which makes an enormous contribution to this nation, to the well-being of all Australians.

Let me just say that I believe a culture of quality service is critical to the future of this country. If we want to grow and prosper as a nation, if we want to take advantage of all the opportunities that await us in a global economy, if we want jobs and a future for our children, we have got to get this right.

Delivering quality service means meeting the needs of your customers, indeed exceeding their expectations, but in a cost-effective way. It means not assuming that you are delivering quality, but getting out there talking to customers to get their views. And it means auditing your processes to ensure that defined standards are being achieved.

But I don't doubt that the real secret to delivering quality service is attitude. Without the right attitude your employees will never get it right. So this evening is an important opportunity to recognise the importance of developing and fostering the drive to higher standards.

The services sector accounted for all net employment growth between 1986 and 1996, with annual growth of employment over this period of 2.4 per cent. So now around 80 per cent of those employed in this country work in a services industry. That is 4 out of 5 workers.

A real highlight in the services sector has of course been the tourism industry. The World Travel & Tourism Council estimates that the direct and indirect contribution of tourism to our economy represents 1 million jobs, or 1 in 9 of those employed; about 15 per cent of capital expenditure; about 14 per cent of exports; and overall, about 11 per cent of our GDP.

As Trade Minister, I can tell you that I very much understand the contribution Australia's dynamic, highly diversified services sector is making to Australia's export performance. The services sector has well and truly demonstrated it is capable of providing high value added services tailored to individual countries' needs.

Services now represent nearly a quarter of our exports. Moreover, services such as financial, telecommunications, air-freight, legal and accountancy services, are also important 'drivers' of Australia's international competitiveness.

Indeed 1995-96 was a real breakthrough for the services sector. For the first time we recorded a surplus on services trade world-wide. Exports of over $23 billion represented some 23 per cent of total exports, up from only 16 per cent a decade ago.

And in 1996-97, services exports increased to over $24 billion, again strongly in surplus.

I applaud that achievement.

But we can do still more. Tonight I would like to spend a few minutes speaking to you about what the Government is doing to free up further the international trading environment for the services sector.

Services are an increasingly important focus of our trade strategy. We rely heavily, of course, on business input to establish our negotiating objectives. The Government has established industry consultation groups in financial, telecommunications, accountancy, legal and engineering services.

Good results have been obtained from bilateral activities, many jointly with industry, in the services sector. For instance:

• India has recently granted the ANZ its 57th branch, making it the largest foreign owned bank, and India has undertaken to bring forward reviews of its monopolies in long distance and international telecommunications services from 1999 and 2004 respectively.
• China has granted the ANZ a licence for a second branch, to operate in Beijing, which I was pleased to open during my recent visit there, and the law firm Blake Dawson and Waldron has been granted a licence to practice in Shanghai.
• Thailand has granted National Mutual Australasia a licence to operate in a joint venture arrangement with Thailand's General Finance Group and the Government Savings Bank.
• The National Australia Bank has been granted an offshore banking license in Malaysia.

Australia would like the World Trade Organization services negotiations in 2000 to take a comprehensive approach to covering all services sectors and updating the existing multilateral rules. It is vital that the WTO stays up to date with developments in the complex and fast-changing services trade environment.

To these ends, Australia is proposing that the preparatory work focus on the impact of current and emerging developments in trade in services, including electronic commerce. We would like this work to focus on how trade in services is evolving and how to ensure that the 2000 negotiating agenda reflects that.

It is all the more important, therefore, for business to join with the Government in looking ahead to consider how Australia can shape those negotiations, according to our interests. We need to know what issues will be key for you in the next five years so we can put these on the global agenda, to start influencing the scope and therefore the outcomes of these important negotiations.

There is already considerable momentum in discussions on services in the WTO. We saw an interim agreement on financial services in 1995 and a good outcome on basic telecommunications liberalisation earlier this year.

This year the WTO is having a second crack at financial services, with a deadline of December this year. Negotiations on liberalising professional services and on extending the WTO services rules to cover safeguards, subsidies and government procurement have been under way since 1995.

Australia is eager to see the current round of financial services negotiations produce a credible liberalisation package by the December deadline.

In particular, we are seeking greater liberalisation from ASEAN, India and Korea in banking and insurance. Other negotiating objectives include gaining new licences, raising foreign equity levels and increasing transparency to give businesses greater certainty in their operations.

Australian industry is certainly strongly placed to capture new market opportunities created by the WTO negotiations if the considerable barriers to financial services exports and investment in Asia and India were to be lowered or, indeed, removed.

Accountancy is another key services sector in which negotiations are already under way in the WTO. Working closely with the US and EU, we are aiming to remove regulatory barriers in accountancy by the next WTO Ministerial in 1998. Australia intends to push the work along by putting forward proposals this year for disciplines on licensing, qualifications requirements and commercial presence.

Australia's legal services sector faces similar market access problems to financial and accountancy service exports. Yet despite this, legal services exports have almost doubled in the last five years to $173 million. The Government has recognised the growing significance of legal services exports and has recently established new arrangements through the International Legal Services Advisory Council to address legal services market access issues.

So I would like to congratulate Australia's service exporters on their success in capturing some of the growing opportunities in an increasingly competitive global environment. These have been achieved despite significant market access barriers in the region.

With the help of your advice on where best to target our efforts, the Government will not rest in endeavouring to obtain substantial improvements in the environment for our services exporters.

To conclude, I very much welcome this occasion and congratulate all of you in your commitment to quality service. I thank the Australian Customer Service Association for all its work, and I look forward to acknowledging this year's winners. I trust that, like Michael Doohan, you make it a habit!