8 December 2007
Media conference – Trade Ministers’ meeting
Bali, Indonesia
Subjects: FTAs, Doha Round, emissions trading, renewable energy
MR CREAN: I’m here obviously for the Trade Ministers’ meeting in advance of the UN Climate Change Conference. That’s provided a terrific opportunity for me only a week into being sworn in as the Trade Minister to meet with a lot of my counterparts and I’ve been having a number of bilateral meetings whilst I’m here and I’ll continue to do that over the next couple of days.
But before I came to Bali I made a special point of going to Jakarta to have a trilateral discussion with my Indonesian counterpart Mari Pangestu to signify very early in piece the significance of the bilateral relationship between Australia and Indonesia, and it was important to do it in Jakarta rather than just as one of the bilaterals down here.
I also met with the Economic Co-ordinating Minister for Indonesia, Mr Boediono. Our relationship, our trade relationship has strengthened. You know that the two countries under the previous government are looking at the feasibility of a free trade agreement , obviously the report on that is still due and we’ll await the outcome. But the message that I conveyed and Minister Pangestu accepted was that if we are to go down the path of a free trade agreement between our two countries then it has to be a multilaterally consistent FTA.
This is important because as you know Labor’s approach to trade negotiations is to put much greater emphasis back on securing an outcome in the Doha Round. By far the best opportunities for trade is through liberalisation through the multilateral round.
We’ve never said no to FTAs but what we have been critical of are FTAs that detract from the multilateral round but we support those and will embrace those and drive those that actually are supportive of the Round.
That said, there’s also the opportunity in our discussions with Indonesia to also impress the importance of securing a successful outcome from the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand regional talks. These are at a delicate stage and I’ve impressed upon the Indonesian Minister the importance of securing a more ambitious outcome in terms of that regional agreement. This too is another building block, if you like, to strengthening the multilateral round.
As for the meeting that we’re here today and tomorrow for I think it is a great initiative that the Indonesian Minister took in hosting this. We all know the imperative, the environmental imperative of facing up to the challenge of climate change. The meeting of Trade Ministers I think emphasises the point that it’s not just the environmental imperative that we’re dealing with but the economic opportunities that come from solving climate change.
Climate change and its solutions open up important opportunities for jobs and for trade between nations in environmental products and services.
We have to ensure that there are complementarities in approach between liberalisation and open trading regimes and the solutions that are being proposed so far as the Climate Change Convention is concerned.
JOURNALIST: How was your meeting with the head of the WTO this morning? Do you think that there will be any breakthroughs?
MR CREAN: I had a very good discussion with Pascal Lamy on the phone on Tuesday night I think, it might have been Monday night after I was sworn in and again had the opportunity to meet with him here today. I’ve known him over the years and I’d kept in constant touch with him over the past 12 months since I’ve had the shadow portfolio.
Discussions are always good with him - he’s a wealth of information and knowledge - but there are still difficult issues to resolve. I want to see an outcome in the Doha Round as I said before I think it’s important for all of us that we secure it. Trade ministers themselves are committed to that task. I think that the reality is that an outcome from Doha is do-able. But it’s going to be tough, but I want to make sure that our efforts, our support to achieve that outcome are redoubled because interestingly enough I was the Primary Industries Minister when Uruguay was signed. It would be a nice double to bring home. But it’s a difficult task ahead and I’m just getting my head around the complexity of a lot of this detail now. But the next two to three months will be critical for it.
JOURNALIST: Emissions trading is obviously going to come under your portfolio to a certain extent, doesn’t Australia have to declare a tough position on what targets we can take on for the next round say post-Kyoto? The suggestion this week by the Australian delegation is obviously 25 to 40 per cent is that something we’ve got to prove ourselves on?
MR CREAN: Well look, Australia has said that we understand that if we’re to solve this problem we’re going to have to commit to targets. The precise targets will be a function of what comes out of the Garnaut report. But the International Commission on Climate Change has identified what developed countries need to commit to but clearly that won’t be enough if developing countries don’t make a commitment. Australia’s task is at the appropriate time to commit to targets but it’s also to try and secure binding commitments from developing countries. I hope that the framework that is being developed over the next week or so provides that roadmap and takes us in that direction but those sorts of things will only evolve over the next couple of years.
JOURNALIST: Mr Crean would you like to see developing nations sign up to mandatory emissions targets?
MR CREAN: No the emissions trading regime is a different issue, it’s a market mechanism by which countries need to, well, to actually engage the market in addressing the solutions.
As for the target question we said during the election campaign that developing countries needed to make commitments in terms of commitments. And that is a position that we will be bringing to this conference.
JOURNALIST: What do you think of the EU-US proposal on trade in environmental goods and services?
MR CREAN: I’m encouraged by it. I think that if what we can do is to identify opportunities for environmental goods and services to have trade barriers eliminated that will help the solution to the climate change challenge.
JOURNALIST: What kind of opportunities or how big would the environmental goods and services from Australia be?
MR CREAN: Enormous, I mean I think that now that Labor has committed to a high renewable energy target we’re going to see much greater investment in renewable energy solutions. There is a market failure and that’s why it’s important to develop those sorts of policy mechanisms, but in terms of wind, and solar and thermal and tidal and bio, biomass – all of those are solutions not just in terms of the product but the services that go with it.
I think Australia is in a very unique position to be able to not just commit to the policy framework but the solution. And the great thing about Kevin Rudd’s first act as a government in ratifying Kyoto that is has injected a new dynamic into this conference. I think he is going to, from all accounts, receive a very strong welcome here because that dynamic is what this conference has needed. And I think that what that highlights is that where there is political will and leadership injected into these very important conferences they can provide that impetus to go forward. We don’t come here just with the commitment to ratify; we come here with a commitment to a range of solutions and practical solutions. So I do see an important opportunity for Australia to take advantage of this in the economic sense as well as make a commitment at the environmental level.
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