Risky Buy Queensland move
THE Palaszczuk government’s Buy Queensland campaign is an extremely simplistic view that is only designed to win populist votes, not boost our economy as the Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk so blindly claims.
I am absolutely all for buying Queensland and buying Australian and will continue to be supportive of these concepts in the broad sense.
I consistently work with local businesses right across Leichhardt to promote Far North Queensland products and services to help grow local businesses and boost jobs.
I also work hard to secure federal funding and look for strategies that will effectively assist to diversify our economy so it grows into a prosperous city in the future and remains productive and vibrant when tourism is down.
Trade is an extremely complex topic, particularly in a global environment, and that is why the Federal Government has worked hard to secure free trade agreements with numerous countries. It has done this to safeguard our export sales and local jobs and protect our economy in the future.
While the majority of the world’s economy remains slow Australia has been lucky. Our economy grew by 2.4 per cent last year with exports making up more than half of this growth at 1.4 per cent.
Overall, our exports grew by 7.9 per cent last year, that’s three times faster than the rest of our economy, and Queensland is Australia’s export hero, making $62.6 billion dollars in 2015-16.
More than 60 per cent of these exports went to countries that Australia has trade agreements with.
To take a one-eyed internal view of global trade is evidence of the Queensland Government’s short sightedness.
Slapping a 30 per cent tariff on international suppliers vying for Queensland Government business is a provocative move that will only incite anger and spark retaliation from our global trading partners.
Let’s take sugar for example. Ninety-five per cent of Australia’s sugar exports come from Queensland and these exports are worth $2.1 billion to our economy.
That means the sugar industry alone is worth around $2 billion to Queensland.
What would happen if countries that currently buy our sugar decided to retaliate against the Palaszczuk government’s Buy Queensland campaign and slap a 30 per cent tax on our products, or worse still banned Australian sugar imports all together? It would be devastating and potentially wipe out thousands of Queensland jobs and businesses.
And it’s not just sugar. What about our cattle, fishing, wine, mining and agriculture industries to name a handful?
If countries importing these Australian products decided to do the same it would have dire consequences for the whole nation, not just exporters, and plunge our country into a trade war with our international business partners.
New Zealand has already expressed grave concern over the Buy Queensland campaign and sent its Trade Minister Todd McClay to Canberra to personally raise their concerns with the Federal Government.
My point is there are smarter ways to boost Queensland’s economy rather than imposing provocative taxes.
The Queensland Government needs to look for better ways of engaging local businesses and provide them with opportunities that also work for our competitors.
One example would be to break down larger contracts that are often given to accredited tier one companies, which are generally nationals and multinational businesses, into smaller projects.
This would give tier two, three and four companies, which are generally your local providers, an opportunity to access components of these larger contracts.
We’ve endeavoured to do this with construction of the Peninsula Development Road in Far North Queensland and it’s been working well.
We’ve also started to do the same with Australia’s Defence contracts.
I urge Premier Palaszczuk to reflect on her Buy Queensland policy and remember we need to be a state if we want to keep prospering in the sunshine state.
Warren Entsch is the Federal Member for Leichhardt.