Let’s talk about the EU-Australia Free Trade Agreement. One Nation supports fair trade, not free trade. This agreement is a sellout driven by globalists in Labor, the Greens, and the Teals.

This Agreement “sneaks” in powers over climate, gender, and social policy, bypassing our Constitution and giving foreign, “woke” NGOs (like George Soros’s Open Society Foundations) power to monitor Australian businesses.

It wipes out $1.5 billion in Australian tariffs, lets foreign companies bid on equal terms for government contracts and bans our producers from using traditional names like “feta.”

It also targets essential diesel fuel refunds for farmers and miners, mislabelling them as “subsidies.”

While Labor keeps the public in the dark about the details of this deal, One Nation’s stance is clear: Australians must decide our own future.

We need to exit foreign agreements like UN Net Zero and the Paris Accord, cut the fuel excise in half, impose a royalty on gas exports and protect our local industries.

Transcript

We’re living rent free in the Labor Party’s head. All you can hear from the Labor Party is, ‘One Nation this, One Nation that,’ because they lost voters to One Nation in the South Australian election. 

Getting back to the topic, the EU has published the European side of the free trade agreement between Europe and Australia. One Nation does not support free trade; we support fair trade. Past agreements make us right because they’re hurting Australia. This agreement still must go before the joint standing committee on trade and tariffs and then the parliament. Given Labor, teals and Greens are full of globalists, I’m certain it will pass after a period of theatre to pretend it’s being scrutinised when it is not. Scrutiny is important. 

This agreement creates a raft of new measures around sustainable development, gender equality—what’s that got to do with a trade agreement? We get woke, they get cheap products—environmental and climate matters, and responsible business conduct. Including these in this agreement means the federal government is giving itself powers it has never had before and which are effectively an end run around our Constitution. They want to get around our Constitution. The agreement also offers civil society organisation an active role to monitor the implementation of the entire agreement, opening up scrutiny of the Australian government and Australian companies to people like George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Wow. 

The agreement will remove almost all Australian tariffs on European Union products, at a cost of $1.5 billion. In return, the EU is scrapping tariffs on some Australian goods, value unknown. We hear the Labor party extolling the virtues of this agreement, yet they won’t tell us the details. Australia will allow European Union companies to tender on an equal footing with local companies for contracts with 60 government entities. Equal footing with Australian companies? Come on! To Labor, an Australian does not deserve any special treatment over a European. Good to know. 

The agreement regulates Australian producers’ ability to use the real names of 300 products, including feta cheese, which can still be called feta if the Australian producer has been calling it feta for five years; otherwise they have to change the name. The public are going to be so confused. Some feta will be feta; other feta won’t be feta. 

From the agreement: 

The EU and Australia recognise that certain subsidies may distort the proper functioning of markets and to that end agreed that in principle no subsidies that negatively affect competition or trade should be granted. 

They’re talking about the refund farmers and miners get on the road tax components of their diesel machines where these machines are not used driving on roads; they are used outside of that. This includes tractors, cool rooms, milking machines and so on. These are not subsidies; they’re refunds. 

This agreement gives the government huge new powers, sells out the bush, allows woke organisations powers over the Australian government and corporations and creates a whole new world of woke governance. Will it make the lives of everyday Australians better? No, of course not. The Labor party do not cover for you; they govern for woke foreign agendas. 

I want to make a few more points. The European Union commissioner was here to sell the free trade agreement just two days ago. She’s here to sell it, but we still don’t know the details, because the Labor Party is excluding them from public reach. Why? Because the government won’t release the detail. 

By the way, people may not know that the same minister for Labor pushing this free trade agreement is pushing something else. He’s pushing an extra 45 federal politicians at taxpayer expense. Expand the Senate, expand the House of Representatives. We’re opposing that too. We don’t need any more politicians; we need fewer politicians in Canberra. They’re pushing that for their own benefit. 

One Nation’s position is clear. Australians decide what we do, not unelected Brussels bureaucrats. We need to abolish UN net zero. We need to get out of the UN Paris Agreement and the UN Kyoto protocol. We support fair trade, not free trade. European Union and American farmers are subsidised heavily. We need to protect our farmers from exposure to free trade because it’s not free except in one way, and that’s hurting Australia. One Nation will cut the fuel excise in half and impose a royalty on export gas at last. 

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Polley): The time for the discussion has expired.