Earlier this year, we were given the chance to sit down with the Hon George Brandis QC to discuss the Australia-United Kingdom Free Trade Agreement.
Mr Brandis played a significant role in the negotiations of the Free Trade Agreement, the broad terms of which were agreed on the 14th of June 2021. Following its signing in December last year, we spoke to Mr Brandis to get his thoughts on the process, the ramifications of the deal, the impact he thinks it’ll have on different industries, and the future of the Australia-United Kingdom relationship.
Joanne Holland
Hello and welcome. Our guest today is the Honourable George Brandis, QC, born in Sydney, Australia. Mr Brandis studied law at the University of Queensland and Magdalen College, Oxford. Mr Brandis has had a distinguished career in law and politics in Australia.
A barrister by profession, he served as a senator in the Australian parliament for 18 years. He was a minister in the governments of John Howard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull. His ministerial appointments included Minister for the Arts. Attorney-General, Vice-President of the Executive Council and leader of the government in the Senate. As attorney general he was responsible for the reform of Australian espionage and foreign interference laws and played a leading role in the introduction of marriage equality in Australia in 2017. Mr Brandis became the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in May 2018.
On December 16, 2021, the UK signed a historic trade agreement with Australia, the first from scratch since leaving the EU, setting new global standards in digital and services and creating new work and travel opportunities for Brits and Aussies. The United Kingdom and Australia started negotiations for a free trade deal on the 17th of June 2020.
The broad terms of the agreement were agreed on the 14th of June 2021 following almost a year of negotiations. Mr Brandis played a significant role in those negotiations. The agreement is not yet in force. Both the UK and Australia are required to complete their respective domestic procedures for the agreement to come into effect. Once approved by both parliaments, businesses will be able to trade under its terms. George, it’s a pleasure to be speaking with you today. Thank you.
George Brandis
Pleasure.
Joanne Holland
George. Could you give us some background as to how the deal came about and why Australia was the first trade deal for the UK?
George Brandis
Well, I think that Australia has ever since the election of the Abbott government in 2013 been very eager to a much more ambitious in its free trade agenda, and there is a number of free trade agreements that were entered into by Australia in the years after 2013, with China, with Japan, with South Korea elsewhere, and previous to that during the Howard government, with the United States. But we were very eager to have free trade agreements with European nations as well, because Europe is the largest trading area with which Australia doesn’t have a free trade or preferential access agreement.
So we were always going to pursue a free trade agreement with the EU, and we’re still doing that, by the way. But after Brexit occurred in 2016, so far as the United Kingdom was concerned, Australia was interested in doing a free trade agreement with the United Kingdom when it came out of the EU.
So that’s the historical genesis of it. The reason it’s the first, I think, is because of the priorities of the United Kingdom government, I mean, Australia is delighted to be the first standalone free trade agreement the United Kingdom did.
We were in a bit of a race with the New Zealanders with free trade agreement, it is very advanced, and I expect will be settled in coming weeks. But. Australia, in a sense, was the easiest country to do a free trade agreement with, there weren’t the difficulties like congressional approvals, for example, that bedevil the attempts to do
an FTA with the United States. It’s a very familiar relationship. It’s a very friendly relationship. So we are natural partners and I think the naturalness of that partnership as it would grease the wheels of getting this done fast.
Joanne Holland
And is that why you think it was such a quick deal to do because you’ve often said it’s the fastest trade deal that’s been done by Australia?
George Brandis
Yeah, it is. And I mean, these trade agreements, they’re enormously complicated and super added to the technical complexity.
There are always sensitive sectors which whose sensitivity creates political sensitivities, so they take an enormously long period of time to get done. The free trade agreement with China, for example, Australia began negotiating during the Howard government, and it came into operation during the government of Malcolm Turnbull.
That’s about 3, 4 prime ministers later and several years later. So to get this done, to go from the announcement of the commencement of negotiations to the announcement of the agreement in principle in 365 days and then to get the 16 page agreement in principle translated into about 1600 pages of actual treaty text in only another six months was a very great accomplishment and particularly given that the negotiations were happening, not face to face, but with the exception of a couple of meetings they were all being done in different time zones over Zoom.
Joanne Holland
And do you think throughout that whole process that the FTA was ambitious enough?
George Brandis
Definitely. I mean, I have no doubt at all that this is as ambitious a free trade agreement as they could possibly be simply because it is in its final state, it is an absolute free trade agreement.
Zero quotas and zero tariffs on everything, though, you can’t get a free a free trade agreement, one that most agreements that are described as free trade agreements. Strictly speaking, concessional access agreements so that there are lots and lots of carve outs for sensitive sectors or that all tariffs are reduced rather than eliminated in this agreement all tariffs have all quotas will be eliminated on everything. Now, the only impurity, as it were in the deal, is that for some of the sensitive sectors, for example, British agriculture, there’s quite a long phase-in period. But at the end state, at the end of the phase-in period, this will be pure free trade.
Joanne Holland
And you talked about the ambitious elements. Were there any other elements that were more important to you in the FTA? Was it the tariffs? Was it the movement of people and recognition of professional qualifications?
George Brandis
Well, there were certainly things that I was more interested in than in others.
I mean, trade agreements are about four things. Basically, they’re about goods, services, movement of capital, and the movement of people. I was very interested from the start in having ambitious movement of people terms agreed to so that, for example, young people from the United Kingdom can now go and live and work in Australia unconditionally for three years instead of one year and vice versa. I think that’s important in a noncommercial way because although obviously it has a commercial dimension because it encourages workplace mobility. It also means that young Australians are more likely, who come to live or work or study in the United Kingdom, are more likely to fall in love and settle down and stay here and young people from the United Kingdom who go to live and work or study in Australia, and they have three years, you know, they are more likely to settle down, too. So I think that binding of the two peoples in that very sort of direct way will bring the countries even more closely together.
And that’s not just a commercial consideration. So that was something I was very attracted to. There were particular areas of the deal that I took a bigger interest in than others. One, for a reason I’ll explain, was sugar.
I spent nearly 20 years in the Australian parliament as a senator for the state of Queensland, which is where the Australian sugar industry is. And when I was a Queensland senator, I had a lot to do with the sugar industry.
They got done over in every free trade agreement Australia ever did. They were they were always sort of disappointed because, for example, when we did the US free trade agreement, because of the arrangements for NAFTA between the United States and Mexico, we couldn’t get the Australian sugar producers into the American market, and they were disappointed with some of the East Asian trade deals, too. So I really wanted to get a good result for the sugar industry in my own home state. So the Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan, who comes from a farming family in Victoria, grew up on growing on a farm, which was a livestock operation.
He said I remember one day he said to me, George, leave beef and sheep, to me, you look after sugar. So, you know, they were, you know, they were certain that sort of quirky reasons. There were certain aspects of the deal that I took a more personal interest in than others.
Joanne Holland
And George, how did you see the role of the Chamber in the whole process?
George Brandis
Well, the Chamber was very important. And your counterpart organisation in Australia was also very important. You never want to underestimate the power and significance of those informal channels, and I know in Australia the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which is the Department of Government equivalent for trade purposes to your D.I.T., was constantly in contact with your counterpart organisation in Australia to take the temperature of Australian business on certain issues, particularly technical issues. And I assume the same thing happened here in the United Kingdom, but certainly in my engagement with Dick Porter and the management of the Chamber, they were very helpful in that way, but they were also very helpful as advocates for the desirability of free trade as a principle, but of a free trade agreement with Australia as a priority.
Joanne Holland
And what did you see as the biggest challenges for the FTA over the next five years?
George Brandis
I think we’ve really passed the biggest hurdles because there was a – in this country, to be honest – large elements still had a bit of a protectionist mindset and for half a century, let’s face it, almost half a century you’ve been in the EU, so you didn’t have to really think about trade policy now.
And all of a sudden, I think there was an element of fear of the unknown. I think we’ve overcome that. So I think that the hardest hurdles have already been over leapt. But I think the next thing is to acquaint both in Australia and in the United Kingdom to acquaint business people and producers and entrepreneurs with the opportunities. So that’s really an educative function. It’s all very well for negotiators and politicians and diplomats to create a framework. But of course, it’s the bold animal spirits of capitalism have got to take advantage of that framework and to enable them best to take advantage of that framework means evangelising the opportunities that exist.
Joanne Holland
And so we move on to the ratification process. And can you talk a bit about the timeline for that and how that’s going to evolve?
George Brandis
We hope to get this done in the next few months. In Australia all international agreements are subject to approval by a parliamentary committee called the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. There is a somewhat similar process. I believe in the United Kingdom, so there will be a process of parliamentary scrutiny. We don’t anticipate that that will be a problem either here or in the United Kingdom.
The government has a clear majority in the House of Commons. The Labour Party, I’m pleased to say here in the United Kingdom, has been broadly supportive of the free trade agreement, at least the Australian Free Trade Agreement.
So I don’t anticipate any particular parliamentary pitfalls in either country.
Joanne Holland
And what next? Can you see anything being done before the ratification? What what do you see will happen prior to the ratification, either by the chamber or the various authorities to implement the FTA?
George Brandis
Well, I think it’s as I said before, it’s a question of now advertising the fact that this free trade agreement exists, that it’s about to come into force at some time. We hope by around about the middle of this year and to promote the advantages of it in both countries now.
You know, in Australia, to which for which Britain was in years gone by very much a traditional market. I don’t think that will be so hard. I think particularly in the manufacturing sector here in the United Kingdom, there are a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises in the area who manufacture in areas where Australia needs product.
They perhaps don’t sufficiently appreciate what a hungry market Australia is for their goods. And that’s the job of the Australian government. It’s my job. It’s the job of the Australian Trade Commission Austrade to promote that. I’m doing a trip, for example, in Wales in a couple of weeks time in which the whole purpose of the trip is kind of like a roadshow to acquaint people in that part of the United Kingdom of the opportunities that are about to fall into their lap.
Joanne Holland
And that sort of leads into what’s the future of the relationship between Australia and the UK?
George Brandis
Well, I think it’s a very, very rosy future. I really do. I mean, Australia and the United Kingdom have always been close allies and partners. There are very many reasons for that reasons of history, reasons of common language, a common legal system, common business practices, but the most important underlying it, all of the people-to-people links. You know, there are more British Britons living in Australia than Britons living in the EU. In my job as High Commissioner, I never have to worry about making small talk because when I meet somebody, almost the first thing they always say is, oh, I’ve got a sister who lives in Perth or my son’s doing his gap year in Sydney. I mean, almost everyone you meet will immediately have an Australian link. So I think those linkages mean the relationship will always be good. But at a time when the world is facing more tension, I think, than perhaps in our generation we have seen certainly more tension since the end of the Cold War, nations with common values and common interests whose values and interests are defined globally, not just regionally, are almost impelled into each other’s arms as mutually supportive partners. That’s exactly what I see happening with Australia and the United Kingdom.
Joanne Holland
The honourable George Brandis, QC, thank you very much for your time today. It was a fabulous and interesting conversation, and we thank you at the Chamber.
George Brandis
Pleasure.
Joanne Holland
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