As I wrote recently, the Hipkins Labour government is providing a sterling example of just what Australia shouldn’t do, with its trade deal with the EU. That deal, a typical EU bully-boy pact, begrudgingly allows New Zealand a pittance of access to heavily protected EU markets, while hog-tying New Zealand to a raft of stultifying EU rules. Australian farmers are warning the Albanese government to have no part of anything similar.
National Farmers Federation chief executive Tony Mahar has advised the government to walk away from Australia-EU free trade agreement negotiations if it is offered “a dud deal”.
The NFF is under no illusions as to just what kind of “bargain” the EU tends to drive.
“In terms of commercial outcomes for farmers, and if we don’t get those outcomes, then our advice to government is to walk away. It’s not worth doing a dud deal just for the sake of it,” he said.
“These negotiations have been going on for a number of years. Our advice to government is walk away, let the dust settle a little bit, come back in a few months time, have another go. It’s too important not to get it right.”
A particularly thorny issue is the EU’s insistence on “terroir” rules — banning anyone else from using well-known names that originated as “geographic indicators”.
He said there could be a room to compromise geographic indicators – which includes the usage of “feta” and “prosecco” – to please farmers in Australia and EU countries.
“We’ve been in touch with with cheese producers that have been in Australia for 50 or more years, and their families have been making these types of cheeses for decades and decades. So they don’t see, you know, the logic in terms of changing the name of feta, of parmesan, of pecorino, you know, these sorts of names, of cheeses that their families have been producing in Australia for decades and decades,” he said.
“So we do think there’s a way around it in terms of, you know, grandfathering some of these these names and these manufacturers and using things like ‘like’ or ‘Australian-style’ or those sorts of things.”
The NFF is also pointing out that trade with the EU is typically heavily one-sided.
“We import over $6bn worth of agricultural product from the EU, but only export to the EU about $2bn,” Nationals leader David Littleproud said.
Considering that Australia’s total agricultural exports hover around the $76 billion mark, the EU is hardly a make-or-break market. Of course, Australia should definitely be seeking other markets to break its indefensible dependency on China, the tight-fisted EU is unlikely to be the one to do it.
“It’s not good enough … have the courage to walk away,” that’s the message from the Nationals, again, to the government regarding the fraught trade talks between Australia and the European Union […]
“It’s not just in terms of quotas in what we’re looking for – like increases in beef, lamb, wool and sugar – but it’s also about the geographical indicators and the EU’s attempt to isolate the use of those terms just for European product rather than what we enjoy here in Australia, where our dairy industry can use feta and our wine industry can use prosecco.
“We shouldn’t be throwing everything out just to get into the EU. It’s not good enough.”
Besides the geographical indicator issue, there’s also the foolhardiness of getting roped in by the EU’s climate-deranged “sustainability measures”.
“They are trying to impose a lot of European production methods on agricultural production here in Australia that simply won’t work and will put our farmers out of production.”
The Australian
Just ask Dutch farmers how the EU’s “sustainability measures” work out in practice.
