Customs Amendment (Safeguard Inquiries) Bill 2026

Mr HUSIC (Chifley) (11:27): It is a pleasure to follow the member for Blair on this because I do know what a big deal this is for manufacturing in his electorate, as it is in many electorates. This bit of legislation, for many people who may have accidentally or deliberately tuned into parliament, may seem like an arcane, esoteric bit of work, but it's actually something that's been 30 years in the making.

It reflects a journey that this country has been on. Let me explain. I was a teenager in the Hawke-Keating years, at a time when we opened up the economy.

We cheered on a lot of what was done back then because opening up the economy, breaking down tariff walls and integrating us into the world trading system at that point in time were a big deal. It hurt a lot of blue-collar workers. I saw that in my own family.

A lot of pressure was placed on the companies they worked for and the wages that they earned from that work. We grew up in a time when we chanted the mantra of free trade. I spouted it many times over the years.

Free trade is great when it happens, but the world is not that neat and it doesn't always abide by the rules. Free trade is great when it happens. That's why a lot on our side of the chamber and our side of politics have talked not just about free trade but fair trade—because in many cases there are big players that will use their position to be able to produce product in a way that is not fair trade and certainly isn't free trade.

One of the biggest turning points in world trade was the admission of China to the World Trade Organization in about the year 2000. At that point, you saw so many countries shift from domestic production and domestic manufacturing; this all shot offshore to China. China, from that point on, became an economic powerhouse.

So much of the world's product came out of one country. It took us 20 years from when China was admitted to the WTO to the impact of a pandemic to make us take another look at the way in which world trading and the world trade mechanisms were operating—so many eggs in one basket. We said at that point that we had to learn the lesson of the pandemic and then we started to build our own capabilities to make the things we needed when we needed them most.

But it took a long journey from us chanting, in a crowd, the virtues of free trade to recognise how much distortion had happened in trade flows across the planet. As part of that, and to protect ourselves from it, we've had an Anti-Dumping Commission in place. When countries produce product at such a volume and, importantly, where they produce it and deliberately price it lower than what they produced it for and then sell it to other countries, that presents a huge economic risk.

To us it means that, if you are a steelmaker or an aluminium producer or an extruder like Capral, which the member for Blair just referenced, and you're having to compete against product that has been deliberately undercut and which then secures market share in the country where you're producing that material—and that is priced so low that you see your customers shift from you to the importers of that product that has been undercut—and you are forced to close, that presents a big problem for a country like ours.

The Anti-Dumping Commission is made up of some great people. I saw them firsthand as the industry minister in the last term of this government. They do incredible work.

It is not easy to do the work that they do, but it takes a long time for them. From the moment a local industry player calls out the pricing of that type of product, it takes a long time for the Anti-Dumping Commission to come up with a decision about what's going on. Then there's a long appeal process as well.

It puts huge pressure on Australian industry. It takes a long time to make those decisions. So, what's the alternative?

The alternative is effectively what's contained in here. I'm grateful for the acknowledgement of the industry minister—that this work began in the last term of government, where we had attempted to shift these powers from the Productivity Commission to the Anti-Dumping Commission. What these powers will allow is that, instead of taking a long period of time for those decisions to be made, we could go on the front foot, make an early assessment through these emergency powers that the parliament's debating right now and act way quicker.

We could prevent and shield Australian manufacturers from cut-price product that would impact on them. Remember this: once manufacturers in Australia are forced out of business because of cut-price product, what happens? It creates yet another dependency, particularly on China, for that product.

Then we get more and more entrenched and we fail to learn the lesson of the pandemic, which was that we should do more of this work on our own and be able to stand up on our own two feet. Having the safeguard mechanism was something that I believed was really important to speed up the way we made decisions. But it gets resisted, and it gets resisted by the usual suspects that exist within the federal bureaucracy.

I'm just going to make this point: it doesn't matter who's on this side of the chamber; we all get advice from the same places. We get it from Treasury. We get it from Finance.

We get it from DFAT. We get it from the Productivity Commission. The Productivity Commission held this power not because it wanted to use it but because it didn't want it to be used.

In the 20 years or so it had this power, how many times did it do safeguarding inquiries? I reckon around four times, and it did it in some arcane areas, probably as a result of pressure of the Howard government or the coalition government, but it wasn't using it actively. So, if it's not going to use it, it should lose it and it should go to the ADC, where they can make those decisions quickly.

But it was those characters, the usual suspects—Treasury, Finance, DFAT. DFAT would argue that anything like this would threaten that the WTO would intervene and that it would breach free trade agreements. Donald Trump has given the biggest kick to the WTO.

The WTO is in the corner nursing its injuries and its shins. It isn't going to do anything. It's up to individual countries to stand up for their own industries and take the steps to fairly, rigorously and in a detailed way determine when they have been impacted by dumping behaviour.

You'll get the arguments out of DFAT, Treasury, Finance and the Productivity Commission—which are occupied by people who are stuck in ideological permafrost and who find it hard to believe these types of powers should come in. In fact, there was an article in InnovationAus that talked about Treasury analysis of the economic implications of AI, and it quoted the Treasury, saying: "In Australia, most productivity growth at the firm level related to AI will likely come from adopting and adapting technologies developed elsewhere." That's the mentality for all parliamentarians.

Like I said, regardless of who occupies the Treasury benches, you get advice from these types of people that believe the best way for us to use technology is to import it quickly and not develop it here. God forbid we spend our own money developing sovereign capability on anything! Similarly in terms of safeguards, they take the view that free trade should occur unencumbered: if someone can price a product in a particular way, competition will be good, will strengthen local firms and will ensure that lower prices flow through the economy, and that's got to be a good thing.

That's very superficial and does not factor in how bigger economies, bigger players, can undercut the prices at which they offer product for trade. When I say this bill has been 30 years in the making, it's going through that journey—the journey of recognising that the free trade mantra is only good if it's not superficial. It's got to be fair dinkum, and you've got to be able to test whether the prices for product are legitimate and not deliberately undercut.

There'll be a lot of people in this place and outside that talk about impending conflict with China and talk about having to get ready for some sort of military conflict, one they've concocted in their head and believe will occur any time soon. China don't need to fire a missile; they just fire product our way. And they fire product because we set up a world trade system where they took on so much of the work that we used to do, and they price it in such a way that creates dependencies.

China don't have to fire a shot; they just fire a product at us. If we don't think seriously, in a sustained way and in a determined way, about building sovereign capability, if we continue to listen to the same voices in Canberra—the PM&C, Treasury, Finance, DFAT and the Productivity Commission—and if we take as gospel what is put to us, we will always be dependent.

Make no mistake. We will not build up serious sovereign capability. We will not be able to stand on our own two feet.

All we will ever be is the best customer on an app store, buying someone else's product from some other land, instead of actually building the capabilities that matter here. Having an economically diverse country, where we don't have all our eggs in one basket, where we build our wealth through different sectors and different activities, is really important. And, if you want to build greater productivity, look at the countries that are more economically complex in their make up and see how much more productive and stronger they are.

That's the challenge for us. I maintain the position that our commitment to sovereign capability has to be deeper than talk. It requires serious coordination across government at cabinet level, where all relevant portfolios are committed, on a yearly basis reporting, what has been done to advance sovereign capability in the key areas.

We cannot do everything on our own, and it's certainly not something I would urge. On the big, important things we have to have depth in capability. That can be across our existing behemoths of resources and agriculture, as well as energy production, medical sciences, advanced manufacturing and advanced tech.

We need to be able to build our capabilities. And we have to do it in a way acknowledging the way that other countries do it, instead of having the ideological nineties version of the way in which we back industry, because the nineties version was that you don't put any government funding in. Other countries have been doing it and working smart in building up capability, and we have been the outpost that has ignored the way the rest of the world is working.

It means investing more in R&D. It means investing more in grants to help grow companies at the relevant points of the technology readiness levels. It involves a scale-up approach that sees more small businesses become medium-sized enterprises and seeing the productivity uplift that occurs from there.

Having a national scale-up strategy is really important. It's being able to keep a central tab on how we are developing capability. All this is critical for the long-term good of the country.

This type of legislation and this type of activity, where we take an important power out of the Productivity Commission, put it into the ADC and protect ourselves in a quicker way from dumping activity, is a big part of that process as well. So I congratulate the industry minister on landing this and the government in bringing forward this legislation, because it is very important and it does correct a behaviour that we have supinely just sat here and let the world dictate the terms in which trade occurs, comforting ourselves in the notion that we've chanted the mantra of free trade without recognising that that doesn't always occur that way and that sometimes you've got to step in and protect yourselves from the behaviours of others.

Trade is important. It builds stronger relationships between countries. It does absolutely improve the strength of economies and the strength of incomes of the workers within those economies.

But we can't be purist about it. We have to be pragmatic, and we have to step in where it's necessary to do so. This is one example of just that, and I absolutely commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to. Bill read a second time.