Possible free trade deal for Asia-Pacific?
TVNZ | Jun 6, 2008
Possible free trade deal for Asia-Pacific?
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says his proposed new regional organisation could produce an Asia-Pacific free trade agreement which would mean big benefits for Australia.
Rudd said the problem now was that there was no single organisation in the Asia-Pacific region dealing with economic, political and security cooperation. A grouping he has proposed could help ease trade barriers.
"One of the things which needs to be advanced across our region at the moment - and President (George) Bush has in fact suggested something like this - is a free trade agreement which covers the Asia-Pacific region," he told ABC radio.
"If you free up trade within our region completely, you open up huge new opportunities for Australian exporters."
Rudd said that meant Australian jobs, not just in the resources sector but in other key sectors such as financial services and agriculture.
"That could be advanced more effectively if we had an organisation which embraced political, security and economic cooperation," he said. "It is an ambitious plan for the future but I believe in planning long-term, having an aspiration and an ambition for Australia rather than just allowing things to drift."
In a speech this week, Rudd outlined his ambitious vision for an Asia-Pacific community. He wants any new regional creation to span the entire Asia-Pacific, including the United States, Japan, China, India and Indonesia.
The idea has sparked widespread scepticism from the opposition and others.
Rudd said he did not want to see a drift towards conflict in a region in which there were still so many unresolved territorial conflicts.
"So what do you do about it? You set an ambition for the future which is about having a regional organisation, which we call an Asia-Pacific community, not modelled on the European Union, which, within one body has a capacity for all the states of the region, China, the US, India, Indonesia, ourselves and others, to work together and co-operate together on how do we effectively bring about a common sense of community," he said.
Among the critics of the plan are former Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
Rudd said plenty of people were sceptical when Hawke proposed the creation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and yet that had worked.
Rudd said he wasn’t proposing to recreate the European Union in the very different Asian region.
"But I would say to Hawkie by the way, when he kicked this thing off back in `88-89 with the establishment of APEC and his work there, and Paul’s very important work on the top of that, when
Hawkie started this process, they all thought it was unachievable as well," he told the Nine Network.
"Where he got, I am simply trying to take it one step further."
