back to article Australians LOVE our Free Trade Agreements

The Australian government has taken a break from trying to resuscitate the limping Trans-Pacific Partnership to spruik the Australia-China Free Trade Agreement. It's decided that the opposed-by-unions, loved-by-business and ignored-by-Joe-Sixpack trade pact needs the support of an official government advertising campaign. The …

  1. rtb61

    It was brought in as a political stunt by Toxic Tony because they knew full well it would be rejected and so Toxic Tony could attack the opposition for doing so. Now they are stuck having to spend money in order to placate a Chinese government ticked into playing an Australian political game, "see we weren't pretending, we really meant it". Like yeah sure, the Government of China can bring in cents per hour workers to run the Australian farms bought by the government of China, whilst those self serving douche bags who sold the farms for maximum profit disappear back to dear old blighty with their billions for selling out Australians (never going to happen).

    China not impressed, sucked into playing a political scam.

    1. dan1980

      Never going to happen?

      Do you really think the fact that it is a ridiculous deal for Australians and will see more of our country sold off for a song is in any way a limiting factor on whether it will go ahead?

  2. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    The harder you whack the dead horse.

    The greater the stink from the carcass!

  3. Kye Macdonald

    The FTA does NOT allow China to import workers on lower salaries. This would be illegal. It allows them, when independently assessed and approved by the immigration minister, to avoid the market supply testing conditions for certain professions. This EXACT same legislation was used on the Roy Hill mining project and was authorised under the previous Labor Govt.

    Currently Chinese nationals are unable to access this legislation because they are specifically excluded for using it. This will bring the treatment of Chinese nationals into line with nationals from almost every other country. China was originally singled out because of question marks as the the legitimacy of a persons credentials because of high levels of corruption in China. The question that needs to be asked is does that level of corruption still exist.

    In the end all workers brought into the country to work would be on the 457 visa which has salary parity tests built into it. If an employer is found to be hiring foreign works and paying them less than their domestic equivalents the penalties are huge, both financially and the loss of ability to sponsor other workers in the future.

  4. John Tserkezis

    Free trade my arse

    I still can't get anyone to ship South Park box sets here to australia.

    Oh, we're talking about china here, not the US. Hmm.

    No wait, didn't we have a free trade agreement with the US anyway? Oh that's right, it's all a crock like the china deal will turn out.

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