Australia's trade agenda balances the developed and developing worlds

The Cairns Group is a great example of a very effective lobby, with influence and negotiating power beyond the sum of its constituent parts, many of whom are developing countries.

With their newfound influence, developing countries have said they will not accept the status quo – and at Doha all WTO members committed to reforming agriculture, with a strong mandate for improving market access, reducing domestic support, and eliminating export subsidies.

There are some critics who say that we concentrate too much on agriculture – that the international trade agenda is a broad one, and that agriculture shouldn’t be allowed to hold back other negotiations.

Well, they are wrong, because they fail to grasp the importance of agriculture to Australia’s export performance, and the benefits that global reform would bring to this distorted sector.

They are also wrong because they fail to understand the dynamics of the multilateral trading system: that the key to success in the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations is agriculture, and that without progress on agriculture there can be no progress in other key areas.

Without a satisfactory conclusion on agriculture, there will be no conclusion of the Doha Round.

Conclusion

Australia’s longstanding commitment to a rules-based WTO system – in which all WTO members can participate – remains the bedrock of the Liberal/National Government’s trade policy.

If we want the Doha Round of global trade negotiations to succeed, we need to take account of the new strategic realities of the multilateral trading system.

We have to grapple with an agenda that is broader, and far more complex, than any undertaken in previous rounds of multilateral trade negotiations.

We need to acknowledge and accept the newfound place and influence of developing-country interests in any new round of negotiations, given both their numbers, and increasingly their weight in the share of global trade.

And we need to find new ways of moving the agenda forward during the negotiations, given the newfound value of informal contact, and coalitions and alliances built around specific interests – in the way we all hope and expect the meeting in Sydney this week will operate.

We need to be creative and flexible in dealing with the developing country issues.