Final trade agreement may be delayed

Press, 3 June 1982, Page 2

Final trade agreement may be delayed

PA Wellington Final agreement on the closer economic relations package negotiated'between Australia and New Zealand could still be some time away. .

The Australian Federal Cabinet. agreed on Tuesday to a “substantive” arrangement . for freeing Tasman trade which .was immediately welcomed by the New Zealand Government. But the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) said the final C.E.R. package might not be ready for signing in August, when his Australian counterpart, Mr Fraser, is expected ■to attend a South Pacific Forum meeting in Rotorua. "It is hard to say,” Mr Muldoon said. “We have two months for this exposure draft . (to be circulated) —

after that we have to see what comes out of it.”

The exposure draft will be formally released tomorrow. But it is expected to contain few changes from the draft obtained in Sydney by the NZPA last month and widely publicised. The preliminary agreement reached on Tuesday after more than two years of negotiations has been welcomed by Mr Muldobn, who said he was “confident that New Zealand now had a great opportunity before it.” The negotiations had been prolonged and often hard, he said.

The • draft agreement is considered unlikely to : be changed significantly through the consultative process of the next two months.

It was disappointing that the draft agreement did not

seek to end New Zealand import licensing on Australian exports until 1995, a business group said, according to a Press Association message from Canberra.

The Australia-New Zealand Businessmen’s Council said that 1995 was too far off. The council’s president, Mr John Utz, said that its executive committee had recently met its New Zealand counterpart and had agreed that 10 years, would be a reasonable time. Mr Utz said that he was disappointed the Australian Government had not accepted the timing agreed on by the committees.

The council welcomed the release of the draft as a positive step in overcoming the inequalities and complexity of the existing trade relationship, said Mr Utz.