Access prospects for Australian beef bright

Press, 9 May 1985, Page 18

Access prospects for Australian beef bright

NZPA-AAP Canberra Australia had been guaranteed growth in imports of grass-fed beef to Japan, and would be the first source of supply when Korea was able to reopen its beef market, the Minister of Trade, Mr Dawkins, has told the Cattle Council of Australia’s annual meeting.

However, Mr Dawkins said that Australia’s longterm success in the Japanese and Korean markets would depend critically on efforts by industry to take

full advantage of marketing opportunities. “At a time of over-supply and massive subsidy, our effort must be unrelenting,” he told the council. “This year, Australia’s over-all beef trade prospects are not constrained by a lack of access opportunities. “Although there are individual markets which we might consider are unduly restricted by non-tariff trade barriers of one kind or another, it is clear that we need to make special efforts to ensure that we do fill the markets which are available and important to us in the longer term.” Mr Dawkins urged beef producers to make every effort to fulfil recent Canadian quotas to forestall competition from countries supplying subsidised product. “Canada provides the latest example of how (European) Community beef exporters can gain access to markets with subsidised product and then greatly expand their share of the market to the detriment of both the domestic industry and efficient third country exporters such as Australia,” he said.

He said that the Canadian Government’s imposition of quotas was unlikely to meet Australia’s ambitions in restricting access for subsidised E.E.C. product.

The Canadian experience underscored the inability of small and medium-sized trading nations to limit the power of important trading nations to do deals to their own advantage. “We experienced that in our negotiations with the Japanese. Unfortunately I fear we will see it again in the final wash-up in Canada,” he said.

“This is a bitter pill to swallow but it underlines the need for the industry to demonstrate that it intends to remain in the market by filling the quota we have achieved.” Mr Dawkins said the Government was determined to prevent East Asian markets from being destabilised in the way the Canadian market had been disrupted. “But we must not delude ourselves that we have some long-term mortgage on markets anywhere in the world without due attention to maintaining our international competitiveness,” he said. Mr Dawkins said he

would pursue these matters in pending discussions in Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia, and he would welcome comments from the beef industry. “I have a fairly optimistic view about future prospects for our beef trade,” he said. “I believe the greatest uncertainty will be price, not access, which reinforces the need for the Australian industry to remain competitive.”

Mr Dawkins said even modest improvements in the international disciplines ap-. plying to subsidy and other trade distorting measures would result in enormous potential benefits for efficient agricultural exporting countries such as Australia. Hence the Government’s commitment to a new round of multilateral trade negotiations.

“In this new round there is the prospect that not only will we be able to negotiate further specific access commitments but also to achieve a strengthening and clarification of the G.A.T.T. rules, particularly as they relate to subsidies and on tariff barriers which are at the root of the distortions that so bedevil world agricultural trade,” he said.