Free trade agreements are all well and good, when they serve both sides of any agreement!

When they place constrictions on local manufacture and the like or allow unfettered investment in cash cow utilities or the real estate market? They may not advantage us at all if ever.

Free trade agreements cannot be used as an instrument to limit local manufacture! But exist side by side with them!

Future free trade may be compromised by increasingly prohibitive carbon tariffs? And given that's so, may mean we will not be able to give coal and or gas away? And I predict, this will become our future reality well before we are ready!

And simply because our politicians are wilfully blind and deaf?

And are focused to the point of insanity on just winning the next election? And maintaining as much as possible, the status quo!

Yes to free trade! And energy, water and tax policies that allow us to take full advantage of them! Via maximised value-adding/manufacture!TBC
Alan B.

Given carbon tariffs will be part of global trade! We will need to ensure that we transition to carbon-free energy. And solutions that are ours, not those of controlling foreign investors that are only interested in screwing us for maximised profit! And an unsustainable outflow of capital!

We have to set the interests of Australians before those of, tax-avoiding, price gouging, profit repatriation of debt-laden foreign investors! Who invariably take vastly more than the crumbs they repay us with!

And that means we need to jettison the mad embargo on nuclear energy and given current threats, nuclear armaments!

We also need a real reform of the tax system so nobody that earns profit inside these shores can avoid paying a share of the
common tax burden!

And we simply cannot trust the current political players to do this unless forced kicking and screaming to a more sane position that genuinely puts the national interests and bipartisan pragmatism first and before, I believe, patently corrupt cronyism!

We also need some visionary infrastructure i.e., very rapid interstate rail projects and the automation of most industries/value-adding!

As for harvesting, young first offenders might avoid jail time as enthusiastic, compliant, harvest workers? Particularly young aborigines! And where they will learn and earn skills that will serve them all of their days! And an award wage they earn in an alcohol, tobacco and dope free environment!

Then let's see who the most productive workers are and who are the natural pace setting workers tough little aborigines or spoiled brat, soft young white offenders?
Alan B.

Alan,

Your assumption that carbon taxes will be part of tariffs is tenuous as retaliatory tariffs are almost certain to be imposed and are allowed under WTO rules.

However, I agree with you that nuclear needs to be part of the mix.

What Peter Fenwick misses is that it was not free trade that made man rich, but the ability to produce excess goods to trade. What was it that allowed a man to produce excess goods, fossil fuel is what generated trade.

With out fossil fuel, & mechanical farming equipment a man struggled to farm more than a few acres, & lucky in much of the world, for that produced to feed his family, village, tribe.

With mechanisation allowed by fossil fuel a man could easily farm 50 acres, & ultimately a couple of thousand acres. It was this productivity allowed by fossil fuels & the industrial revolution, that enabled the wide trade of goods.

Yes nuclear power could replace fossil fuel power, something wind & solar can never do, but it will be a long time before we can exist without fossil fuel, the creator of our trade & wealth.

It's amazing that the UK, which used to be suspicious of foreigners and fought wars against Europeans at one time or another, ever got mixed up with the EU in the first place. Probably because of the same sort of know-all, lets-get-rid of what works ratbags we have in Australia. Oh, and let's mix in with 'other cultures' to dilute our terrible white, racist selves.

Whatever the warped reasoning, it didn't work, and members of the Commonwealth, the actual creations of Britain, suffered.

Thankfully for Australia, the Brits have finally come to their senses - especially now we are threatened by Communist China, which deliberately decided to take over our political system and everything else back in 2010.

Our first choice of trading partners should be from the Commonwealth; after that, countries other than Communist China. Australia has belatedly started to extract itself from Communist China's campaign to "buy" Australia's sovereignty. Over 15 years, we were brought to the brink of political and economic submission. Changes have been made, starting with Malcolm Turnbull's (with encouragement from Peter Dutton) prevention of Huawei getting control of our communications systems, and the quiet but steady finding of new markets in response to the bellicose CCP. There is a lot more to be done, and renewing our relationship with the UK - which has already escaped a dictatorial EU - is another rung on the ladder

Hi Alan B, You're probably right.

Carbon tariffs will almost certainly appear & be applied to us.

Hi shadowminister, Alan B is probably right about carbon tariffs.

But there is NO free trade ANYWHERE on the planet.

EVERY country on earth other than Australia, either has lower costs of doing business, or lower wages, or subsidies of their exports & in many cases it's all three advantages combined.

We have NO hope of EVER competing as there is NO level playing field anywhere on earth, other than on Australian soil, or inside Australia's national boundaries.

The period between 1901 & 1914 saw Australia doing well because of free trade between the states, "Inside Australia's borders".

International free trade is a pipe dream that will never happen. Unless Communist China succeeds in colonising the entire planet. Then everybody on the planet will all have the same pay & conditions.

Hi Hasbeen, So true. We have plenty of fossil fuels & should stop exporting them. We could instead be using our own fossil fuels for our own benefit in our own primary, secondary & tertiary industries.

Hi ttbn, i hear where you are coming from but Australia NEEDS to be working on our extremely high cost of living & doing business. It doesn't matter who we try to trade with, we can't compete against ANY economy at the moment because our costs are so high.

Australia has the highest pay & conditions on the planet, because we have the highest cost of living on the planet.

Free trade & free trade agreements are exactly like communism.

Sounds good when you say it fast, or wonderful in theory, but they have NEVER worked to our advantage, NOT even once.

If Australia wants to have even the slightest chance of surviving, let alone prospering, we MUST rebuild the tariff barriers we had before 1972.

Australia MUST begin rebuilding secondary & tertiary industries ASAP.