Don Farrell Speech - 24 September 2024
Thank you so much Justin for your opening remarks, and for the entire team at Zurich for kindly hosting us all here today.
Zurich have always provided fantastic hospitality to the McKell Institute and we appreciate your support today.
Can I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land — the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation — and pay my respects to elders past and present.
I also want to acknowledge we are joined by former McKell Institute Chair and Minister, Dr. Craig Emerson; McKell Institute Board Director Mark Lennon; former McKell Institute CEO Sam Crosby; and pay a special welcome to Mrs Farrell, who is also here with us today.
Ladies and gentleman, my name is Ed Cavanough, I’m the CEO of the McKell Institute.
Shortly, we will hear from Minister Farrell, before we undertake a Q and A.
But I first wanted to cast your mind back to the eve of the last election.
It was clear that going into that vote people were tired, and frustrated, after a difficult few years.
Much of that fatigue came from COVID, of course.
But there were other issues undermining Australia’s prosperity and social harmony that were starting to bite.
One was our diminished relationship with China.
Just 8 years before the 2022 election, China’s President addressed Australia's parliament in a spirit of friendship, espousing the mutual benefits of our economic ties.
But as China changed, so too did its approach to Australia.
Soon, it had begun using Australia as a test case for a new era of more combative trade coercion.
China enacted new trade walls that had real effects, for real people — and threatened to unleash a new era of tit-for-tat global protectionism.
Both the Minister and I are proud South Australians.
You don’t have to travel far in our home state to see the impact of this kind of coercion.
You could see it in the wine towns of the Barossa and the seafood and timber communities in the southeast — regional SA workers just going about their lives, suddenly bearing the economic costs of our fraying regional relationships.
Just as our trading future was becoming more complex, at home, voters headed into 2022 increasingly cynical about the health of our Democracy itself.
We saw that manifest in votes for candidates whose primary concern was transparency.
But there were also millions angered by the growing role of big money in our campaigns.
One billionaire famously spent over $70 million on the 2019 election — a shocking stat that rings alarm bells for all of us worried about the influence of money in American politics, and who wish to never see the same here.
So, when Minister Farrell was appointed to Cabinet as Minister for Trade & Tourism, and Special Minister for State after that election, he was handed two sizable tasks — implementing a thaw in our trade relationship with China while diversifying Australia’s trading relationships as the prospect of protectionism drew nearer; and improving the integrity of our Democratic system.
No small tasks.
These types of issues are not solved through aggressive public posturing — but by collaborative, methodical work.
Since his days as president of the largest private sector union in Australia, Minister Farrell has been recognized as this kind of collaborator — one who values negotiation, and looking at an issue from all angles.
And this style, now applied to these most complex and consequential of portfolios, is bearing fruit.
The unwinding of tariffs has had an $11.5 billion benefit to Australian communities.
Diversified new trade deals, such as the UAE-Australia deal, which began its negotiations under Minister Farrell, are being signed into force.
And on Democratic reform, progress, too, is being made, with the Government close to implementing policy designed to enhance the integrity of — and public belief in — the Institutions we all rely on.
So, to elaborate in this record and what's ahead, please join me in welcoming Minister for Trade, Tourism and Special Minister for State, The Honourable Don Farrell.