RELATED CONTENT: Small business front and centre – Bishop
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Free Trade Agreements with Asian neighbours will open doors for Eurobodalla tourism operators, the Foreign Affairs Minister has told a gathering in Batemans Bay.
“In my area of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the most important opportunity for small business will come from the Free Trade Agreements that we have signed with China, Japan and Korea,” Julie Bishop told a breakfast meeting of business owners, volunteer groups, Eurobodalla Shire councillors and officials, and MPs on April 21 at the Batemans Bay Soldiers Club.
“The opportunities for you are enormous. We will have preferential access into our three biggest export markets.
“We will be able to have opportunities other countries will not and this means a lot for small business and medium enterprises.”
Ms Bishop said Eurobodalla businesses would be to “sell you services into a much bigger market”.
She the agricultural sector was already benefiting and Korea was a strong example.
“Important areas like agriculture have already seen opportunities expand for dairy, beef and wine producers, for seafood producers. We have seen a 50 per cent increase in 12 months in bottled wine sales to Korea; a 30 per cent in the sale of beef products into Korea.”
China represented the largest opportunity for tourism operators and it was a market largely waiting to be tapped for Australia.
“China is a massive market of 1.3 billion people, and the middle class, the consumer class is growing dramatically. There are opportunities to sell goods and services for this huge consumer market.
“They are also wanting to come here. We had a record number of Chinese tourists in Australia last year, one million. That is only a fraction of the number of Chinese tourists who travelled around the world – there were 120 million.
“There are enormous opportunities for us to expand our tourism base into China. The tourists are looking for different experiences, they want quality, they want something unique. They want something they wouldn’t get in China and that is what is available in this beautiful part of the world.”
Ms Bishop pushed the Coalition’s “innovation science agenda”.
“We are focusing on start up companies, the companies who have got an idea, but need support to commercialise it. Australians are great with ideas; we are creative, ingenious, innovative people. What we are not so good at is turning our ideas into a commercial reality.”
On the national stage, Ms Bishop said the defence industry strategy and the Defence White Paper showed chances for small and medium enterprises to piggy back of a “home-grown defence industry”.
“We want to build defence ships in Australia,” she said.
“We need a skilled workforce, we need suppliers to fill the supply chains. If you are building your own defence capability at home, the opportunities for small businesses to be part of that supply chain are enormous.”