CFMEU National Secretary Michael O’Connor today endorsed the passage of a swathe of legislative reforms which will provide the Australian manufacturing industry with ammunition to fight the serious threat posed by the dumping of cheap imports currently threatening Australian jobs. The reforms will be critical to ensuring the Malaysia free trade deal does not further exacerbate the inflow of dumped  Malaysian timber and wood products.

“Embedding the International Trade Remedies Forum in national legislation, the new appeals process and the anti-circumvention framework will help us stop the bleeding out of Australian manufacturing jobs.”

The reforms complement today’s release of the recommendations of the Brumby Review into Anti-Dumping Arrangements.

“We thank the Minister for Home Affairs for commissioning the Brumby Review and urge him to move swiftly to implement its key recommendation to establish an Anti-Dumping Agency”.

“This agency must be well resourced in order to tackle the challenge of enforcing regulations to stop Australia from being the dumping ground for foreign companies trying to flood the market with below-cost, often inferior quality manufactured goods”.

“The Minister acknowledged that ‘more needed to be done’ which gives us hope that further work on greater compliance of imports causing ‘economic risks’ at the border through duty and tax evasion will occur”.

“The current system undermines rather than supports efforts to combat dumping and causes more material injury to Australian industry and destroys jobs. The Anti-Dumping Agency will assist by driving a hard-nosed ‘culture of compliance’ with rules that protect Australian industry’s trade entitlements”.

What’s even better is that through better enforcement we will be able to raise revenue which will make this initiative cost-neutral and add money to the coffers of the Federal Government which can then be put back into supporting innovation in Australian manufacturing.”

The union is campaigning on the issue as part of the ‘Let’s spread it around’ initiative which seeks to ensure all Australians benefit from the mining boom through better economic management.

More information about the campaign at www.cfmeu.net.au.