China lifts ban on five major Australian beef exporters
China has eased its restrictions on Australian beef imports. Five major Australian meatworks can now resume business with Beijing. The businesses in Queensland and New South Wales had been trading about 1 billion dollars’ worth of beef when they were locked out during the trade war in 2020.
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TVTranscript
00:00 We've nearly completed the deep thaw after Australia's trading relationship with China
00:07 went into the deep freeze in 2020 over various political calls from between the Australian
00:13 government and the Chinese government.
00:15 At that time we saw a number of Australian abattoirs suspended from trade with China,
00:21 as well as tariffs applied to commodities like barley and wine, and of course Australian
00:26 lobsters were locked out too.
00:28 But this morning it was good news from the Australian government.
00:31 Here's the Federal Agriculture Minister, Murray Watt.
00:34 That is fantastic news for Australia's cattle producers, for our meat processing industry,
00:39 for the workers in those industries, and of course for Australian exports.
00:44 What we've worked out is that even so far over the last few months with the different
00:47 export bans that have been lifted by China, that has worked out to $3 billion in extra
00:52 exports for Australia.
00:54 So the work that we've done to stabilise our relationship with China is paying real dividends
00:58 for our farmers.
00:59 Well, before China suspended Australian abattoirs, we estimate that the value of the trade from
01:06 those major outlets in Queensland and northern New South Wales was around a third of the
01:10 trade, which was valued at around about $3 billion pre-COVID.
01:15 So it'll be interesting to see whether China resumes the trade at such a hectic pace.
01:20 Of course, it is the most valuable customer for a lot of Australian farm exports and beef
01:25 is no exception.
01:26 We do know, however, that there are two Queensland abattoirs, John Dee and Australian Country
01:31 Choice, which had hoped to resume trade with China.
01:34 They remain suspended at this stage.
01:37 And I touched on it earlier, Australian Lobster Fishers still locked out of trade with China
01:42 too.
01:43 [BLANK_AUDIO]