Journalist: Now a little while ago the future of steel making in this region was looking shaky, the solutions included several things, including strengthening Anti-dumping legislation here in this country to prevent overseas businesses dumping cheap goods into our market and putting Australian manufacturers at a distinct disadvantage – it was something that the Federal Government came to the party with and announced new anti-dumping reforms which will help Australian industry. Earlier this morning, the Assistant Minister for Science, Karen Andrews, explains what these reforms are and how they will help Australian manufacturers.

Karen Andrews: Can I just start by saying that Australia is well known for having a very robust and very rigorous anti-dumping system and our system is certainly aimed at ensuring Australian manufacturers and producers are competing on a level playing field.

Now over the course of this year there have been some changes to the anti-dumping system which are designed to further strengthen our system. Now the first one that I think is particularly important is the direction to provide for provisional duties to be applied at 60 days where the anti-dumping Commissioner has determined that the there is probably a case to answer – so that means that we can start imposing dumping duties at day 60, which is quite early in the process as well, where we believe there is going to be a positive outcome in the investigation. Now to put this into perspective, our system is one of the shortest compared to other countries, so 155 days per investigation – for us to now be able to impose provisional duties at 60 days is significantly shortening that time frame. This will of course assist Australian manufacturers.

We’re also cracking down on uncooperative exporters, so where there is an exporter that is not providing us with the information that we need to properly conduct the investigation, they will be deemed to be uncooperative and they can certainly face greater penalties as a result of that. And thirdly we are putting in additional resources into the anti-dumping commission to streamline our investigations to make sure that we can complete them in the earliest possible time.

Journalist: So sometimes this whole notion of dumping and anti-dumping and how it influences our own industries here is unclear, and particularly we’re concerned about the steel industry here, in the Illawarra, can you just explain to people what happens, when there’s importation of steel from China or Thailand and when does the Anti-dumping Commission click into action? What actually happens? So they notice that the steel is being sold for below cost price?

Karen Andrews: Normally the manufacturer makes an application to the Anti-dumping Commission to conduct an investigation, and the allegation is that the product is being dumped in Australia. So in simple terms dumping is when an exporter tries to sell a product into Australia at a rate that is significantly less than the price it would be sold in the home country. So effectively, dumping, cheap imports into Australia. So once the anti-dumping commission is notified of that, they can commence an investigation into this, and where it is determined that the price that the manufacturer is selling into Australia, is less than what they would sell it at home, then we can impose dumping duties to level the playing field for Australian manufacturers.

Journalist: So the investigation is triggered when an Australian manufacturer notifies the commission to say this steel is being sold at a significantly lower cost than they believe they would be charging in their home country?

Karen Andrews: That’s the normal way it is done, some manufacturers are normally very alert to what’s being brought into the country and they are often in the best position to identify as soon as it hits our shores, so they then notify the anti-dumping commission and put in a formal application and that starts the process.

Journalist: And if say a particular company from say China or Thailand, or wherever, is found to be engaged in dumping what happens then?

Karen Andrews: We impose dumping duties, so we actually calculate, what is the normal value, so what is the home value for this, and we apply a percentage of duties to raise the price of the product that is being brought into Australia.

Journalist: And how do these new reforms bring Australia into line with other countries that have quite strong anti-dumping legislation as well?

Karen Andrews: Well Australia actually has one of the strongest anti-dumping systems in the world, which is great news for our Australian manufacturers and producers. We are trying to strengthen that, because we are aware that our manufacturers are competing in a global market and we certainly don’t want them competing on any sort of a playing field that is not at all level.

Journalist: What about some ideological opponents to any kind of anti-dumping provisions who just say that this is just a function of the market, what do you say to them? Because I understand that there are some people that are of this belief in the Coalition, both in the state level and the federal level? What’s your argument against that ideologically opposition to any kind of crack down on anti-dumping?

Karen Andrews: Well I would say it’s not necessarily a true reflection of the market, overseas manufacturers are taking steps to dump their product in Australia and I don’t think that’s fair to Australian manufacturers.

Journalist: And we know it’s been something that’s been complained about by Bluescope, by some downstream fabricators and manufacturers of steel products for a long time now, do you have any figures or any sense of the proportion of the market that’s been taken up by dumped steel as opposed to steel that’s been sold at a reasonable cost?

Karen Andrews: Look I don’t have that breakdown of numbers, but what I can say is that steel certainly is a significant part of the work of the anti-dumping commission, so we do get a number of applications coming in, in respect of various forms of steel, we do take the allegations very seriously and we conduct full investigations.

Journalist: And the need seen by the Government to toughen these regulations and to introduce these anti-dumping reforms is quite directly as a result of what’s been happening with the Australian steel industry in particular?

Karen Andrews: Well the anti-dumping system has been in place for some time now, we have looked at it as a Coalition Government since we came to office two years ago, to look at what we could do to see that there was a level playing field for our Australian manufacturers. So the changes that you see coming through now are a result of the Government doing the best that it can to ensure that the rules of the game are fair for Australian manufacturers.

Journalist: That is the Assistant Minister for Industry and Science, Karen Andrews, talking to me earlier this morning. Now the reforms have been welcomed by Ian Waters who is the spokesperson for the Save our Steel campaign who has been working very hard on this and anti-dumping reform has been one of the things they’ve been calling for…he has said that this will bring great benefit to companies like Bluescope and greatly assist affected producers….

ENDS