Trade talks beginning between Australia and the UK are welcome news

Today marks the beginning of something truly exciting: trade talks with Australia. 

Our two peoples might be over 11,000 miles apart but in personal terms we couldn’t be closer. We share the Queen as our Head of State, we share a common language, our legal systems are common law based, we share attitudes to life, we have been the victims of each other’s sporting triumphs, our troops have fought and died together in the defence of the world’s freedoms in the face of the most awful tyrannies. 

We share a healthy scepticism of pious political promises. A healthy commitment to the maintenance of habeas corpus. And we share a healthy love of accosting our leaders in the street when they’re getting too big for their boots, or telling them off when they step onto our lawns. 

Trade is about goods and services, but mostly importantly it’s about people. More than 1.2 million Brits live in Australia, and more than a hundred thousand Aussies call these fair islands home. As our very own Matthew Lesh shows, they integrate and have an impact immediately. 

We’ve made it difficult in recent years to live in each other’s countries and it’s had an impact. Surcharges and visa fees, quotas and a lack of recognition of qualifications mean it’s more expensive, more time-consuming and less inviting for Australians thinking of making a move. In the meantime, the USA has made it cheaper and easier for Aussies to study and work in the States with an E3 visa specifically designed for them. It’s worked, more Australians live in New York now than London. 

This trade deal is a chance to rectify this. Make it easier for our peoples to start businesses, use bank accounts, and for insurers and marketers and lawyers to work across borders. Make it easier to come and study or do a secondment, or even to start a family. Make it cheaper for doctors and nurses in our health services to come and tend for each other. Make Britain the greatest place for an Aussie to live outside of Oz itself.

Trade is also, or at least should be, about trust. Australia is a modern and developed country that wants for its citizens the same things we want for our people: a safe society built on open and transparent processes, where you trust what you’re buying and have recourse if something goes wrong. We should recognise their regulators are trying to do the same job as ours. If it’s good enough for Australians (whether that’s food, or medicines, or banking, or technology) then it’s good enough for Brits. 

When the UK voted to leave the EU, it was Australia that jumped at the chance to offer up a trade deal first and has been most vocal in supporting the free choice of our free people to make their own destiny. That loyalty is being rewarded finally with concurrent negotiations for the UK with the EU, USA and Australia. Our physically closest allies in Europe are no longer put ahead of our personally closest allies further afield.

Today marks the beginning of Britain’s global future. A reminder that a world outside Europe awaits and welcomes us with open arms. They’ve been waiting for a long time. They’ve held the faith. For four long years so have we. It’s finally here. That’s something to cheer.