Our submission to the review of Australia’s free trade agreements in Southeast Asia is about making good agreements work better.

Southeast Asia is one of Australia’s most important dairy export regions – close to home, fast-growing, and critical to the long-term strength of our industry. Existing free trade agreements have opened doors, but too often, avoidable barriers are still getting in the way.

In our submission, we call for three practical, targeted actions.

First, we need stronger enforcement of existing commitments. Agreements only deliver when trading partners honour them, and we’re urging continued action to ensure Thailand fully complies with its TAFTA obligations on duty-free access and quota allocations.

Second, we must finish the job on tariffs. Small, lingering duties on products like yoghurt, dairy spreads and liquid milk create unnecessary friction. Removing these “nuisance tariffs” would improve competitiveness without reopening whole agreements.

Third, it’s time to modernise the paperwork. Outdated certificate of origin requirements add cost and complexity for exporters. Aligning older FTAs with the CPTPP’s self-certification model would cut red tape and support smaller and regional businesses to export.

Our message is straightforward:

• enforce the rules
• clear the bottlenecks, and
• modernise the system.

Because when free trade agreements are fit for purpose, Australian dairy can compete, grow, and keep delivering value to regional communities and the national economy.

More: Read ADIC’s submission.