Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm the Australian High Commissioner. My name is Bill Fisher.
I just wanted to say how much we appreciate, first, coming before this committee. Australia and Canada have worked very closely in a number of international forums on international trade matters. And of course we are, together, members of the Cairns Group of pro-reform agriculture exporting countries. In that forum, I think we have, together, played an influential part in world trade negotiations. We have always felt that Australia's and Canada's interests and activities in international forums are things where we have had so much in common. We work very well together.
In Australia's case, of course, we are a trading nation. In our position in the world, we've had to establish a forward-looking trade policy to try to overcome some of the tyrannies of distance that we work with. I suppose the basis of Australian trade policy is to work from a low tariff basis. We have a country that, 30 years ago, was a fairly closed economy. We had high barriers. We had lots of barriers to trade. We had a lot of closed practices within the Australian economy.
From about 1983-84 onwards, we've undertaken a really substantial effort to open up the Australian economy to the world. This has had an enormously beneficial effect. I think now that we've looked back over the last 20 or so years of reform, we can see the benefits that open and free trade have brought to us, even at the time.... Some of the reforms are not easy to undertake, and it produces a lot of domestic resistance. A lot of people had to be reformed against their better will at the time. But when the results are in, it has to be said that the price of reform is well worth paying, and I think the strength of the Australian economy today is witness to that.
What we thought we might do this morning, Mr. Chairman, is give you a rundown of some of the policies that have driven us over the last few years and that continue to drive Australian trade policy today. I'm going to ask my deputy, Mr. Huber, who has prepared a more comprehensive paper on this, to speak to you.