Editorial: Australia must abide by WTO rules on apples

Apple-growers from China, the United States and Chile are queuing to sell their fruit in Australia. Photo / Getty Images

Apple-growers from China, the United States and Chile are queuing to sell their fruit in Australia.

They, especially, will be interested in New Zealand's reported success in persuading the World Trade Organisation to overturn Australia's long-running ban on the importing of apples from this country.

But they, too, are the reason Australia is bound to use every conceivable delaying tactic to deny the benefits of that verdict to New Zealand orchardists.

Protection of struggling Australian producers has become the only rationale for the ban in the latter years of its 90 years' existence.

The foot in the door courtesy of the WTO will, unfortunately, probably only intensify that approach.

It is regrettable, of course, that New Zealand ever got into this dispute with its main trading partner. But, in the end, it had no alternative.

Even now, Australia continues to insist that bilateral talks would be the best way to settle the matter.

But these have produced only frustration. Efforts to gain access to the Australian market in 1986, 1989 and 1995 were rejected.

When access was allowed four years ago, it came with conditions so strict - such as apples having to be bathed in chlorine disinfectant and then stored for several weeks before crossing the Tasman - that exports would be impractical and uneconomic.

An international body devoted to free trade is the right vehicle to deliver a final ruling on Australia's policy.

Under WTO rules, a nation can ban imported produce only on the grounds that the product could introduce pests or diseases.

Bans cannot be used to protect local industry. Australia has always contended that the presence of the bacterial disease fireblight in New Zealand apples would devastate its own apple and pear orchards.

Local growers maintain that mature apples do not pose any such risk.

The Australian defence was virtually eradicated in 2003 when the WTO ruled in favour of the US, and against Japan, in stating that the risk of apples spreading fireblight was negligible.

That verdict used scientific evidence provided by New Zealand. It is hardly surprising that a WTO special panel would now confirm that decision, having pored over thousands of pages of argument advanced by Biosecurity Australia.

It is always unseemly when a bogus scientific case is clearly being used as a smokescreen for a crude form of protectionism. Increasingly desperate measures to justify and implant the import ban have been employed in a politically driven response to the lobbying of Australian orchardists.

It seems almost inevitable that Australia will appeal against the WTO's final report, which is due in mid-year. Such an appeal, while restricted to issues of law covered in the report, would mean another delay.

In the process, however, Australia is besmirching its reputation as a promoter of free trade. At the moment, its trade practices are the subject of 10 complaints from other countries.

New Zealand has no such cases against it. But Australia is not shy of using the WTO disputes process when it feels slighted. It is a complainant in seven cases, and has also registered as a third party in 47 cases, where it believes that it has commercial or legal interests.

Obviously, the Australians are prepared to use the WTO rules when they are in their interests.

They should also recognise when self-interest is driving their policies and leading to the erection of unacceptable trade barriers.

New Zealand orchardists have been denied entry to a potentially lucrative market for far too long.

Australia should bow to the inevitable, put an end to its boorish behaviour and abide by world trade rules.