Recommendations

Increase, expand and accelerate capacity-building projects which focus on financial services regulation in the APEC region.

Government continue to address international regulatory barriers to trade in financial services via multilateral and bilateral mechanisms including trade agreements and capacity building.

Government and industry should work together to consolidate a comprehensive and prioritised list of international barriers to services exports for actioning, including formal market access barriers as well as ‘behind-the-border’ process, procedural, regulatory and cultural barriers.

Develop a user-friendly mechanism to encourage exporters to keep the industry-government developed comprehensive and prioritised list of international barriers to services exports accurate and current.

Appoint a Minister for the Digital Economy to champion the interests of Australia’s digital trade, e-commerce and digital services in Australia and overseas, and represent them in policy discussions which have an impact on Australia’s international competitiveness.

Convene an informal non-government diplomacy channel to multiply the impact of the business community’s current efforts to support Australia’s global policy interests in digitally-enabled trade.

Encourage the development and harmonisation of high-quality digital standards with key trading partners, including through FTAs, in multilateral fora, and through regulator-to-regulator cooperation. This could include facilitating the development of international digital standards.

When negotiating trade agreements, the approach taken by Hong Kong and Australia in the recently negotiated Australia-Hong Kong FTA should serve as a model of how to lock in free cross-border data flows for the finance sector without mandatory local data storage requirements.

Accelerate the domestic implementation of the voluntary APEC Cross Border Privacy Rules, and promote greater understanding of their benefits, to improve the likelihood of these rules becoming the regional minimum standard.

Develop a Government and industry-led services narrative to support the promotion of Australian services overseas, with an emphasis on the internationally recognised capability of Australian services firms, their collaborative nature, and their innovative and solutions-driven ethos. This should include identifying and promoting points of excellence and success stories in the Australian services sector and highlighting specific expertise.

The Australian Government should ensure Australia’s Nation Brand initiative captures and supports the whole spectrum of Australian services capabilities and allows services exporters to leverage the Nation Brand to promote their service offerings.

Encourage industry to develop a ‘Creative Industry Export Strategy’.