END OF TRADE “IMPEDIMENTS”
At the low point in relations, Australian exporters faced impediments on exporting wine, barley, coal, cotton, timber logs, oaten hay, copper ores and concentrates and red meat, the government said.
“The removal of restrictions on lobster marks the resolution of all outstanding impediments to trade from that period,” it said in a statement.
The reopening to lobster may also give Albanese a political boon.
The prime minister must call an election in the first half of 2025, and many lobster producers come from Western Australia, a key battleground state.
The centre-left leader has spent much of his time in office trying to improve the trade relationship with China, Australia’s biggest trade partner.
At the same time, Australia is part of a loose US-led alliance that has aggressively pushed back against China’s bid for primacy in the Pacific region.
Before the ban, an estimated 97.7 per cent of Australia’s rock lobster exports were sold to China, more than 1,600 tonnes a year.
Some Australian producers have since found new markets in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Many more skirted sanctions by creating a “grey market” of exports to China via Hong Kong, Hanoi and other Asian cities.
The volume of exports to Hong Kong alone shot up more than 6,100 per cent after the ban, according to researchers at the University of Technology Sydney.
Exporters are hoping they can resume exports in time for Chinese New Year when delicacies such as rock lobster are in hot demand.
