During the 1980s and early 1990s there was broad bipartisan support for the three pillars of Labor's trade policy: unilateral trade liberalisation, open regionalism and multilateralism. In the lead-up to the 1996 federal election, however, this consensus began to break down as the opposition Liberal and National parties sought to distance themselves from the Labor government and place their own distinctive stamp on trade policy. Hoping to capitalise on voter discontent with Labor's regionalist and internationalist inclinations, under John Howard's leadership the coalition promised a more vigorous and results-oriented approach to Australian trade policy, with emphasis on bilateral efforts to open export markets for Australian producers.

Initially it seemed that this bilateralist turn in coalition policy was little more than an exercise in product differentiation for campaign purposes. After all, Australia has dozens of bilateral economic agreements and lobbies constantly on a country-to-country basis on a wide variety of economic, trade, investment and taxation issues. In that sense, promoting ‘bilateralism’ was simply a means of bringing to the fore an aspect of Australian trade policy that tended to be crowded out by Labor's emphasis on regional and multilateral trade issues. Once in power, however, it became evident that the Howard government's pledge to ‘get tough’ on trade signalled the beginning of a new phase in Australian trade policy.

Aggressive Bilateralism

The coalition's election commitment to bilateralism was reaffirmed in the 1997 White Paper on Foreign and Trade Policy which described bilateral relationships as the ‘basic building block’ of Australia's trade and foreign policies.