Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations are 90 per cent there: Ciobo

Trade Minister Steven Ciobo says negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership are 90 per cent there, with strong core elements of a deal in place.

Australia's Minister for Trade Steven Ciobo and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at a meeting for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the APEC

Australia's Minister for Trade Steven Ciobo and Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull at a meeting for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the APEC Source: AAP

Trade Minister Steve Ciobo is confident Canada will sign up to the 11-country free-trade agreement that would give Australia access to markets worth $1 trillion.

Negotiations have been revived on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has floundered since the US rejected the deal in January.

But the TPP-11 was thrown into limbo on Friday after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau snubbed an APEC leader's meeting on the deal and raised a raft of unforeseen issues.

Mr Ciobo indicated he believed the Canadian concerns regarding the deal could be overcome.

"Having lost a bit of a momentum on the back of the decision by the Canadians not to attend the leaders meeting on the TPP 11, we'll have to keep working methodically through it," he told ABC TV on Sunday.

"I'm very confident. And I know my counterparts in the 10 other countries, we all feel that we can accommodate the various questions that are outstanding."
There are effectively four remaining issues of concern to Canada to be resolved, Mr Ciobo said.

The main issue Canada has raised is in relation to cultural exemptions for elements of broadcast policy that impacts its French-speaking province of Quebec.

A successful TPP deal would give Australia new market access to Mexico and Canada - two countries with which it does not have a free-trade agreement.

"It involves a bit of give and take. We've done great work on a very important deal," Mr Ciobo said.

Labor frontbencher and former trade minister Richard Marles said there needed to be an independent economic analysis of what a final TPP deal would look like.

"That's just the prudent sensible answer to the question about whether or not you support any given trade deal," Mr Marles told Sky News on Sunday.

The TPP was an attempt to give a practical trade expression to the original aspirations of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Mr Marles said.

"A TPP without the United States is a very different entity, as it is now without Canada," he said.

"The Canadian prime minister is clearly equivocating and that is deeply disappointing... as is the position that the United States took under President Trump."

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