The Global Trade Briefing

Opening — The Border Is Where The New World Order Shows Up First

Good evening, everyone, and thank you to the Ethical Trade Alliance for the invitation, and to our hosts and sponsors for an evening like this, in a building dedicated to telling this country's story.

I spent forty four years in law enforcement and border management — pounding the beat in London at the start and the last seven of them as Commissioner of the Australian Border Force. And by today, the border has become a place where geopolitics, technology and commerce collide. Usually before they collide anywhere else.

Henry Kissinger observed, late in his life, that the institutions of international order were designed for a world that no longer exists. I don't think that's visible anywhere more clearly than in cross-border trade.

So, three things tonight. What's changing. What it means for everyone in this room, whichever direction you trade. And why I believe the answer comes down to a single word: trust. Digital, verifiable trust.

The State Of Global Trade — From Tariffs To Trust

First: what's changing. The short version is this: trade policy has become statecraft, and compliance has moved from the shop floor to the boardroom.

Tariffs, sanctions and export controls are now routine instruments of national power. A global US tariff. Expanding Section 232 measures. A US–China truce that nobody would call settled. And renewed conflict in the Gulf reminding us that war-risk premiums and chokepoints like Hormuz now price themselves into every supply chain. Volatility itself has become a compliance cost.

Second, the trade agenda and the human-rights agenda have fused. In June, the United States proposed tariffs on sixty economies, Australia among the forty-six marked for the higher rate of 12.5 per cent, for not having a forced-labour import ban. A lower rate for those, like the EU, the UK and Canada, that do. But look at what just happened: human- rights compliance is now, literally, a tariff line. And it isn't only tariffs. The EU's forced- labour ban applies from December next year (its risk database and guidance are already live) and under America's Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, goods can be stopped, withdrawn and destroyed. In each case, the burden of proof flows toward the trader.

Carbon has arrived at the border too. The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) entered its definitive regime on the first of January. If you import steel, aluminium, cement or fertiliser into Europe, you now need authorisation, and you pay for the emissions embedded in the product. Carbon accounting is customs business.

Due diligence has moved into hard law. The EU's Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, scaled back, yes, but very much alive, reaches large non-EU companies selling into Europe. Including Australian ones.

Products themselves are getting passports. The EU's digital product passport registry went live this very week. Batteries come first, with textiles and steel to follow. Products will carry their provenance with them.

And at home? Mandatory climate reporting has begun, and Modern Slavery Act reform is moving from disclosure to due diligence; lower thresholds, real penalties, declarations for high-risk sectors.

Individually, these are compliance regimes. Together, they amount to one question: can you prove what your product is, where it came from, and who touched it along the way?

The Two Sides Of The Room

Now, there are two kinds of traders in this room, and this story lands differently for each.

If you trade into Australia, and I'm looking at our friends from the diplomatic corps, you should know Australia is tightening too. Modern slavery reform. Mandatory climate disclosure. The hardest illicit-trade enforcement posture in years. But here's the other half of that story: Australia is also seeking to simplify (the Simplified Trade System, Cargo Reporting System Transformation, digital trade reform). So my message to you is this: verifiable, ethical supply chains will find Australia an easier market, not a harder one.

If you trade from Australia: the EU's rules don't care where you're headquartered. CBAM certificates, due-diligence obligations under the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, forced-labour proof, product passports; they apply to Australian steel, agriculture, garments and seafood entering those markets. The new Australia–EU free trade agreement makes the point structurally: its sustainable-development chapter binds climate commitments into market access. Politically contested here, certainly — but the direction is set. And that US forced-labour tariff proposal tells us even our oldest free-trade partner will price our compliance regime.

The question isn't “are we compliant?” — that question is always answered yes. Ask instead: if a regulator, or a customer, asked us to prove where this product or the components inside the product came from, tier by tier, how long would it take us — and how much of the answer is sitting on paper, in someone else's filing cabinet, in another country?

Put simply — the firms that build provenance and traceability now are the firms that turn compliance cost into market access.

But what happens when there is no visibility, and trust is elusive?

Case Study — Illicit Tobacco: What A Trust Vacuum Looks Like

Australia is losing as much as 11.8 billion dollars a year in tobacco excise to organised crime. That money doesn't disappear — it funds the same networks behind drugs and violence, and globally, terrorism financing.

The enforcement response is real, and it's serious. The Australian Border Force-led national disruption effort seized close to a kilotonne of illicit tobacco under Operation PRINTWALL in its first four months alone, with agencies right across government working together. But here is the uncomfortable truth: you cannot seize your way out of a systemic problem when the systems themselves are fragmented, paper-based and siloed. And remember, we physically examine only around one per cent of the containers crossing our border, a figure that has been on the public record for twenty years. The answer was never going to be cutting more container seals. It has to be knowing which one per cent to open.

And the lesson extends far beyond tobacco. Criminals exploit the gaps between systems, between agencies, between borders. Think about how it actually works. A shipment arrives with underlying documents that look low-risk; they may be forged. The importing company checks out; it may have been registered three weeks ago and be liquidated three weeks from now. The cargo description looks plausible; it may have been mis- declared just carefully enough. It's the sequence of data points, not any single indicator, that tells the story. If we can't connect and validate the data, we can't see the risk. And when we connect it, it works. WCO Operation Tin Can proved that: fifty-eight countries and the major shipping lines sharing supply chain data, and close to a hundred tonnes of cocaine taken out of the global supply chain in around a month.

The same gaps that let illicit tobacco in are the gaps that let forced-labour goods and sanctions-evading cargo through.

The Answer — An Architecture Of Trust

So what's the answer? I'd give you four building blocks and call it an architecture of trust.

First, paperless trade. The model laws already exist. The UN's Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records, from the UN's trade-law commission, UNCITRAL, has been legislated in the UK and in Singapore, and Australia's attorneys-general have now agreed to draft uniform amendments here. Digital bills of lading and verifiable credentials can replace paper that anyone can forge.

Second, trust in the parties and in their data. Digital credentials that prove who you're actually dealing with, and provenance data you can verify rather than take on assertion. Trust that travels with the transaction, all the way along the supply chain.

Third, federated visibility. Not a single database. A system of systems, where government and industry lawfully share what's needed for near-real-time visibility of risk. Each party keeps its own data; what travels is the verification. And that's good for security and good for trade, because trusted traders move faster, at lower cost, with fewer interventions. The green lane gets greener, and the attention goes where the risk actually is.

And fourth; the physical layer. Data tells you where to look; you still need the means to look without stopping the flow of trade. That means modern non-intrusive inspection (NII — imaging), built into port architecture, that examines a container or a pallet without ever opening it, increasingly paired with artificial intelligence that learns what normal looks like, so that human judgment is spent on what isn't. The much-needed reform conversation isn't just about advances in technology. It's about government and industry finding ways to co-invest in screening capability at our ports and airports, so that detection scales with trade instead of forever lagging behind it.

None of this is science fiction. Every piece of it exists somewhere in the world today. What doesn't yet exist is the joined-up version and that is a choice, not a technical constraint. And here's the reframe I'd leave with you: the same infrastructure that satisfies CBAM, forced-labour rules and product passports is the infrastructure that defeats illicit trade. Prove once, use many times.

Close — Ethical Trade Is Becoming The Licence To Trade

So let me close where I began, with the two sides of this room.

To those of you looking at Australia: this is a market that will increasingly reward the verifiable. To the Australians looking outward: the world's biggest markets now demand proof and if you get ahead of that, it is an advantage, not a burden.

Digital architecture allows us to break the trade-off between throughput and assurance: We can have both. And ethical trade and cross-border compliance need not be a constraint; they become the licence to trade. That is exactly why platforms like the Ethical Trade Alliance matter, because no company, and no country, builds trust architecture alone.

The border is no longer where trade ends and begins. It's where trust is proven.

Thank you.