Australia-Japan FTA
A free trade agreement with Japan is expected to boost our GDP by $39 billion over 20 years. That's about $2 billion a year, on average, and even then assumes the talks are amazingly successful and we get the agricultural concessions we're dreaming of. So with a GDP of around $940 billion, that's at most a 0.2 per cent increase in a year. Not exactly an economic miracle.
Perhaps the political capital expended on these negotiations would be better spend on persuading Japan to open up its agricultural markets to poorer nations, ones where agriculture comprises upwards of 80 per cent of the economy and millions of people live in poverty. Surely even small concessions by Japan in opening its markets to the world would achieve a much greater return; a return that improves the lives of a lot more people and sets a good example for Europe and the US.