Trade & investment, explained.
Products on display at the Australian Native Food Festival on 27 September 2025 in Sydney, Australia to showcase First Nations culture, knowledge, and flavours through native ingredients and bush foods (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
Free trade deals gave First Nations exporters market access – but insurance and shipping risk are pricing many out.
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Escaping the fine print blocking First Nations tradeEscaping the fine print blocking First Nations trade
First Nations enterprises in Australia are set to benefit from the preferential market access that has been opened under new free trade agreements with the United Arab Emirates (Opens in new window) and the proposed deal with the European Union (Opens in new window).
But a concerning gap has emerged between paper access under FTAs and practical access, falling hardest on small and medium-sized enterprises (Opens in new window) and leaving export growth on the table.
Barriers FTA negotiators never bargained for have arisen with attacks on commercial shipping and rising geopolitical tension. This has driven up the cost for insurance, financing and freight routing (Opens in new window) – factors that no tariff treatment can resolve. It is estimated that rerouting for an ultra-large container ship in response to conflict zones has added US$1.2–2 million per voyage in fuel costs (Opens in new window) and major shipping companies including Maersk reserve the right (Opens in new window) to abandon carriage altogether.
Unlike large enterprises, small and medium-sized firms often cannot absorb the cost of freight volatility, and these prices may flow to consumers. First Nations enterprises are particularly vulnerable (Opens in new window), given that two-thirds of First Nations businesses are small and another third are medium enterprises. Insurance affordability remains a persistent constraint (Opens in new window), with 16% holding no insurance, rising to 23% among businesses trading under four years (a cohort making up almost half the sector (Opens in new window)).
Strengthening the participation of small and medium-sized firms in global markets is an economic resilience issue, not just an Indigenous development one.
This is not for lack of institutional support. Export Finance Australia (EFA), Indigenous Business Australia (IBA) (Opens in new window) and private insurers already work with First Nations enterprises trading internationally. But because the sector remains in a growth stage (Opens in new window) and may be underrepresented in the data insurers use to price risk, premiums may be higher than demonstrated claims experience would suggest.
New Zealand’s Waikato-Tainui (Opens in new window) offers a successful precedent of a more favourable risk profile and lower financing costs. With a diversified NZ$2 billion portfolio spanning property, infrastructure, agriculture and investment, the tribal group operates at a scale individual enterprises rarely reach, consolidating many smaller, higher-risk assets under one commercial entity and building strong governance capacity. Recognising this success, IBA has partnered with Waikato-Tainui, aiming to strengthen Trans-Tasman economic cooperation (Opens in new window).
The model of consolidation for scale and control has also worked in natural resources. Canada’s Membertou First Nation addressed supply chain volatility by anchoring a CA$1 billion joint acquisition of Clearwater Seafoods (Opens in new window), directly owning export infrastructure and high-value offshore quotas. Converting volatile shipping and harvesting dependencies into a stable, de-risked asset class (Opens in new window) secured lower financing costs. This was later demonstrated through its debt restructuring via the First Nations Finance Authority (Opens in new window).
Together, these examples suggest scale, diversification and strong governance can reshape how risk is perceived. A “First Nations Trade Resilience Facility” offers one of several policy options that could be explored, drawing together government, Indigenous economic institutions and international insurers into a single blended structure. The Australian government, through EFA’s (Opens in new window) existing trade-finance capability, could underwrite war-risk surcharges and cargo insurance for exporters operating in higher-risk trading environments. The National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) and IBA (Opens in new window) could support the governance and domestic-capability side of the arrangement.
The facility could also partner with organisations such as Supply Nation, whose export-focused arm, “Export Nation” could provide accreditation for facility-ready exporters. Supply Nation’s broadernetwork of more than 3,000 verified Indigenous businesses generating a combined $3 billion in revenue (Opens in new window) illustrates the scale such a facility could draw on.
International insurers, such as Etihad Credit Insurance (Opens in new window), could offer additional underwriting capacity where domestic institutions alone cannot absorb the risk involved.
None of this would guarantee lower premiums alone. But rather than assessing individual First Nations enterprises in isolation and treating each as a standalone risk, the facility would consolidate verified exporters into a shared portfolio, allowing their combined trading history, claims record and governance standards to be assessed together, underwritten by government and economic institutions.
By pooling verified exporters, the facility would give insurers a larger, more predictable base to assess, addressing the possible data gap existing in insurer pricing, and building an evidence base that could over time attract capital and insurance on competitive terms.
Insurance is only one example of a broader challenge. Across finance, regulation and market access, the question is whether the institutions supporting Australian trade are equipped to accommodate a growing cohort of First Nations exporters.
First Nations businesses already generate more than $16 billion in annual revenue and employ over 116,000 people (Opens in new window). At the same time, international demand for Australia's culturally informed First Nations products and services continues to grow (Opens in new window). The sector's future may depend less on market demand than on its ability to navigate the regulatory, financial and institutional barriers that accompany expansion.
How Australia responds to those barriers will have implications beyond First Nations enterprise. As economic security becomes increasingly central to Australian statecraft, strengthening the participation of small and medium-sized firms in global markets is an economic resilience issue (Opens in new window), not just an Indigenous development one. A nation reliant on a small number of large exporters is more exposed to external shocks than one supported by a deeper and more diverse export base.
About the author
Mathew Kerwin
Mathew Kerwin is a proud Worimi and Wiradjuri Nation man who holds a Masters of Pacific Development from the Australian National University, a Master of International Business from the University of Canberra and a Post Graduate Diploma in Diplomacy and International Organisations from the European Academy of Diplomacy.
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