Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. As the House will be aware from the remarks made by the government and by the companies in recent days, there have in fact been good developments as far as Australia’s natural gas sector is concerned. Of course, those developments hinge in part on Australia being viewed internationally as a reliable destination for large amounts of foreign investment. In that respect, I draw to the House’s attention a Dun and Bradstreet global risk indicator, released just today, which describes Australia as a safe haven for business investment. Australia’s rating was DB1d, which is the equal highest ranking achieved anywhere in the world. The only other countries to achieve this rating were Canada, Norway and Switzerland. Australia has the highest rating awarded to any economy in the Asia-Pacific region. According to D&B’s CEO, Christine Christian:

The latest GRI rankings show that Australia is a low risk environment for business investment.

Furthermore, she makes this observation:

The world is continuing to change at a rapid pace and although Australia is faring well compared to other nations we cannot afford to stand still.

She is right. She is absolutely right. This is good news in terms of international investor perceptions of doing business in Australia and, in particular, investing in Australia. That brings us back to the question of LNG investments and those at considerable scale—and it is good to have the Minister for Resources and Energy back from Beijing.

Earlier this week in Beijing, Exxon Mobil and PetroChina signed Australia’s largest ever export deal, a $50 billion contract to supply liquefied natural gas to China from the greater Gorgon project—a fact which, in itself, seems to have elicited a particular response on the part of those opposite yesterday.

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