Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I have been listening carefully to the argument here. This amendment from the opposition is a constructive amendment. It seeks information that Australians should have available to them. I say to the minister if 10 per cent of the investment in Australian bonds is coming from tax havens like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, should we not know that? I think we absolutely should. If memory serves me correctly, a very senior treasury official in China called on the United States a couple of months back to take measures to guarantee that investment from China in the United States was safe. We are in a situation where we are seeing a big inflow of investment from overseas and the likelihood of it increasing—as Senator Coonan has outlined—and there is also the potential for governments and entities overseas to seek assurances like that which we saw from the Chinese government to the United States quite recently. So I think a bit of scrutiny about where the investment is coming from is very much in order.

I was in South Korea a couple of years ago looking at the 30-kilometre long Saemangeum sea dyke that was being built into the sea by one of the Hyundai chaebols. It destroyed extensive mudflats and, as a result, one-tenth of the migratory birds from Australia going to Siberia and Alaska each year. In talking with people involved there was clear concern then in Korea about the outflow of money, particularly going to the United States. I think it is actually good for the countries of origin of the money to know where their money is going to. I suspect that some of those countries have a much better register of where the flow is than we do as the recipients. It is very reasonable in an open and transparent democracy that we do get more information. So the Greens will be supporting this amendment.