Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would not expect the Greens to do selective quoting, but there is a first time for everything. This is exactly what the Productivity Commission said:

Australian Governments should seek to avoid the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions in BRTAs that grant foreign investors in Australia substantive or procedural rights greater than those enjoyed by Australian investors.

I do not dispute that view. But the Greens always leave out that little bit—it is only those bits that provide substantively greater procedural rights. That has not happened in any of these agreements. If it had, we would have seen that evidence.

I listened to Senator Ludlam earnestly worrying about how this provision could stop us dealing with fracking, and I think uranium mining, and all these other things. If you read the Korean FTA that we have only just signed, chapter 18 deals with the environment and these issues that Senator Ludlam raised. The very first article, 18.1, in that chapter says:

Recognizing the right of each Party to establish its own levels of environmental protection and environmental development priorities, and to adopt or modify accordingly its environmental laws and policies, each Party shall ensure that its laws provide for and encourage high levels of environmental protection and shall strive to continue to improve their respective levels of environmental protection, including through such environmental laws and policies.

There are no restrictions against a country acting to protect its environment under the Korean FTA or under any of our other bilateral investment agreements. The Greens have quoted from none of these ISDS agreements to prove otherwise.

Senator Whish-Wilson also raised the point about international evidence. It is true, internationally there is much more experience associated with ISDS clauses. There are, across the world, 2,400 bilateral investment treaties in place. Of those bilateral investment treaties, 90 per cent have not had a single investor claim under them for a treaty breach. Fewer than 10 per cent of these 2,400 agreements have ever been triggered, even once. I did not hear Senator Ludlam say this, but sometimes people claim that there has been a surge in ICS claims.

There has been an increase. I do not have the numbers of the increase in claims here, but the key point to make is that these increases are proportional to the amount of outward foreign capital investment in the world. I am not sure if I am allowed to use props, but there is a graph from a report I read this morning that shows, very clearly, that the number of claims—sorry, I do have the figures here—have risen to about 600 a year now we are averaging in ISDS claims. But that is directly proportional to the increase in foreign direct investment across the world. It is a very good thing that we have more foreign direct investment. It has allowed economies, particularly developing economies, to increase their growth considerably over the past 50 years. When you think about—