Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Vice-President of the Executive Council) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Hanson for that question. The first point I would make is that Australia does rely on foreign investment in order to reach and meet our economic growth opportunities. We are a capital importer in order to develop our economy, though it is important that any foreign investment is not contrary to the national interest. We have a well-established framework in place to review foreign investment proposals to ensure that they are not contrary to the national interest. That scheme has broadly been in place since 1975. In more recent times a number of reforms have been announced in relation to this, fundamentally to strengthen the level of scrutiny in the context of relevant proposals coming forward.

We've made some temporary adjustments in the context of the COVID-19 crisis to ensure that Australian businesses at this difficult time are protected from the threat of inappropriate foreign takeovers at a time of comparative weakness and challenge. We've also recently made some significant reform announcements in relation to national security sensitive businesses. Critical infrastructure is, of course, one of the areas where we've put some additional safeguards and powers for the Treasurer into this framework. I don't believe it would be useful to provide arbitrary targets around what would or would not be a desirable level of foreign investment in relation to a particular asset class. I think we've got to determine whether or not there is a particular reason why a particular investment would be contrary to the national interests. Ultimately, there is a high level of discretion for the Treasurer to make relevant judgements in this place. But let me just conclude on this point: foreign investment is very important for our future economic growth and success and for the opportunity— (Time expired)