Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister is back from China. Apparently, there were warm handshakes all around, but the PM is saying that the meeting wasn't transactional, which I guess means that we didn't promise anything and nothing was promised—good to know, because, even if the Chinese Communist Party make promises, they can break those promises the very next day. That's how a dictatorship works. This isn't news to Chinese Australians; they know how the Chinese Communist Party works.

What I am worried about is the deals that have already been made in this country. The Chinese already own 7.8 million hectares of Australian farmland, and the Foreign Investment Review Board gave the tick to $700 million of residential real estate proposals just in the first three months of this year. Tasmanians know this story very well—don't you, Tasmanians?—because in 2014 the Liberal Premier, Will Hodgman, showed the Chinese President around Tasmania, and the story goes that the Chinese said they wanted to buy TasPorts. Apparently, the Premier said he 'couldn't quite make that work'. Well, thank God! Instead, he directed the Chinese government reps to a nice bit of crown land on the waterfront in Hobart. Then, in 2015, without any consultation with the community, the Premier put out a press release that this prime land would be gifted to a Chinese company to build a massive hotel and hospitality centre. The local council, headed up by the mayor, who was a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party, waved the deal through. Fast-forward to 2023, and it seems that this deal is dead in the water, thanks mainly to the local community. Thanks to the community down there. Well done, you guys. I am not saying I'm against overseas investment—we need it—but it is Australians who should be first in line when it comes to owning our land and assets, like ports, and we should not be selling anything off to other countries, especially China. They aren't a democracy, and they don't follow a rules based order.