Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the Leader of the Nationals for his question. I think, as he and the House know, Australia welcomes foreign investment, but it has to be in our national economic interest. There are strict rules and thresholds that apply to people purchasing agricultural or commercial land in Australia. These are enforced—again, as he knows—by the foreign investment decision of the Treasury. We allocated another almost $16 million in the 2024 budget to enhance this kind of monitoring and enforcement and also to strengthen and streamline the system.

The settings and thresholds in this case are applicable to private investors from the United States. They were established by our free trade agreement which was entered into by the coalition 20-odd years ago and that remains the case today. What we are doing is making sure that our foreign investment arrangements keep pace. Obviously we see these sorts of cases pop up from time to time. We spend time analysing those cases and working out whether a change is necessary. But, overall, the FIRB system is robust. We have made some recent changes. They've been about quickening the pace of approvals. There are some historical cases like this one which pique our interest but are not inconsistent with the arrangements set up by those opposite.

So my commitment to the House and more broadly is to continue to make sure that the arrangements are the right arrangements to protect our national interests. We do have a robust foreign investment screening regime. That's very important. That's the way that we build trust to attract the foreign investment that our economy needs. From time to time, when cases like this pop up, we make sure that we take them into consideration to make sure that the FIRB system remains as good as it can be.

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