Rex Patrick (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

To clarify, the case that I was referring to is APR Energy Holdings Limited and the Commonwealth of Australia. I'd also like to ask the minister to confirm for me a circumstance—and I apologise: I use a hypothetical, just to give context to the question—where Australia changes a policy in this place that gives rise to an application under ISDS. The government may say that that's not likely, but actually that's not a matter for the government to decide. An applicant can simply make the application, and you can contest jurisdiction or the appropriateness of that. Say we have a situation where a policy has changed and an international company makes an application and they choose to do so, because they can, and to use ISDS as the mechanism for doing so. I just want to confirm that in the same circumstances an Australian company who is affected by the policy change doesn't have the ability to make application under ISDS for the same potential damage to the Australian company.