Labor has revealed it will seek to block tighter vetting of Asian investment in Australian farms and agribusinesses, and insist on a more than tripling of the investment trigger point for such regulatory assessment.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The move is designed to burnish Labor's pro-trade and foreign investment credentials and pressure the Coalition to justify rules that could appear racially motivated.
It threatens to restart an ugly parliamentary slanging match next week that had reached fever pitch during the last days of Tony Abbott's prime ministership when the government branded Labor and unions racists for holding up the China-Australia free trade agreement.
A government-opposition compromise on that bilateral pact was eventually reached, in which some of Labor's fears over Australian jobs, wages and safety protections were accommodated.
Now, however, the boot is on the other foot, with Labor trade spokeswoman Penny Wong telling the Economic and Social Outlook conference in Melbourne that the Turnbull government's proposed changes to install tougher restrictions on Korean, Chinese and Japanese investments in Australia suggest Canberra wants to discriminate against investors "according to their nationality".
She said the bill currently before Parliament, which would set the threshold for referral to the Foreign Investment Review Board at just $15 million in the case of proposed acquisitions of agricultural land, would send the message that Australia is neither particularly open for business nor an enthusiastic destination for foreign capital.
"[The Coalition] has legislation before Parliament to introduce a complex regime of differential thresholds for Foreign Investment Review Board screening of proposed investments," Senator Wong said.
"This new regime will discriminate against investors according to their nationality.
"It reduces the screening threshold for investments in agricultural land to $15 million for investors from China, Korea and Japan – but not for investors from the US or New Zealand. It also introduces a new screening threshold of just $55 million for investments in agribusiness – and defines agribusiness so broadly that it will include half of Australia's food manufacturing industry."
Senator Wong said the bill, which Labor says is merely a sop to the protectionist Nationals, "would create the bizarre position where the threshold for foreign investment in sensitive sectors like uranium extraction or defence industries would be five times higher than for food manufacturing".
"Labor will treat agribusiness the same as other non-sensitive sectors of the economy," she said.
"We will also seek to amend the government's legislation to increase the screening threshold for investment in agricultural land to $50 million ... this is the level required under free trade agreements the Howard government negotiated with Singapore and Thailand."
Politically it is clear Labor's approach has been designed to drive a wedge between the two Coalition parties and to test Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's resolve to lead a modern, "thoroughly liberal" government committed to free trade and minimum levels of red tape.
"The challenge for Malcolm Turnbull is whether he will stand up for an open economy by supporting Labor's amendments – or just be a rubber stamp for the anti-investment barriers concocted by Tony Abbott and the Nationals," Senator Wong said.
The renewed trade and investment debate is likely to inflame tensions with the Nationals, who have long expressed fears of Chinese investors buying up Australian farms, and who in many cases harbour suspicions that the urbane and city-focused Mr Turnbull is less in tune with the junior Coalition partner than was the man he replaced, Mr Abbott.
