DAVID SPEERS: Penny Wong, thank you for your time. Can you explain to me why Labor has decided on this policy shift to allow Chinese foreign investment up to or just over $1 billion without automatic scrutiny from the Foreign Investment Review Board?
SENATOR PENNY WONG, LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE: We think investment is good for Australian jobs. Investment is good for Australian growth and we want more jobs here in Australia and we think we should be encouraging, in non-sensitive sectors, investment into the country.
So what we flagged is that as part of the China Free Trade Agreement negotiations, we would support moving the threshold in the way you've described. The screening for non-sensitive sectors wouldn't be required for anything under $1 billion which is the same threshold as the United States have.
SPEERS: What does non-sensitive mean? What areas would be exempt from that?
WONG: The existing Foreign Investment Review Board rules do set out sensitive sectors. They include things like telecommunications, uranium and a range of other sectors. So were not proposing to move from that policy framework. What we are saying is that if we think investment is good for the country, and we do, if we think investment is good for jobs, and we do, then were up for increasing or lessening the red tape on investment from China and potentially from other countries just as Australia has already done in relation to investment from the United States.
SPEERS: What about agriculture? There's a lot of sensitivity around Chinese investment in farmland. What would this mean?
WONG: I've said today that we don't agree with the National Party imposed carve out of agriculture and agribusiness. Let's be clear, the policy justification for that carve out is entirely political. It is entirely about the internals of the Coalition and the fact that there is a Government which says we are open for business but only in those parts of the economy where Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce aren't going to cause us a problem.
SPEERS: But Kevin Rudd, during last year's campaign said and I quote, "I was a bit anxious about simply an open slather approach when it came to Chinese foreign investment in farmland". Was that a policy position on the run or has something changed in terms of Labors approach to this?
WONG: I think you asked me about that at the time and I made the point that Kevin didn't flag any changes to foreign investment rules. The only changes that were flagged by a political party to those rules during that election campaign were Tony Abbott, where he adopted National Party policy on agriculture.
But can we just get out of the belt-way here for a minute? Why do we say this is a good thing? Let's talk particularly about the agricultural sector. People talk often and the Government does, Andrew Robb does about us being the food bowl of Asia. And certainly we want to continue to trade on our strengths, build on our strengths, and supply the growing consumer market in China and in other Asian countries. It is inconceivable David that we will be able to fund all of the investment and scaling up of our production domestically that that requires.
So if we want to do it, were going to have to have more foreign capital just as foreign capital has, through Australia's history, been invested in so many other parts of our economy resources being an obvious one.
SPEERS: Just to be clear on this though - this would also include state owned enterprises in China?
WONG: No, we have said very clearly there were some very sensible policy principles that Wayne Swan as Treasurer laid out in 2008, which laid out some of the issues with state owned enterprises, and we are not proposing any changes to that.
I note the government has flagged a change on that front. The Prime Minister has flagged a change and what we would say is we will assess, and I think Australians would expect us to assess, any Government proposal in relation to state owned enterprises against the principles that Treasurer Swan laid out a number of years ago.
SPEERS: Alright. But therefore a lot of what you're saying really only applies to a small or to a percentage of Chinese investment because so much of it does come from state owned enterprises.
WONG: I think the principles that Wayne laid out are sensible ones and if the Government wishes to move on those it probably should be clear with Australians about what its proposals are. The other thing we said today, not only in relation to the $1 billion and in relation to having a much more open approach and a much more welcoming approach to investment in agriculture, is we said looking forward, if we do get a Free Trade Agreement with China, then really you'd have to say why would Australia not simply have the same higher threshold across the board? Once you've got the US and China and other free trade agreement partners under the same regime, why not just make it the same for all nations.
SPEERS: Shadow Trade Minister Penny Wong, we will have to leave it there. Thanks for joining us this afternoon.
WONG: Good to speak with you.
 
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