Australia S Foreign Investment Policy

Information guide on the Australian foreign investment policy. Chapters include: Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Act 1975; other aspects of foreign investment policy (naturalisation of companies, treatment of foreign portfolio shareholdings).

Did the Chiko Roll change Australian history? As a matter of fact, yes. Efforts by the reviled US company IT&T to take over the company making the Roll in the early 1970s marked a turning point in Australian foreign investment policy. And this is just one of the strange twists and turns in the buying and selling of Australia. Takeover is an authoritative, engaging account of the history of foreign investment in Australia – both the economics and the politics. It explores the strange coalitions of left and right that have sought to insulate us from the world economy and the equally unpredictable forces that have embraced it. It is a story of the fights between the protectionists and free traders of the nineteenth century, of our relationships with the US, Britain, Japan and China, and of the rise of Google and Uber. Australia’s economy has been built on the back of foreign capital – alone among nations advanced or emerging, we have been able to run deficits with the world throughout our history precisely because foreigners are so keen to invest here. Yet there is an insecurity about the source of our prosperity coming from somewhere else. Where does the national interest lie, and what issues are at stake?

Regulatory Autonomy in International Economic Law provides the first extensive legal analysis of Australia’s trade and investment treaties in the context of their impact on national regulatory autonomy. This thought-provoking study offers compelling lessons for not only Australia but also countries around the globe in relation to pressing current problems, including the uncertain future of the World Trade Organization and widespread concerns about the legitimacy of investor–State dispute settlement.

Given its geographical proximity to Asia and its close alliance with the West, Australia, amid the rise of Asian economies, needs to re-formulate its policies on trade, investment and security. Over the years, in making decisions on issues relating to trade, investment and security, the Australian government has often resorted to the notion of 'national interest'. This book attempts to analyse ‘national interest’ from the perspectives of economics, finance, international trade, foreign direct investment, international relations, energy resources, and migration in the context of Australia in the Asian century.Currently, there are no multidisciplinary books on the Australian ‘national interest’. This book fills the gap with a broad and integrated approach in examining the subject. Academics, researchers, and students of various disciplines (such as economics, finance, international relations, international trade, foreign direct investment and Asian studies), policy advisors, government agencies, financial institutions, and trade law practitioners from around the world will find this book useful and stimulating.

This book revises the existing account of the first Rudd Government's engagement with China, placing Australian foreign direct investment screening policy at the centre of the story. At the time, the Rudd Government was accused of holding an unnecessarily interventionist approach to Chinese Sovereign-Owned Enterprise investments into the Australian mining sector. This book claims that the Australian Government had a deep and coherent understanding of the problem posed by Chinese investments that went well-beyond any simplistic 'China Inc.' or geopolitical threats. The key policymakers believed that the Chinese state-directed investments threatened the integrity of the liberal governance structures on which the Australian state is founded, and so Australian sovereignty itself. While the response of the Rudd Government was largely ineffectual, the logic underpinning it remains the best framework for guiding Australia's engagement with China into the 2020s, as well as the engagement of other liberal states coming to grips with China's rise.