Treasurer Jim Chalmers speaks on foreign investment reform

SARAH FERGUSON: You're delivering a major economic speech tomorrow at a foreign policy think tank much in the way that the US national security advisor Jake Sullivan did last year. Are you proposing a significant rewrite of foreign investment rules based on national security?

JIM CHALMERS: No, the focus is more forward-looking than that, Sarah and what I'm intending to announce tomorrow is a major overhaul of our foreign investment framework in three ways. If it is higher risk, it will get more scrutiny, stronger, more robust examination to how it relates to our national interest and some of the things that we are worried about will be familiar to you, Sarah.

SARAH FERGUSON: Let's talk the risky investments. You just used the word interference, risk of interference. What you mean by that? JIM CHALMERS: Well, first of all, the regime in Australia is already a bit tougher for state-owned enterprises and I think that's appropriate. I don't intend to change that when it comes to the zero threshold and the like, that's an important part of the current framework that we are looking to enhance and improve.

JIM CHALMERS: Well, it's just one of a suite of tools that we want to make more substantial when it comes to the scrutiny on foreign investment. SARAH FERGUSON: And would you be sending security officials from ASIO for example to accompany those Treasury officials because an on-site visit at a company that is digging a rare earths out of the ground, it is very hard to imagine a Treasury official can make an on-site visit and discover anything crucial.

But fundamentally, it's about looking forward. It is about how do attract more, less risky investment and how do we better screen the more risky investment because if you think about A Future Made in Australia, you think about our capacity to be a renewable energy superpower, you think about the future of our economy.

No investment stays exactly the same over a long period of time and so, any normal self-respecting country like Australia should have the ability to go back into those deals, if that's necessary and what the changes I'll announce tomorrow will be about beefing that up, as you say, but also having a much more robust information base to make those kinds of often difficult decisions.

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