The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, says Australians need to decide if certain national assets ought to never be sold to foreign state-owned enterprises.
He said the Turnbull government’s decision this week to reject the proposed sale of the NSW electricity distributor, Ausgrid, to Chinese bidders was an embarrassment.
He said if Australia’s security agencies thought Ausgrid was a strategic asset then they should have intervened in the bidding process months ago to prevent it being sold to a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
“Maybe we need to have a discussion,” he said on Friday. “What are the parts or assets in Australia which we’re just not going to sell to state-owned enterprises?
“Let’s be upfront about that in a structured fashion, rather than having this sort of chaotic on-again, off-again approach which is becoming a hallmark of this incompetent Turnbull government.
“We need to have a discussion ... about what assets should never be for sale to state-owned enterprises of any country. We can’t just make this an issue about China.
“If we want to be known as a reliable destination for foreign investment and we want to maintain our national security, we need to be a lot more upfront with potential investors from state-owned enterprises.”
The NSW premier, Mike Baird, criticised the Turnbull government on Friday for leaving it until the last minute to raise national security concerns about his proposed sale of Ausgrid.
He has been trying to sell a 99-year lease on 50.4% of Ausgrid as part of his government’s poles and wires privatisation program, and to raise $10bn from the sale.
The final two bidders were China’s largest state-owned company, the State Grid Corporation of China, and the privately owned, Hong Kong-listed, Cheung Kong Infrastructure, controlled by the billionaire Li Ka-shing.
But the sale was thwarted this week by the federal treasurer, Scott Morrison, who rejected it, on a preliminary basis, on national security grounds.
Baird said he accepted the final decision was Morrison’s, and that national security ought to be paramount, but it should have been handled better: “My only frustration, and strong belief, is this should have been resolved much earlier.”
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said on Friday that every national asset was unique and the sale of this one, unfortunately, had to be rejected on national security grounds.
“Each transaction, each asset, is distinct one from the other,” he said. “The national security considerations, as I said, were based on the unequivocal advice from the agencies.
“What I can assure you is the advice we received was absolutely unequivocal. This was not a political decision ... this is a decision that was taken with the utmost seriousness by the Government.”
The State Grid Corporation of China, and Cheung Kong Infrastructure, now have a brief window of time to persuade Morrison to change his mind. They are allowed to make new submissions before next Thursday.
