The Business Council of Australia (BCA) welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the Establishing a Front Door for major, transformational projects consultation paper. A Front Door that is ambitious, well designed and well implemented can help attract investment to Australia. Its success would be further enhanced by improving Australia’s underlying investment fundamentals.

Australia has tremendous endowments, including our natural resources, skilled and educated population, stable and respected institutions, and proximity to the emerging Asian markets that will drive new forms of prosperity. Yet we are languishing when it comes to productivity, global competitiveness and our investment potential. Australia must therefore not sit still while other countries are increasing their incentives, nor while they are growing their competitiveness at a foundational level.

Our investment and competitiveness challenges mean incremental or superficial changes to the current landscape will not be enough. An ambitious approach is needed to attract more investment, drive innovation and lift our competitiveness. The starting point must be a change in mindset across the board. Australia has been a net capital importer for much of its history. Both policy changes – and policy inaction – have at times taken investment in Australia as given. But the need to lift productivity, attract investment and improve our competitiveness is urgent. This is about every dollar that could have been invested in Australia but was not. It is about drawing overseas investment into Australia while also ensuring domestic investors are encouraged to invest more in Australia.

This submission reflects on the experiences of BCA members with the current investment environment, as well as existing investment facilitation and ‘Front Door’ initiatives around the world. It may be difficult for Australia to replicate all the features of investment facilitation offices from around the world, for example, due to the complexities and challenges of working with three layers of government – although the pandemic demonstrated they can be overcome. At the same time, there are many lessons and features that can be adapted into an Australian Front Door that can help drive investment.

The starting point could be a new statutory body, the Australian Investment Promotion Authority, that brings existing functions around foreign investment attraction, facilitation and regulation under a single roof. This should be accompanied by equivalent bodies for each state and territory to ensure a joined-up approach to investment facilitation across the Federation. Engagement with the Front Door must be easy and not a barrier i.e. the Front Door should be easy to ‘knock’ on. Key features should include:

• A prominent and centralised position within the structure of government, including high level ministerial backing and ownership.
• An open and flexible approach to investment facilitation aimed at maximising foreign investment that is not necessarily tied to specific government priorities or existing processes.
• A set of tools and powers that empowers and provides the authority, flexibility, scale and speed required to facilitate and compete for investment.
• An economy-wide scope of projects eligible for support and service.
• An international investment champion that develops a targeted, strategic and proactive approach to help promote Australia as an investment destination i.e. searching for investors to ‘knock’ on the Front Door.

The net zero transformation, technological advances (including artificial intelligence) and fragmentation of the global economy mean that the resilience and competitiveness of Australian business is more than ever dependent on its ability to be flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. This requires a focus on getting the fundamentals right to make Australia an attractive investment destination through reform of our tax system, easing the burden of regulation, a streamlined project approvals process, a high-quality skills and education system, a well-managed migration program, a streamlined foreign investment screening regime, a well−functioning merger regime, and improvements to the workplace relations system.

Read our full submission here.