FIRB reforms article series – Part 1: National security businesses

The potential impact of the Commonwealth's proposed reforms to Australia's foreign investment regime

With the release of a Discussion Paper on 5 June, the Commonwealth Government announced its intention to introduce sweeping reforms to Australia's foreign investment review laws. As summarised in our recent article (which can be found here) the Commonwealth Government is intending to amend the foreign investment regime to address what it sees as a gap in the regime with respect to Australian national security considerations.

The proposed wide ranging reforms set out in the Discussion Paper are intended to form the base for draft legislation to be released later this year, and then to be legislated and become effective from 1 January 2021. The last significant reforms made to the foreign investment rules in 2015 saw Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) approval go from being largely treated as a procedural issue to be addressed in the ordinary course of a