‘Complete nonsense’: Australian treasurer Scott Morrison rejects criticisms of China investor ban
Australia’s treasurer on Friday rejected accusations that the true reason his government plans to ban Chinese bidders from leasing a Sydney electricity grid is to appease influential lawmakers with xenophobic views.
Critics including Bob Carr, director of the Sydney-based Australia-China Relations Institute and a former foreign minister, said the decision reflected the wishes of anti-establishment lawmakers who gained balance-of-power roles in the Parliament in elections in early July.
“The treasurer’s decision ... is a huge concession – the first major policy sacrifice – to the Witches’ Sabbath of xenophobia and economic nationalism stirred up in the recent federal election,” Carr said in a statement. “The treasurer is conceding to economic populism in the Senate.”
The assumptions and the extensions that are being drawn by some in relation to this decision are misplaced, they’re inaccurate and in some cases, mischievous
Morrison dismissed the views of Carr, who was a minister until 2013 in a Labor Party government which is now in opposition, as “complete nonsense”.
