Australia
4. Industrial Policies
Investment Incentives
The Commonwealth government and state and territory governments provide a range of measures to assist investors with setting up and running a business and undertaking investment. Types of assistance available vary by location, industry, and the nature of the business activity. Austrade provides coordinated government assistance to attracting FDI and is intended to serve as the national point-of-contact for investment inquiries. State and territory governments similarly offer a suite of financial and non-financial incentives. Australian and State and Territory Governments provide selected grants to businesses for establishing or expanding a business, or for specific activities such as research. The Commonwealth Government also provides incentives for companies engaging in research and development (R&D), and delivers a tax offset for expenditure on eligible R&D activities undertaken during the year. R&D activities conducted overseas are also eligible under certain circumstances, and the program is jointly administered by AusIndustry (Government agency) and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). The Australian Government typically does not offer guarantees on, or jointly finance projects with, foreign investors.
Foreign Trade Zones/Free Ports/Trade Facilitation
Australia does not have any free trade zones or free ports.
Performance and Data Localization Requirements
As a general rule, foreign firms establishing themselves in Australia are not subject to local employment or forced localization requirements, performance requirements and incentives, including to senior management and board of directors. Proprietary companies must have at least one director resident in Australia, while public companies are required to have a minimum of two resident directors. See Section 12 below for further information on rules pertaining to the hiring of foreign labor.
Under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015, telecommunications service providers are required to retain and secure, for two years, telecommunications data (not including content); to protect retained data through encryption; and to prevent unauthorized interference and access. The Bill limits the range of agencies that are able to access telecommunications data and stored communications, establishes a “journalist information warrants regime.” Australia’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records Act prohibits the transfer of health data out of Australia in some situations.
Australia has a strong framework for the protection of intellectual property (IP), including software source code. Foreign providers are not required to provide source code to the Government in exchange for operating in Australia. A current government enquiry is investigating the competition impacts of digital platforms, including the market implications of the algorithms used by these platforms and options for mandating the disclosure of these algorithms to regulators.
The Government introduced legislation to Parliament in 2018 that would require encrypted messaging services to provide decrypted communications to the Government for selected national security purposes (the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act 2018). Parts of this legislation were passed by parliament in December 2018, and the remaining aspects of it are subject to review by a parliamentary committee at the time of writing. Companies relying on secure encryption technologies have expressed concern about the impacts of this legislation on the security of the products, and the lack of sufficient judicial oversight in reviewing government requests for access to encrypted data.
Companies are generally not restricted in terms of how they store or transmit data within their operations. The exception to this is the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Records Act (2012) which does require that certain personal health information is stored in Australia. The Privacy Act (1988) and associated legislation places restrictions on the communication of personal information between and within entities, however, the requirements placed on international companies, and the transmission of data outside of Australia, are not treated differently under this legislation. Finally, Australia’s data retention laws require telecommunications companies and internet service providers to retain customer metadata for a period of two years. The Australian Attorney-General’s Department is the responsible agency for most legislation relating to data and storage requirements.