One of the barriers is Treasury Australia, which was told to Politicians countless times. Hong Kong is the 3rd financial capital of the world after London and New York. Treasury has been avoiding a Double Taxation Agreement (DTA) with Hong Kong for the last 20 years. AustCham in Hong Kong tried lobbying the former Morrison Government (via Hon. Ian Robb), which said we will do the DTA agreement with Hong Kong after the Free Trade Agreement. No DTA action has been done after FTAs with China and Hong Kong. FTAs and DTAs are not conditional on each other, but can be complimentary. On 23 October, ABC Business Reporter Daniel Ziffer reported "Hundreds of billions of dollars held by Australians in foreign tax havens, report estimates" of which around $1 billion is probably sitting in Hong Kong banks doing nothing after profit shifting. A DTA provides information exchange and that $1 billion can come back into Australia for investing in our Primary Capital Markets, if Treasury provides an incentive. Secondly, the DTA would iron-out the tax complications for investment funds management from overseas to increase. Back over 10 years ago when Hon. Chris Bowen was Financial Services Minister, he visited Hong Kong and said 5% was from overseas funds management and he could not understand why it was not higher, given Australia has strong compliance regime. Now it is around 6.3% from overseas. Federal Labor thinks its Funds Management Passport in APEC region will do the trick (?) The question I ask, when is Treasury going to move forward into the 21st APEC century and form a DTA with Hong Kong, the 3rd financial capital of the world? This question should be put by the Senate Economics References Committee to Treasury. [Note: Ross Smith was a member of the Finance, Law Tax Committee in the Australian Chamber of Commerce AustCham in Hong Kong from 2015 to 2019, which was advocating a DTA. He wrote a paper for a DTA pensions clause that allows superannuation transfers across borders to maintain retirement funding, which would comply with ESG Charter from the UN in New York and with the social protection, financial floors from the International labour Organisation in Switzerland.]