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SYDNEY : Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard urged critics of the planned merger between Singapore and Australia's stock exchanges not to seek to "disturb" current foreign investment laws.
Gillard said she discussed the proposed 8.2 billion US dollar takeover with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during talks at the ASEAN Summit in Hanoi, and they both agreed there was community interest in the bid.
"We also both understood that there is a clear process to be gone through here, a clear process from the Australian point of view with our Foreign Investment Review Board and that that process would be gone through," she told ABC television on Sunday.
The proposed merging of the Sydney and Singapore stock exchanges faces political opposition in Australia, where Gillard heads a fragile minority government which relies on Greens party and independents to hold power.
Gillard said it would be inappropriate for her to speculate on whether the merger would be approved by the foreign investment watchdog, but called for due process to be respected.
"I certainly hope that no one would seek to criticise or disturb what have been long-standing and bipartisan arrangements to assessing foreign investment and assessing it through the prism of our national interest," she said.
"That's what the Foreign Investment Review Board does -- ask the question: is this in Australia's national interest?"
The Singapore-Sydney tie-up, which will also need the approval of Australia's parliament to go ahead, aims to create the world's fifth biggest exchange with a market capitalisation of about 12.3 billion US dollars.
- AFP/ir
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