After Tony Abbot’s great gaffe of China, a month or two ago, when he flew to Beijing and told the Chinese to take their money elsewhere, today we have another brouhaha over Graincorp, with another swag of Coalition MPs resisting the deal.
From the AFR:
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said he was against a foreign company owning GrainCorp because it had an effective grains storage and handling monopoly on the eastern seaboard.
Nationals leader Warren Truss said the nation was “rapidly descending into a state where farmers will toil in their paddocks while post-farm gate profits from Australia’s $9 billion a year grain crops will be counted in multinational boardrooms”.
…Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey said there were a lot of questions to be answered over the proposed takeover. “GrainCorp has some important national infrastructure in its portfolio and there will be significant hurdles that would need to be overcome to win community support,” he said.
The story recounts a more measured response from state Nationals MP, Peter Walsh.
I can only ask, what’s the big deal? So Graincorp has an east cost monopoly in some processing and storage assets. How is this a strategic issue? The price of grain is set on world markets so there’s no issue there. Will a foreign owner charge any more for its services than a local owner? It will be subject to the same business conditions and regulations so why would it? Could the new owner divert grain from Australia in the event of a famine? I suppose, but it can always be nationalised if it behaves thusly. Is Archer Daniels Midland a Chinese SOE? Hardly.
Maybe I’m missing something (happy to be convinced) but this looks like more knee-jerk drivel from a Coalition that appears to have lost its liberal compass.
