With debate raging over the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) allowing Chinese funded projects to employ their own workers, The SMH has uncovered a plan by a large Chinese-owned dairy in Gippsland to import workers, in a worrying sign of things to come:
Ningbo Dairy has bought several dairy farms in Kernot, in South Gippsland, and plans to build a feedlot and $20 million milk-processing plant to export fresh milk directly to Chinese consumers. Ningbo’s vice-president Harry Wang last year criticised Australia’s high wage costs and said he could improve the Kernot farms’ productivity and profitability by importing workers from its 12,000-cow mega dairy operations in China…
Fairfax Media has uncovered evidence that in August 2013, Ningbo was actively recruiting Chinese dairy farm workers for Australian jobs…
YoYou Dairy was already the focus of controversy, with local outrage over expansion plans that include housing a herd of 500-1000 cows in giant barns for most of the year.
The company plans to increased per-cow milk production from the Australian average of 6000 litres a year to the 9000 achieved on its 12,000-cow “mega dairy” Chinese operation…
“If they are not using local labour, what’s the point of the [foreign] investment in the first place? Because not only will the profits be repatriated, so too will the employment”, [said Ben Davis, Victorian Secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union].
Ben Davis makes a legitimate point. If the Chinese vertically integrate the food production process in Australia – from purchasing our farms, to employing their own workers, as well as taking over the distribution and logistics chain – then where is the benefit from such foreign investment? Australians would be cut-out completely from the whole food export business, and in turn cut-out from sharing in the economic benefits.
In the example above, local dairy producers/exporters would also be displaced by the Chinese-owned and run operations, thus reducing their revenue and potentially local employment as well.
