HOW ironic that just days after the Treasurer put a hold on the S. Kidman & Co sale to the Chinese, Pauline Hanson announced a fresh tilt at Australian political relevance. While ill-informed racial perceptions spread, I can’t help but think these events highlight our out-dated, illogical and financially stupid anti-Asian sentiments as a nation.
On Saturday it was reported that Pauline has her sights set on the 2016 Senate – and I bet she’ll play the foreign ownership card. Perhaps Donald Trump’s success in dividing Americans by race, gender and religion has given her inspiration?
But our local xenophobic diehards aren’t all right wing. In fact, people who can’t handle globalisation sit in all quadrants on the political compass, but the arguments against foreign investment and ownership of agricultural assets are half-baked at best.
Arguing against foreign investment in Australian agriculture demonstrates an embarrassing unawareness of our history, a weak grasp on economics and abeyance around the reality of Australian agriculture and how we contribute to domestic and global markets.
The populist anti-foreigner sentiment has only surfaced since the Chinese started dominating foreign investment. It never stirred through the 22 decades of past and current investment/ownership by the US, Canadians, Swiss and Brits who have dropped tens of billions across all sectors.
But I guess it’s ok for them to come here and buy our land, because they’re white.
Now even the xenophobes know you can’t take land away on a ship, so they tend to come at the rational and informed with my favourite comeback: the ‘food security’ argument. Ridiculous.
For starters, our generation has never eaten the beef S. Kidman and Co grow. Sidney Kidman himself helped set-up our first frozen beef and mutton exports and all of their product is exported to the US and Asia.
On top of that, Australia is an exporting nation. We export more than we import. In fact, we produce four times more than what we eat. For every meal you eat, we export four. And with trade agreements, technology and training improving, we’re growing even more for export. And that’s with 12.5 per cent of our agricultural land ‘foreign owned’.
On this, it will take more than $370m-plus cash to buy the company. The Kidmans didn’t come down in the last rain and will not just sell to anyone. They want to see efficient capital come in, not ‘dumb money’. They want to see the sale as a strategic one, where not only is capital transferred, but also alliances made, more talent brought in, strengthening the company for future growth.
So the local $70m DomaCom has raised from 4000-plus investors to compete with the Chinese is cute, but it has fear and loathing written all over it. There’s been talk of ‘beating the Chinese’, rather than being the best strategic investors. And what’s more disturbing is that these investors aren’t fussed about which Chinese company they’re against – seems they don’t discriminate on business record, just on race.
Having a beef export business bought by shareholders that have united to buy out against our largest trading partner for no other reason than they’re “Chinese” speaks to that boneheaded logic I touched on earlier.
We need to remember smart money is money that comes with help that’s worth paying for. Dumb money is either just money alone, or worse - money that comes with crippling side effects.
Whilst there is both in Australian agriculture, our nation needs to open its doors to more money that comes with smart management and an alignment of values from informed, educated and clever people. Not to mention that touch of multiculturalism that’s needed to run a business and manage relationships in 2016.
Something people like Pauline Hanson would have you believe otherwise.