Ann: CKI Proposal APA Grants Due Diligence, page-42

Great post and you clearly have a lot of knowledge about infrastructure and energy assets in Australia. I think you've covered the national security threat of foreign ownership well - and I agree that with your reasoning around that and agree that there's not much threat to Australia on that front. I think our army could regain control without issue. Besides, a foreign force could easily cripple gas and electricity networks using targeted air and missile strikes and have them rendered useless for quite a while no matter who owns the assets.

Another concern for me is simply long-term economic security for Australia. Many countries, China included, place a lot of restriction on foreign investment in their own countries. Australia has some restriction, but comparatively less. Important Australian assets including mines, farms, land, ports and infrastructure are being sold to foreign investment and corporations. I'm all for free trade - meaning more than happy for Australia to trade minerals, agricultural produce, education and other exports without tariffs and so on. I'm not so keen on the actual assets being foreign owned.

So, if we take dairy as an example - if the farm is foreign owned, and the farm workers are on 457 visas, and the milk processing facility is foreign owned, and the products produced are sold to a foreign owned brand and shipped overseas from a foreign owned port - a whole heap of that supply chain and the profits along the way are going overseas and Australia benefits relatively little. In that somewhat extreme example - all of those bits of foreign ownership are already happening to varying degrees around our country. This, I argue, is poor long term management of our economy. China, on the other hand, largely because it is a single-party state - has extremely good long-term economic planning and management. Australia needs to wake up a bit - our 3 years or shorter election cycle and gridlocked federal senate make long term planning difficult.