Asian investment isn’t just good business, it’s good security as well.
Already a subscriber?Foreign minister Penny Wong said Australian business doesn’t seem to have shifted the dial in investing in the ASEAN neighbourhood in the past two decades. that have underpinned their industrialisation.
When Ms Wong appointed former Macquarie boss Nicholas Moore as special business envoy to SE Asia she confided to him that “I don’t know what we have to do” to change our apparent myopia.There are signs things have improved – Austrade just had its best quarter in the region ever with a billion dollars in commercial outcomes. But that’s still nothing like REA’s $10 billion move on a British online real estate business this week.
But competence also includes very large banks, who are now very selective about where they operate in Asia. Australia’s huge industry super funds have long outgrown purely domestic investment mandates but have to meet fiduciary responsibilities to keep growing. Yet it’s hard to talk about security when we do not seem committed economically. Kyung-wha Kang, the President of Summit co-organiser The Asia Society, said Australia was rarely a priority for Asian decision-makers because we were not present as investors with capital at risk in the region.
There are big opportunities in the right places. Richard McGregor of the Lowy Institute said that while China may be deliberately flooding world markets with its green technology, Australians need to get smarter at exploiting Chinese opportunities. China in the past quickly adopted new technologies through joint ventures and encouraging foreign investment. Now Australia must do the same and learn from China’s innovations if it wants to succeed.
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