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Book Launch and Talk - Dr Ian Austin
Branch Meeting
Hosted by: AIIA WA Branch
The event will start on: Tuesday, 28 February 2012 6:00 PM
And will end on: Tuesday, 28 February 2012 8:00 PM
2 Park Road , Nedlands Western Australia
Posted by: wa
Investments in Australia by Asian State Owned Enterprises and Sovereign Wealth Fund Investments: Impact on Australian Political Economy.
Ian Austin is a researcher at Edith Cowan University. He has recently edited two books covering efforts by Singaporean and Chinese investors to acquire significant Australian assets over the past decade.
Australia-Singapore Relations: Successful Bilateral Relations in a Historical and Contemporary Context will be launched at this meeting of AIIA.
It examines the influence of Singaporean sovereign wealth investments into Australia, including infrastructure (Victorian Power, Basslink and others), telecommunication (Optus), and property (Stamford Hotel group and others). A number of these Singaporean investments have involved the purchase of former Australian state owned enterprises being 'privatised' in the name of economic efficiency. The sale of supposedly inefficient Australian state enterprises to Singaporean state enterprises has never been fully explained to the Australian public. This political failure has come at a continuing cost.
The second book, Chinese Investment in Australia: Unique Insights from the Mining Industry, examines the impact of Chinese state owned enterprises (SOE) on the Australian mining investment landscape over the last 5 years. Whilst accepting tens of billions of dollars in Chinese investment into the resources sector, the federal government has also knocked back a number of Chinese SOE investment proposals, on 'national interest' grounds. This has clearly caused rancour within elite Chinese circles. The full criteria of 'national interests' upon which the Australian federal government has rejected Chinese, and Singaporean, recent investment proposals remain unknown. Our speaker will argue that this does a disservice to both the Australian public and to vital Asian investors. A full and frank national debate, extended to the broader Australian community, about Asian SOE and sovereign wealth investment and its future role in Australian society needs to take place. So that both Australians and Asian and international investors have a firm understanding of the policy positions adopted.
About the Speaker:
Ian Austin is an Australian-American researcher on American and East Asian political economy at Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia. He is the sole author of Common Foundations of American and East Asian Modernisation: From Alexander Hamilton to Junichero Koizumi (2009), Goh Keng Swee and Southeast Asian Governance (2004), Changing Faces of ASEAN: A Select Book List (2002) and Pragmatism and Public Policy in East Asia: Origins, Adaptations and Developments (2001) and chapters and bibliographies on Asian and American affairs. Most recently he has collaborated with other researchers as the co-author with Xueli Huang of Chinese Investment in Australia: Unique Insights from the Mining Industry (2011 Palgrave McMillan) and the Editor of Australia-Singapore Relations: Successful Bilateral Relations in a Historical and Contemporary Context (2011 Select Publishing). Before joining academia, Ian worked in logistics in Australia and Singapore, for the National Library Board of Singapore in research and project management, and for Australian state and federal politicians in the areas of public policy and elections. He is a member of the Academy of International Business (AIB) and the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA).
Members and Guests are invited to join the Speaker for dinner at a nearby Chinese Restaurant after the talk.
Rediscovering Foreign Policy: Australia, China and the US (Ric Smith)