Under which particular pillow does Joe Hockey hope to find a lazy trillion dollars lurking? That’s the estimated investment Australian agribusiness will require over the next 35 years to increase productivity and remain globally competitive, according to a report released in 2012 by the ANZ. Clearly Archer Daniels Midland won’t be coming to the party, although up until Mr Hockey put the kibosh on them last week they were more than keen to lob several billion dollars our way.

The Treasurer’s decision to reject the American grain distributing giant’s purchase of GrainCorp is a deeply worrying sign for this government’s understanding of, and plans for, a strong, productive, forward-looking Australian economy. Supposedly ‘opened for business’ on 9 September by an excited Tony Abbott, ‘Oz Inc’ has slammed the shutters down on the first seriously cashed-up customer to come sauntering past its shopfront window. Memo to Mr Abbott — turning buyers away is not how you run a successful enterprise.

Much has been made over the past few years about the potential for Australia to act as ‘provider’ to south-east Asia and beyond. Our open lands and favourable climate (changing or otherwise), along with our history of farming and ‘riding on the sheep’s back’ would suggest we are well positioned to switch from flogging uranium and coal to selling beetroot and barley. ‘Just like that’, as comedian Tommy Cooper used to say.

Unfortunately, it will require more than cunning sleights of hand to find the money required to bring our agribusinesses up to scratch. Investment in infrastructure, transport, modern equipment and the management skills to implement world’s best practice will not come cheap. By turning our backs on powerful and wealthy multinational companies we are, in the long run, merely consigning ourselves to paddle along in the backwaters.

Mr Hockey’s flawed reasoning cites crass populism (lots of people were against it) and a snide moral superiority (we don’t trust those dodgy seppos from ADM) as prime reasons why the bid was rejected. This simply isn’t good enough. In what way is the national (rather than the National’s) interest seriously threatened by doing what has made Australia the success it is; attracting foreign investment? Let’s not forget, Canada, Japan, the Swiss and others already have invested in various Aussie grain industries. Under what bizarre logic does giving in to self-serving protectionist lobbying today grow the economic pie of the future?

As the Wall Street Journal Asia pointed out: ‘A little protectionism rarely buys more liberalisation, and it typically leads to more protectionism or corporate welfare.’

The Australian Financial Review were equally dismayed, seeing an unwelcome return to ‘the lost opportunities of the Fraser years’ and a ‘betrayal of the Liberal party’s ideals of free trade and free capital flows’. Already, GrainCorp’s shares have fallen, their CEO has departed and the company has confirmed it will be closing certain collection sites between now and the next harvest. Messrs Abbott, Hockey, Truss and Joyce now need to explain precisely where the billions required for future investment in GrainCorp and other agribusinesses is going to come from.

The taxpayer? Say it ain’t so, Joe.

Normal programming resumes

To those of our readers aghast at last week’s ‘brain snap’ in defence of the ABC, fear not. Normal programming has resumed — once again we are appalled by our national broadcaster. The subject of our indignation this week comes courtesy of Miranda Devine, who wrote of one particular ‘tentacle’ of the vast network being used in its crusade against the Coalition and Tony Abbott: the ABC’s Behind the News.

BTN, as it is fondly known to over a million schoolkids, is a weekly show designed to introduce them to the concept of ‘news’. It features cool, young ‘reporters’ who regurgitate Ultimo’s viewpoints to impressionable young minds. Tony Abbott, we learn, is ‘a really good listener because he’s got really big ears’. Hamas are a ‘religious’ group. The Taleban are ‘rebels’. Privatisation means ‘you don’t care about the people’. The ancestral home of the Jews was ‘majority Muslim… with some Jews’ before 1948. The NBN? ‘It’s been designed to connect Aussie homes with fibre optic, the fastest network technology around. But the Coalition says that’s too expensive’.

BTN has helped shape the views of many young students over the past few years on climate change, asylum seekers etc. Even ‘freedom of speech’ got its own special insight: ‘This is Alan Jones, a guy who’s famous for saying what he thinks even if it isn’t all that nice. Some reckon comments from media personalities including Alan Jones helped to fuel racist riots in a Sydney suburb in 2005.’ You get the drift. Kiddy groupthink.