Grain silos, cheese and a flying kangaroo stir the emotions – at least when it comes to foreign ownership.
The partial sale of home-grown biscuit brand Arnotts in 1992 was emotional enough.
Back then, the Arnott family ran television ads with the slogan “Can you put a price on Arnotts?” as the American Campbell Soup Company made a hostile takeover bid for the maker of Tim Tams.
That was also the year that Qantas and the NSW Grain Handling Authority, now known as GrainCorp, were privatised.
Treasurer Joe Hockey on Friday blocked American food giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)’s $3.4 billion takeover bid for GrainCorp, Australia’s biggest grains handler and exporter.
A day earlier, ADM offered more than $200 million to build new silos and improve rail links but with GrainCorp handling 85 per cent of the eastern seaboard’s bulk grains exports, opposition from Nationals MPs and grain growers won the day.
The 93-year-old Qantas airline stirs even stronger patriotic fervour.
By law, foreign ownership of the carrier is capped at 49 per cent, with foreign airlines restricted to 35 per cent.
But with rival Virgin Australia moving to obtain $350 million from its three main foreign airline shareholders – Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines and Etihad Airways – Qantas is worried.
Chief executive Alan Joyce fears its rival, which is 73 per cent owned by foreign airlines, will be able to obtain extra overseas capital to put Qantas out of business.
“It’s not a level playing field and it needs to be a level playing field,” he told a Brisbane business lunch this week.
Mr Hockey is sympathetic to Mr Joyce’s wish for the Qantas Sale Act, restricting foreign ownership, to be reviewed as the airline seeks commonwealth support to obtain cheap overseas finance.
But other politicians are calling for foreign ownership caps to stay so Qantas remains an Australian airline.
The cheese and milk industry is another emotional minefield as Canadian dairy conglomerate Saputo squares off against Australian players Bega and Murray Goulburn for control of Warrnambool Cheese and Butter, Australia’s oldest surviving dairy company.
The Foreign Investment Review Board has approved Saputo’s bid but convincing the Australian public that a brand founded in 1888 should go the way of Vegemite, VB and Speedos is another matter.
